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Character consistency: one master reference, and the marks that vanish

A character made and re-posed for 8 credits each. Face, hair, age and wardrobe survived; the scar through her eyebrow did not. Why models carry structure and drop marks, and how to keep them.

September 20, 20266 min readAIKIZI

Part 6 of 11 · ← previous · all parts · next → Prompts that work

To keep the same person across pictures you need two things: one clean reference of that face, and a sentence telling the model that the reference is the person. We made a character and moved her into a new pose for 8 credits. Her face, her hair, her age and her shirt survived. The small scar through her eyebrow did not — and that is the failure worth planning for.

The two routes

	Reference and re-pose	A SUBJECT realm
What you give it	One picture, plus a sentence naming its job	1 to 5 reference images
What you get	One new picture per generation, fully directed	A pattern applied to your reference — poses, expressions, turnarounds
Cost	The normal ladder: 8 / 16 / 24 on Nano Banana Pro	The same ladder
Best for	A specific shot you can describe	A set of variations you do not want to write one by one

Realms come in five kinds — SUBJECT, OBJECT, WORLD, STORY and CONCEPT. SUBJECT is the person one: action poses, expressions, turnarounds. Output ratios are 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 and 9:16, and some realms lock the ratio because the pattern needs it.

What we made

First, the master. One generation, no references, deliberately plain: a neutral grey studio backdrop, soft key from the left, head and shoulders. A master reference should be boring — the less the picture is doing, the more of it is face.

The master reference: a woman in her thirties with short dark curly hair and a small scar through her eyebrow, in an indigo work shirt, against a plain grey studio backdrop — The master. Nano Banana Pro, 1K, 4:5, 8 credits. Its decode.

Then the re-pose. The master attached as a reference with the Character role, which writes this into the prompt for you: "Reference 1 is the character — keep their exact face, features, hair and age. Do not replace them with anyone else." Then one sentence of new direction: three-quarter view, waist up, at a workbench, holding a brass fitting up to the light.

The re-pose: the same woman in three-quarter view at a workshop bench, holding a small brass fitting up to window light, same indigo shirt with its chest pocket and rolled sleeves — The re-pose. Nano Banana Pro, 1K, 4:5, 8 credits, one reference. Its decode.

What survived and what broke

Feature	Held?	Note
Face structure, nose, mouth, jaw	Yes	Reads as the same person without effort
Hair — short, dark, curly, same line	Yes	Including how it sits at the temple
Age and build	Yes
The indigo shirt, its pocket, the rolled sleeves	Yes	Wardrobe travels well on the Character role
Hands	Yes	Both hands correct, which is not guaranteed
The scar through her eyebrow	No	Gone entirely. The one detail that made her specific

That is the pattern, and it holds beyond this one test: models carry structure and drop marks. A face is a shape the model can hold. A scar, a mole, a chipped tooth, a particular ring, a tattoo — these are small high-contrast details with no structural role, and they are the first thing to go. So is anything asymmetric, because averaging is what these models do.

How to keep the marks

Name the mark in the prompt, every time. Not in the character description you wrote once — in this generation's words: "the small scar through her left eyebrow is visible". The reference is not enough on its own.
Say which side. Our master had the scar on her left. The decode of that master read it as her right. If the model's own reading of the picture flips it, your prompt has to be explicit.
Give it more than one reference. A SUBJECT realm takes up to 5, and a mark that appears in three of them is much harder to drop. This is the real argument for Pro's 10 reference slots over Basic's 3.
Check before you go big. Confirm the marks at 1K for 8 credits, then upscale for 15. Regenerating at 4K starts the whole gamble again — see part 8.

Building a turnaround

A turnaround — the same character from front, three-quarter and side — is a SUBJECT realm's natural job, and doing it by hand is the same move three times: one master, one Character-role reference, one clause of direction per angle. Keep everything else in the prompt identical between them. The commonest mistake is rewriting the lighting for each angle; then the set does not match and nobody can say why.

Cost, honestly: three angles at 1K on Nano Banana Pro is 24 credits, and you should expect to discard one. Budget four generations, 32 credits, for a usable three-angle set.

The limit worth saying out loud

Nothing here trains a model on your character. There is no fine-tune, no LoRA, no stored identity — every generation re-derives the face from the pictures you attach that time. That is why a master reference matters so much, and why the answer to "how do I keep her consistent across fifty pictures" is "keep the same master, and attach it every time".

FAQ

How do I keep the same character across AI images?

Make one clean master portrait, then attach it as a reference with the Character role on every later generation. That role writes "Reference 1 is the character — keep their exact face, features, hair and age" into the prompt, which is what makes the reference stick.

Why does my character lose her scar or tattoo?

Models carry structure and drop marks. A face is a shape the model can hold; a scar, mole or tattoo is a small high-contrast detail with no structural role, so it goes first. Name the mark in each generation's prompt, and say which side it is on.

Do I need to train a model on my character?

No, and you cannot. There is no fine-tune or stored identity here — every generation re-derives the face from the references you attach that time. Consistency comes from reusing the same master reference, not from training.

What is a SUBJECT realm?

One of the five realm kinds, the person-focused one: action poses, expressions and turnarounds from 1 to 5 reference images. Output ratios are 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 and 9:16, and some realms lock the ratio because the pattern needs it.

What does a three-angle turnaround cost?

Three generations at 1K on Nano Banana Pro is 24 credits, but expect to discard one. Budget four generations, 32 credits, for a usable set — and keep the lighting words identical between angles or the set will not match.

Make one plain master portrait in the Studio, give it the Character badge, and re-pose it once; the whole technique is in that one round trip. The realms guide covers the five kinds, and part 4 covers the other five roles.