The AI Filmmaking Pipeline
Generating characters
A character lives or dies on its character sheet — the reference image Seedance reads to know who this person is. Seedance reads it literally, so every flaw in the sheet becomes a flaw in every shot. Here's how to build one that holds.
The pipeline
Four moves, always in this order:
Generate — Build the sheet from a prompt Claude writes for you — moodboard and description first, then one production prompt that packs every angle into a single generation.
Inspect — Check the sheet before anything downstream touches it — a stray rim light, a mismatched face, or plastic skin here bleeds into every shot Seedance makes from it.
Edit masked onto the original — Fix flaws with Photoshop masks composited onto the original sheet — never regenerate the whole thing, or drift and grime pile up.
Test in Seedance — Test the finished sheet on a good location — the test is the finish line, not the generation.
Which model generates it
| Model | Reach for it when |
|---|---|
| Soul Cinema | First choice for generating characters |
| Seedream 4.5 | Also works — run in parallel |
| AI Cast (Cinema Studio) | A strong casting tool, worth exploring |
| Nano Banana Pro | Editing a finished sheet only — never generating one |
| GPT Image 2 | Creatures and precise add-ons — see below |
GPT Image 2 is the creature model, not the human model — on human skin it goes oversharp and slops. But for one precise addition on top of an existing character, it's excellent.
The character-sheet prompt
This is the production template — it works in any model. Two things never change: the deep neutral grey background and the split into columns with a dominant portrait (columns can be added when the character needs them). Everything else — the whole CHARACTER block — you rewrite through Claude for your character; Claude knows exactly what a character sheet is, so start by asking it for the prompt yourself and learn the shape.
What that template yields — a dominant portrait carrying the face, full front and back, neutral grey throughout. Four different characters, same recipe every time:
Good sheets, side by side
Five real production sheets. Swipe through and notice they all make the same moves — one identity across every panel, a portrait that dominates, and nothing loud in the background:
The rules that make a sheet Seedance-proof
These are the difference between a character and a slop. Flip through them:
Portrait = 25–30% of the sheet
The portrait is where Seedance reads the face — every detail it will ever know comes from those pixels.
Angle the portrait
Slightly off-frontal beats dead-on — it reads the head's volume instantly. Or add a smaller, separate 3/4 portrait.
Eyes are never black
Iris color must read clearly. Crushed-black eyes give Seedance no light info, so tones drift between generations.
Catchlight, or dead eyes
Like a photoshoot or film frame, there's always a glint in the eye — no catchlight means dead eyes.
Break the symmetry
Real faces are symmetric but never perfect — the right side differs from the left. Perfect mirroring reads as AI.
No 3D-game-render look
Seedance recognizes the game-model mood and animates the character like game footage.
Grey is the golden middle
White bleeds into the video and washes out your location; black eats detail. Deep neutral grey wins.
Crop the head off the full-body panels
On a full-length panel the face always distorts and drifts from the portrait — so remove it, and Seedance is forced to take face textures from the portrait panel, where the pixels and the precision are:
What a SLOP sheet looks like
Three real fails. Each one hides multiple tells — here's what to look for, called out directly:
The dirty sheet — two problems compound: a mottled, dirty plate, where repeated whole-sheet re-generations layered grime into the background that Seedance treats as part of the asset and carries into every shot; and a full-body face that doesn't match the portrait, so Seedance receives two identities and the face and build drift between shots. Reject it — stacked re-generations give Seedance a dirty plate and competing identities. Mask repairs onto the original, then audit again.
The game render — three problems compound: plastic game-model textures, where the whole sheet reads as a 3D game render that Seedance repeats and moves like game footage; an orange rim light baked into the sheet that bleeds into every generation made from it; and a portrait too small, with face panels sitting in a narrow strip nowhere near 25–30% of the frame, so Seedance lacks facial evidence and invents it differently shot to shot. Reject it — weak facial coverage, baked light, and game texture become identity drift, orange edges, and game-like motion downstream.
Standard Nano Banana slop — three problems compound: mirror symmetry, where the face is perfectly mirrored and reads as synthetic, a look Seedance preserves and repeats downstream; soapy skin that's waxy and poreless, which Seedance reads as identity texture and reproduces as plastic skin in every scene; and no dominant portrait, with six near-equal tiles leaving no 25–30% face panel, so Seedance has no authoritative face and identity drifts between shots. Reject it — symmetry, soapy texture, and no authoritative portrait make the same synthetic, drifting character recur in every shot.