Starting an AI character often involves two primary approaches: engage in conversation with the character before creating a visual representation, or generate an image first and develop a personality to accompany it. Both approaches can sound easy, yet each requires iterations before finding the character’s true voice or visual appeal.
Your first attempt to speak with the character might not quite sound like who they are, and the first generated image likely won’t match your vision. The question then is which of the two methods you should choose to start the process, depending on which approach best defines your project and brings it to life.
What a Character Creation Workflow Entails
The workflow does not stop at picking a character’s name and generating her image. It might also include a description of her personality, goals, history, way of speaking, appearance, and a plan for ensuring all that stays in sync.
The text and the images can affect each other. A thoughtful character might not be as well posed or costumed as an energetic adventurer. Likewise, the image might lead you to give the character a different occupation, environment, or personality than you originally planned. The character creation cycle often includes defining, play-testing, and tweaking.
The Chat-First Approach
Chat-first is exactly what it sounds like: You start with the character in a relatively short brief and work through the prompts, getting to know how she/he sounds, how she/he reacts, and what she/he disagrees on before you ever get to see her/his face.
Users might expect a character persona to be finished after just one prompt, but often early versions are broad strokes of the character type. Specific directions and example scenarios get better results. Chat and images for AI girlfriend may both be in this style, but the character definitely needs a solid definition to know how to act and respond.
Chat first is good for narrative, roleplay, and other chat based experiences, but the downside is that good personality doesn’t necessarily equal good art design.
The Image-First Approach
Image-first means you begin with a portrait, wardrobe, pose, or aesthetic and let that drive your choices later on when it comes to personality and back story. This works well for comics, RPGs, social media accounts and other visual media.
The end product can give the illusion of completion when it is usually not done at all. A face alone tells you little about what drives a character – their values, habits, fears or goals – and even an AI character generator with fewer creative limitations may produce an attractive concept that feels fairly flat until you add the relevant specifics.
Image-first is useful when the look is central to the project and it also risks committing you to aesthetic choices too early. Consider the first image as a rough draft.
Expectations and the Actual Creative Experience
It was expected to prompt strong prompt for the strong prompt and the complete character, the actual experience was one more akin to editing. I might retain one character’s hair style from one result, one character’s personality from another, and their back story from a third.
A difference between a compelling idea and a consistent character is another difference. A character’s behavior may change across scenes, and their face shape, style, clothing, and even age may change from picture to picture. Unclear, conflicting, or vague directions can contribute to the change, too.
Chat First vs. Image First: Key Differences
What’s the main difference between a chat first and image first prompt? Chat first gets you control over character’s voice, motivation, relationships, and story, and image first is better for quick control over character mood, style, silhouette, and overall aesthetic.
Neither approach is right. Chat prompts may take longer to develop a clear, detailed character and image first prompts are less effective when inspiration is needed before the character’s backstory is clear (or even developed). Writers may wish for more character dialogue to decide how he looks before deciding what to prompt an artist. Artists may wish to choose the right face and wardrobe before trying to imagine how they’ll design the scene.
However, image prompts are better at developing a sense of character quickly and chat prompts can reveal more personality with more effort, so neither way is perfect at establishing and maintaining a consistent character without some reference.
The Benefits of Using Both Methods
The most dynamic workflow involves switching back and forth between the two. A text exchange can indicate that the character is formal, restrained, or lighthearted, which can help you choose the appropriate expression and clothes. An image can suggest the character’s vocation, cultural background, or the surrounding environment, which can help clarify your text description.
Some AI roleplay chat apps with instant image generation capabilities enable testing of your character and scenes, thus minimizing the time you spend going back and forth between text and image, but don’t sacrifice documentation for convenience. Save important expressions, clothes descriptions, and behavior rules.
Things to Remember as We Go Along
Sticking with the same character can prove frustrating. The finer the details, the more they’ll likely change with the AI generations, and especially as you lengthen prompts. Chatbot characters may also forget things or grow more generic as chat sessions go on for many turns. And while broad prompts tend to bring out stereotypes, overly detailed prompts may lead some tools to overlook certain bits.
Some services may have certain features while others don’t. An AI tool might offer built-in editors that can patch a few mistakes, while another might make a closer to ideal first draft without being able to make as many tweaks. Policies, privacy, memory, exporting, and other factors are also specific to each tool, so take a tour before going all-in on a program.
A Practical Hybrid Workflow
To do the hybrid workflow, begin with a one-sentence character description. That should include the character role, three defining traits, one goal, and one conflict. Also describe at least two things about the character’s appearance.
Pick the format (text chat, image) that’s easiest for you to imagine. Write a chat and create an image, one or two samples. Evaluate what’s working about the samples, then adapt those elements to the other medium. For example, start with the chat, take the personality clues and make visual changes, or start with an image and give that character a persona and backstory, using a conversational format.
Put your character into several scenarios, like a conflict scene, a joke, a casual conversation, or an unimagined environment. Change one large detail per revision pass.
Assemble a reference sheet with your description, persona, a sample of the dialogue, character visual characteristics, your prompts, and a final set of examples.
Practical Guidance for Improved Outcomes
Clearly identify which attributes are mandatory and which can be adjusted. While the presence of a scar, a person’s approximate age, their underlying motivation, or their manner of speech might be non-negotiable, the clothing accessories and the hues of the environment can be flexible.
Provide precise instructions for required features, but remain open to surprises. Tweak a single significant characteristic during each attempt so you can observe its specific impact. Store the most effective wording and example images rather than attempting to replicate them from recollection. Plan on completing multiple cycles of revision. Iterative adjustment is standard procedure in character development, not an indication of inadequacy.
Which Approach Should You Choose?
Which is best to start with? If there will be dialogue, interaction between characters, role-play, or if it will be a multi-chapter story, you should start with chat. If it’s an image you want, or a logo, or if you want to quickly experiment with visuals by generating several, try image first. Hybrid works best for video games, comics, social media, and interactive stories.
Start with the one that you think is most important and try the other at a later time to see how it goes. Generally it’s best to start with the project that has more clarity, and less ambiguity of what the final product should look like.
Conclusion
To sum it up, Chat First and Image First solve different creative problems. Chat First is better for setting character and plot while Image First gives you instant visual.
Because it’s almost never perfect instantly, considering both Chat First and Image First as a first draft can work. At the end of the day, a good brief, several revision passes, and a visual dictionary is going to trump the Chat vs. Image debate.
