How to Create Midjourney Consistent Characters (Step-by-Step)

One of the biggest challenges in Midjourney is achieving character consistency. You might generate a perfect original character once, but when you try to recreate it in a new scene, the facial features, clothes, or expressions suddenly change. Generating consistent characters is a key goal in Midjourney, especially for storytelling in children's books, comics, and digital media.

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In this guide, we’ll cover how to create consistent characters in Midjourney, using reference images, seed numbers, and prompt variations that help you keep your character’s style, details, and personality the same across multiple images. Adjusting parameters—such as aspect ratio, style, or chaos weight—can help fine-tune your results. Maintaining reference to the original prompt throughout the process is important for ensuring your generated images stay true to the initial character design.

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1. Start with a Strong Base Image

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Begin by generating one image of your character that you’re happy with. This base image is created using your carefully crafted, original prompt, which will act as your reference image for future generations. Use descriptive prompts that clearly define appearance, clothing, and style—the original prompt will help maintain consistency across all images.

Example Prompt:

“Pixar-style young woman, red hoodie, curly hair, soft lighting, white background, detailed facial features, cinematic tone.”

When writing your prompt, pay close attention to the specific words you choose, as they directly influence how accurately the character is depicted.

Once you get a result you like, upscale it using the Midjourney bot so you can use the upscaled version as your main reference later.
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2. Use Image Prompts for Character Consistency

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Midjourney allows you to upload an image URL and use it as part of your prompt. Uploading an image as an image prompt helps guide the AI to maintain character consistency in your generated artwork. This is the easiest way to keep the character the same across new images or scenes.

How to do it:

1. Upload your original image to Discord.
2. Copy its URL (right-click → “Copy link”). This is the URL of the generated image you want to use as a reference.
3. Use that link in your new prompt. The image generated from your original prompt will serve as the reference for new scenes:

https://cdn.midjourney.com/abc123.jpg young woman standing in a gym, same character, same style, professional lighting, full body shot –ar 3:4

The AI uses the reference image to maintain facial features, clothes, and hair.

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3. Lock Character Design Using Seed Numbers

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Every Midjourney image has a hidden seed number that determines the random values used during generation. You can set the seed number as one of the initial settings to lock in character design. If you use the same seed number with similar prompts, you can generate consistent characters much more reliably.

To find it, use the /show command with < jobID> under the Midjourney bot, and it will show your image’s seed.

Then reuse it with the /imagine command:

/imagine prompt: same character, sitting on a park bench, Pixar style –seed 45291 –ar 16:9

The seed is one of several parameters you can adjust for consistency. This helps the AI reproduce similar facial features, hair, and proportions, keeping your original character intact across new images.

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4. Maintain Style with a Style Reference

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If you’re creating visuals for a children’s book, comic book, or game, you’ll want style consistency too. In children's books, maintaining consistent character design and visual style is crucial for engaging young readers and supporting effective storytelling. With Midjourney, you can select from a variety of styles—such as photorealistic, surrealistic, or minimalist—to match the desired look for your children's book or other projects. Choosing the right style helps ensure that characters and scenes remain visually coherent throughout children's books.

You can include a style reference in your prompt:

“Use same style as reference, consistent character design, bright colors, hand-drawn Pixar style.”

You can also use the Midjourney web interface to group your reference images and style examples in one place for easier reuse across multiple images.

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5. Focus on Facial Expressions and Clothes

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Small differences in expressions or clothes can break character consistency. To fix this, mention specific facial expressions, outfits, or details in every prompt:

“Smiling or sad, looking left, wearing the same blue jacket, same hair, consistent lighting.”

Avoid vague phrases like “same person” or “like before.” Instead, describe what makes your character unique — freckles, hairstyle, outfit color, mood, lighting, and actions like talking.

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6. Use Reference Pairs to Create Variations

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You can combine two images (or more) as character references in one prompt to guide Midjourney toward character consistency. For example:

[reference image URL 1] [reference image URL 2] same character, different pose, professional portrait lighting.

Using multiple character references in your prompt helps the AI understand which features to keep consistent. This process allows you to generate a new image with the same character's features, style, and clothes, even as the scenes or backgrounds change.

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7. Example Workflows

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Here’s a simple process to generate consistent characters for different use cases:

A. Comic Book Style

• Start with a reference character created using a specific prompt in bold line art.
• Use consistent prompts for each panel.
• Add white background and specify same outfit for all frames.

B. Children’s Book

• Focus on soft lighting, pastel tones, and consistent facial features.
• Include a style reference or artist name for consistent rendering.

C. Animation / Storyboards

• Use the same seed number and reference image.
• Each scene is generated using the same reference and seed to maintain expressions, angles, and hair color across each scene.

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8. Combine with Other AI Tools for Better Control

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If you want more flexibility than Midjourney offers, you can use another ai tool like starryai to refine your character consistency.

starryai lets you:

• Upload your reference character and generate new images in the same style.
• Keep consistent facial expressions, clothing, and lighting across scenes.
• Experiment with different backgrounds or environments while preserving the original look.
• Edit generated images for further refinement using built-in editing features.

You can also download your images to your computer for additional editing or upload them to other platforms for character creation.

It’s perfect for creators who want to generate consistent characters quickly for projects, children’s books, or comics without heavy manual tweaking.

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9. Tips for Better Results

• Always save your first image and reuse its reference URL.
• Note: Reusing the reference URL helps maintain consistency across generations.
• Before generating images, check your settings to ensure they match your creative goals.
• Start with the default values as a baseline, but adjust them as needed for specific results.
• Keep prompts short but descriptive.
• Adding comments to your prompts can help clarify your intent for the AI and improve output quality.
• Avoid adding too many new elements at once; build slowly.
• For each instance, change only one parameter (like pose or setting).
• Use same prompt + seed for perfect consistency tests.

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Final Thoughts

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Achieving consistent characters in Midjourney takes some experimentation, but once you understand reference images, seed numbers, and style references, the process becomes predictable and repeatable. Leveraging Midjourney's features, such as the cref parameter, can help you maintain facial features and character traits across multiple images, which is especially useful for branding, illustration, or creative projects.

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If you’re designing a comic book, a children’s story, or building a brand mascot, mastering character consistency will save you hours of rework — and make your visuals look like they came from the same artist.

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Try blending Midjourney’s creative control with starryai’s reference-based generation to take your character consistency to the next level. We hope this article has provided valuable insights—feel free to write about your own experiences with character consistency in Midjourney and share your tips with the community.

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