How do you keep an AI video character consistent across scenes when their costume or appearance changes?

Treat every costume or appearance state as its own locked asset: generate a separate character sheet per appearance beat, lock each one before video generation, and attach the matching sheet to every prompt in that beat. One documented production created a new sheet for every sequence because the character gained a new trinket in each city — and stayed consistent throughout.

Handle an evolving character the same way a wardrobe department handles continuity: lock a base identity once, then version it for every appearance change. invideo is an agentic video creation tool with the current image and video models built in, and its agent stores your character sheets in persistent context so the right version travels with every shot.

1. Lock the base identity before any video generation. Generate a turnaround character sheet — front, side, profile, back, plus a face close-up and a mid-angle close-up — at 4K. Nano Banana Pro outperforms Nano Banana 2 for character sheet fidelity, and Recraft works well for the initial photoreal face portrait. Generate four options per sheet, select the best, and lock it; in one documented production it took about 5 generations (~$9.78) to lock one character, and 11 images total covered four characters and a prop. Frames first, then video — approve the stills before a single clip is generated.

2. Create a new character sheet for every appearance beat. Don't stretch one master sheet across changing looks — each costume change, new prop, or accumulated accessory gets its own sheet derived from the locked base, so the face and body stay identical while the wardrobe updates. This was proven in a production where the character picked up a new trinket in every location: every sequence got its own sheet. If you don't have an exact spec for the new costume, give a costume designer sub-agent the mood you want, pick from the options it generates, then lock the winner into that beat's sheet.

3. Build each sheet clean and complete. Remove objects from the character's hands before generating turnaround angles — held props introduce angle-to-angle inconsistency across the sheet. And include close-up panels, not just wides: small details like scars and accessories only survive across shots if the model can actually see them, otherwise it hallucinates whatever is hidden under a cap or collar.

4. Attach the active beat's sheet to every prompt in that beat. Consistency comes from discipline, not luck: every generation in a scene carries that scene's character sheet as a reference. Where the shot continues across clips, Seedance 2.0 reference-to-video accepts character references alongside location references, so the locked appearance carries across segment boundaries — and when the story hits the next appearance beat, you swap in the next sheet. The invideo agent holds all the sheets in context and attaches the right one per scene, which is how a 70-second film kept two characters consistent across every scene with no LoRA training, for $750 total.

5. Fix drift at the sheet, never at the shot. When a continuity error appears — a stray accessory, a wrong costume detail — ask the invideo agent to inspect the character sheet instead of re-rolling the shot. In one documented case it identified the exact panel containing the error, corrected it, stored the updated sheet in context, and regenerated only what was needed, so every subsequent shot inherited the fix automatically.

Watch some of these to see what works for you:

Juicebox keeps adding a trinket onto himself in every different city. So we needed different character sheets for every single sequence.

— invideo's creative team