Characters
What Are Characters?
Characters are named visual identities. Define one and the AI keeps their face, hair, and look identical across every panel — regardless of scene, mood, or lighting.
The problem characters solve
Without characters, the AI generates people purely from your scene text. "A young woman with red hair" in panel 1 will look completely different in panel 5 — different face shape, different shade of red, different everything. That's because the AI has no memory between panels.
Characters give the AI a persistent visual anchor. Once defined, a character's appearance travels with them into every panel you put them in.
The character sheet
After you create a character, YarnSaga generates a character sheet — a triple-view illustration showing them from the front, side, and back in a neutral T-pose. This is done automatically in the background and appears in your Characters tab once ready (usually under a minute).
The sheet is generated in your story's chosen art style, so the character looks consistent with the rest of your comic. Every time you generate a panel that mentions this character, their sheet is passed to the image AI as a direct visual reference.
How it works under the hood
When you mention a character by name in a panel description, YarnSaga:
- Detects the name and matches it to the character's record
- Injects the character sheet image as a visual reference (
@imageref) into the image prompt - Adds their physical features — hair, signature hook, face structure — as textual anchors
- Applies their default outfit unless your scene describes different clothing
The image model sees both the visual reference and the text anchors, which is why character faces stay consistent even across very different scenes and lighting conditions.
Use the character sheet before generating panels
The character sheet is the visual backbone of consistency. Wait for it to finish generating before using the character in scenes — the difference in quality is significant.
What's next
- Creating Characters — text form fields explained, plus photo-to-character flow
- Using in Scenes — how to mention characters, outfit overrides, multiple characters per panel
- Editing & Deleting — update fields, regenerate sheets, deletion risks
Why does my character still look different sometimes?
Read: Why Your AI Comic Character Looks Different in Every Panel