Character sheets: the same hero in every clip

Here's the first wall every meme show hits: you make a great first clip with a perfect character, write the second scene, press Generate — and a different character shows up. Same description, different face, different coat, sometimes a different species.

That's not the AI being difficult. Every clip is drawn from scratch, and a description leaves a lot of room. The fix is to stop describing your character and start showing it.

What a character sheet is

A character sheet is one wide picture that shows your character from every side that matters: a portrait, the full figure from three angles, and a close-up of the face. Animators have used them forever for the same reason — so that whoever draws the character next draws the same one.

On trololo.tv you make one in the Character tab of the pictures popup (the Reference card next to Generate).

Making one

You can start from:

• Photos — one to nine pictures of the same character. A pet, a toy, a drawing, yourself.
• A description — who it is, how it looks, its age, what it wears.
• Both — photos for the look, words for what to keep or change ("always wears the yellow raincoat").

Press Generate and you get a 16:9 sheet for 0.10 credits. It lands in your library, so you can use it in every show you make.

Character sheets are for living characters — people, animals, creatures, cartoon and meme characters. For objects and places, use ordinary pictures as references instead.

Using it in every clip

Add the sheet to your clip as a reference. It becomes Image 1 (or whichever number it gets), and you refer to it by that name in the scene:

Image 1 walks into a laundromat at night, puts a single sock into a giant machine and salutes it.

Do this in every clip of the show and your character will stay recognisably themselves from the pilot to episode ten.

Two characters? Two sheets

Make a separate sheet for each character and attach both. Then the scene can tell them apart:

Image 1 and Image 2 sit across from each other at a chess table in a park. Image 2 eats one of the chess pieces.

You can attach up to nine pictures to a clip, so there's room for a cast, a place and a prop or two.

Tips for better sheets

• One character per sheet. Group photos confuse it.
• Clear photos. Good light, the whole face visible, no heavy filters.
• Say what matters. If the scarf is the joke, mention the scarf.
• Keep the sheet, change the scene. Once you have a sheet you like, don't remake it for every episode — reuse it.

About real people

Public figures can be parodied on trololo.tv, as long as it's plainly parody. They can't be put in sexual content, shown committing crimes as if it really happened, or used to fool anyone. And only use photos of private people — friends, family, yourself — with their permission. The full rules are in the content rules.

Next up: how to write a scene the AI actually follows, if you haven't read it yet.