Characters, the cast and looks

A character is a face you make here and keep. On the Characters page, describe them, choose a face (head and shoulders) or full-body drawing, and the image model draws a few versions; you pick one, and from then on they are a click away in the composer — attached like a reference image, so the same person can appear in every video you make.

Characters are invented people, and that is enforced rather than hoped for: there is no upload. Every character begins as a description, so nothing in anyone's library is a photograph of a real person. The description cannot name, picture or resemble anyone real, and you confirm that when you create one. Drawing a character costs 4 credits for 4 images to choose from, drawn by GPT Image 2.5; if the drawing fails, nothing is charged.

Our video provider normally refuses to animate anything that reads as a real face, synthetic or not. Characters get past that because each one is cleared with the provider after its own review. A character being reviewed shows as such; a video that uses it waits for the review rather than failing. One the review does not accept cannot be used — make another.

Add one with + Character in the classic layout, or Cast in the new phone layout and the desktop beta. In the classic layout, refer to people by position: the first image attached is Image 1. “Image 1 walks along the pier at dusk” tells the model who you mean.

In the new phone layout and the desktop beta, Cast opens a popup with the shared library and your own characters. Search, press the people you want and press Done. Each one gets a card under the prompt with their name: write @ and the name (“@Teacher hands a coffee to @Firefighter”), or press the name to put it where the cursor is. On the card you can describe a costume (“navy suit, red tie”) or upload a photo of just the clothes, cropped so no face shows. We number the people and costumes for the model and add a short line for each, which the card shows you before you generate.

• Up to 5 characters, on Pro and Max. Characters, the cast and looks work with the Seedance models.
• The cast: beside your own characters, the Library (the Cast popup in the new phone layout and the desktop beta; the Cast tab under + Character in the classic layout) offers a shared cast of several thousand ready-made people, each with a face and a short biography, searchable by occupation, country and age. Attach one like a character. The cast is shared, so anyone may pick the same face; invent a character when you want one that is yours alone.
• Looks: the Looks tab (in the Cast popup, or under + Character in the classic layout) holds outfits, settings and art styles. In the new phone layout and the desktop beta, an outfit's card asks who wears it, and we write the line for you; a setting or a style is named as such. In the classic layout, attach a person first, then a look, and write "Image 1 wearing the outfit in Image 2" or "Image 1 in the setting of Image 2". You can also just describe the clothing in the prompt; the face comes from the person, the clothes from your words.
• New look: beside a cast member, or on one of your own characters, "New look" redraws the same face in a new outfit, age, setting or style — 4 versions for 12 credits (drawing from a picture costs the image model more than drawing from words). The one you keep is a character of your own; a cast member stays in the cast for everyone.
• Same characters, next scene: a video you made here can be the reference video for the next one. Download it from its job page and upload that file unchanged as a reference video. We recognise it as yours and send it as a trusted clip, so its faces are not refused as a real person. An edited or re-exported copy is screened like any other upload and will usually be refused.
• Deleting a character does not touch videos already made with them.
• If your plan stops including characters, they stay in your library but cannot be used until it does again.

The provider's review is the last word on what counts as an invented person. A very photoreal drawing can be refused; a drawing with some style to it rarely is.

For casting, costumes, dialogue and keeping people the same across scenes, with example prompts, see People and characters.