Character sheets in Soul Cinema | Academy

Every character and prop in this film starts the same way: a character sheet on a plain grey background, three panels — full-body front, full-body back, and a separate close-up headshot. That one image is what lets the AI hold a face, an outfit, and proportions steady across dozens of unrelated shots later. Skip it, and every new generation reinvents the person.

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Write me a prompt for a character sheet on a plain gray background featuring a front view, back view, and a separate close-up headshot of a tired-looking 25-year-old Latino man with stubble in a casual outfit.

Recreate

Claude turns that ask into a full shot-by-shot prompt — three panels side by side with thin dark dividers, one identical person locked across all three views. Paste it into Cinema Studio, select Soul Cinema, set the aspect ratio to 16:9 at 2K, and generate. Soul Cinema throws a different-looking character on every run for under half a credit, so the move isn't to nail Santiago on the first try — it's to generate a batch and pick.

The reject test: soft light, no glare

Most of a batch fails on lighting, not likeness — and lighting is the one thing worth screening hard for.

Rejected sheet — left side of the face falls into shadow, harsh glare catches the hair. Unusable no matter how good the face is.

Rejected sheet — faces render too dark across all three panels, detail lost in the shadow. Same fix: soft, even, near-shadowless light.

The rule: light has to be soft and near-shadowless, with no glare on the hair and a visible catchlight in the eyes. A cinematic AI video is only as good as the reference photo behind it — a dark, glary character sheet poisons every shot generated from it downstream.

Locked sheet — even wrap-around light, clean catchlights, identical identity across all three panels. This is the one to keep.

Once a sheet reads clean, lock it, click Create Element, and name it Santiago. Saving it as an Element means Claude can reference "Santiago" by name in every prompt it writes from here on, and the moment that prompt lands in Higgsfield, the matching character gets pulled in automatically — no re-describing him shot to shot.