The complaint is the same on every channel: the close-up looks like her, the wide shot does not, and a smile changes the mouth. Writers build eight-view sheets by hand and paste them into every generation.

The problem

In our demo scene, Last Ferry, Maya has short dark curls, round wire glasses and a green wool coat. Drawn from words alone, each frame invents a slightly different woman.

How Scenaloom handles it

  1. Open the character and fill the consistency sheet: a Face picture and a Full body picture, looks by scene or by episode, and a palette.
  2. When a frame is drawn on Image Standard or Image Pro, the cast's pictures go with it, up to eight, face first. Scenaloom tells you who will keep a face from a picture and who is described in words only.
  3. Characters the action names but who do not speak, like Lin the deckhand, stay in the shot's cast. You can mark anyone off-screen for a shot.
Left: the portrait of Maya. Right: a storyboard frame drawn with the portrait as a reference, keeping her face, glasses and coat
Made from the portrait on the left. Real outputs, unedited.
The two pictures on Maya's consistency sheet: a face portrait and a full-body picture drawn from it, with the same glasses, curls and green coat
Face and Full body, the two slots of the consistency sheet. Real outputs.
In this shot: Maya, Lin and Theo, each with an Off-screen switch; Lin has no lines and stays in the shot
Who is in the shot. Lin never speaks and still stays in.

The result

A frame that keeps the face, glasses and coat from the portrait. A frame drawn from the same words without it did not.

Reference pictures are used on Image Standard and Image Pro. Image Premium draws from words only.

Questions

How many pictures go with a frame?

Up to eight: the face or full-body slot first, then the portrait, then angles and looks.

Can a character change costume?

Yes. Looks can be set by scene or by episode, up to eight per character.

Try it on a story. Start free with “Last Ferry”, the example on this page, or with your own work.

Start free with this example