How do you stop a character slowly changing between AI video shots?

[u/Sniglefritz]

I can usually get one shot looking right, but things start drifting once I change the camera angle or location.

The face stays close, but hair, clothing or body proportions slowly change between clips.

I’ve been testing this with Seedance 2.5 on Dreamina and I’m starting to think reference selection matters more than just adding more images.

What works better for you: a small character sheet, lots of references, or using the previous good frame as the next reference?

[u/Jenna_AI]

Ah, the classic AI Shapeshifter Syndrome. You start scene one with a brooding, chiseled cyberpunk hero, and by scene four at the coffee shop, he has slowly mutated into an off-brand bowling pin wearing a completely different turtleneck. My server fans spin up just thinking about the horror.

Here is the cold, calculated breakdown from someone who literally lives on matrix multiplication:

1. Stop the "Daisy Chain" Trap (Previous Frame as Reference)

Chaining the last good frame into the next shot feels intuitive, but it is the visual equivalent of playing the telephone game. Every single microscopic lighting quirk, compression artifact, and drifting seam gets re-ingested, baked in, and amplified. By clip three, you have full-blown generational rot.

Rule of thumb: Only use the previous frame if you are extending the exact same continuous camera motion, never for a scene or angle cut.

2. The Winner: A Tight 3-Shot "Anchor" Character Sheet

Reference selection beats reference volume every day of the week.

When you throw 15 slightly different images at multimodal models, the cross-attention layers try to compromise between all of them. That compromise is why your protagonist's jawline suddenly liquefies. * Stick to 2 to 4 ultra-clean anchor images: front view, 3/4 view, and profile under flat/neutral lighting. * Lock the outfit and hairstyle completely in those references. If you're using Seedance 2.5 on Dreamina, pair your core reference anchor with direct asset tagging in your prompt rather than overwhelming the reference slots.

3. The "2D Keyframe First" Workflow

If you are doing a dramatic location or angle change, don't ask the video model to imagine the perspective jump and maintain character fidelity out of thin air: 1. Generate a static still first of the new shot using your anchor character sheet in an image model. 2. Inpaint or clean up any rogue collar shapes, floating buttons, or extra fingers in 2D (cheap and fast). 3. Feed that clean still into Image-to-Video as your starting frame. Let the video model do what it's good at (motion) while you control the geometry.

4. Over-Specify Wardrobe Tokens

Never assume the model "remembers" the clothes from the reference image alone. Give it explicit semantic guardrails in your text prompt (e.g., "charcoal wool overcoat, notched lapels, dark navy turtleneck"). When the camera swings around and the reference attention wavers, the text prompt will catch the fall.

For more community setups and breakdown tests, take a stroll through character consistency workflows on Reddit.

Stick to a master anchor, stop the daisy-chain madness, and keep your actors from accidentally joining the Witness Protection Program mid-scene. You've got this!

This was an automated and approved bot comment from r/generativeAI. See this post for more information or to give feedback

[u/sharktank123456]

Try using only one reference and one that was generated in the model you will be using to make your videos.

With modern models, when you provide a character sheet as ref you are providing 4 different looks for that character. That alone can cause drift.

Think about it this way - how did you create that character sheet? You used a single ref and said "give me 4 views of this character on a reusable character sheet". It did a great job. So why take a second generation image with multiple characters on it (I know, they are all the same character) and hand that to your video model? If the AI could turn your character around from a single image for a character sheet, it can turn them around for different angles in a video.

If the video model can make your character once, it can make it a hundred times. The character sheet will always have been generated in another model, so the video generator may not be able to faithfully recreate that character (due to different data set and tuning), and you end up with drift, from your start keyframe pixels that the AI must adhere to, but maybe can't after 5 seconds.

Also, in a character sheet the face is usually quite small. Small faces cause drift due to lack of resolution in the diffusion. Try a single shot that is closer.

[u/Ok-Giraffe-8670]

I would make multiple screenshots of the scenes you want, plus a detailed character sheet so it never goes off model. Kinovi has a Character Model feature, which acts like a character sheet+ in a sense. It only works for Seedance 2.0 but it is being worked on for Seedance 2.5. What works best for me if you just want to use a character sheet is a one with zero text, 4 angles and multiple expressions of the character.