A few weeks into making a daily AI comic, a Reddit user noticed something odd. Panel one: a sharp-eyed heroine with a braid. Panel two: same heroine, but now she had short hair and a suspiciously different jawline. By panel three she was basically her own cousin.
That’s the moment most AI comic projects quietly die. The art looks great, but the main character keeps changing who she is.
u/oooooooooooopsi posted a fix on r/PromptEngineering that actually works. They call it the locked look method, and it’s simple enough to steal today.
Why It Matters 🧭
Image models don’t remember your character. Every prompt is a fresh roll of the dice. If you describe your hero a little differently each time (“dark hair” here, “black wavy hair” there), the model reads that as a different person.
One commenter put it well: most people tweak their descriptions each time, thinking they’re improving them, and end up introducing drift. The fix is boring on purpose. Say the same thing, every time.
The same idea works for brand mascots, storybook characters, and recurring faces in social posts. Anywhere you need “same person, new scene,” this applies.
How-To Steps 🛠️
- Write a six-line character card before you generate any image. Keep it short. Six lines: who they are, what they want, their fear or secret, their sidekick, their signature, and their locked look. This does two jobs. It gives the character a personality, and it forces you to decide what they look like before the model decides for you.
- Write the locked look as one long sentence, in a fixed order. The order is: age and role, hair, eyes and face, build, outfit, shoes and accessories. Once it’s written, paste it unchanged into every panel prompt. Same words, same order. No “improving” it halfway through the series.
- Pick a signature. Choose two or three features nobody can miss, like a bright red scarf or a streak of white in the hair. Small details will drift. The signature is what keeps readers recognizing your character even when the buttons on her jacket change.
- Lock your style words and put them first. Watercolor, flat vector, gritty ink, whatever you choose, it goes at the start of every prompt and never changes mid-series.
- Build every panel prompt the same way. The formula is: style words + “comic panel” + one sentence of action + the locked look of whoever is in the shot. That’s it. Every panel, same skeleton.
- Leave room for text, and letter it yourself. Ask for empty sky or blank wall across the top fifth of the image. Then add the speech bubbles in an editor. Models still can’t letter reliably, so don’t make them.
Tips & Tricks 💡
The original post flags two failures you will hit, so here’s how to dodge them.
The double character. Hand-off scenes (someone passing an item to someone else) often draw your character twice. Tell the model how many people are in the panel, or reframe the shot as a close-up on the hands.
The mini comic page. If your prompt has several actions in it, the model may cram a whole comic page into one image. One moment per panel. If your scene needs three beats, that’s three panels.
A few extras that follow from the method:
- Keep your character card and locked look in a text file, and copy from there every time. Retyping from memory is how drift sneaks in.
- If you add a second recurring character, give them their own locked look and signature. Paste both when they share a panel.
- Test your locked look by running the same pose in two or three different styles before you commit. If the character stays recognizable, your signature is doing its job.
The author also wrote up a longer walkthrough with a sample character, her card, the same pose in three styles, the common failures, and a four-panel strip. You can find it at https://mutuals.life/blog/how-to-make-ai-comics/.
Your Turn 🚀
Grab a blank note and write your six-line card, then the one-sentence locked look. Paste it into three panel prompts and see if your hero finally stays herself.
Credit to u/oooooooooooopsi for sharing the method on r/PromptEngineering. If you try it, drop your results in the comments, and tell me which panel gave you the most trouble. Fair winds, and may your characters never grow a new jawline mid-story.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why use the exact same wording in every prompt instead of tweaking descriptions to improve them?
AI models are surprisingly sensitive to prompt variations, even small wording changes compound across panels and cause visual drift. As one reader noted, most people assume tweaking improves results, but consistency in your locked look actually matters more than polish. Lock your words and paste them unchanged every time.
Q: What if small facial details like eye color or nose shape still drift anyway?
They will, and that’s totally normal. That’s why the “signature” concept, 2-3 unmissable features like a bright scarf, distinctive scar, or specific accessory, is so important. These anchors let your brain recognize the character even when minor details shift, preserving the sense that this is the same person across panels.
Q: How do you prevent accidentally drawing your character twice in a handoff scene?
State the exact number of people in the panel (e.g., “one person handing something”) or frame it explicitly as a close-up of one character. This is one of the most common failure modes, and being specific about actor count prevents the model from duplicating characters unintentionally.
Q: Can AI models actually create readable speech bubbles and lettering?
Not yet reliably. Current models still struggle with readable text in bubbles. The practical workaround: ask for empty sky or wall space in the top fifth of your panel, then add your own text bubbles and lettering manually, it’s faster and way more readable than trying to get AI lettering right.
How to keep an AI comic character consistent across panels: the “locked look” method, with examples
by u/oooooooooooopsi in PromptEngineering