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# Non-human cast members

Not every character in a comic has a human body. ComicInk supports that directly: every character has a **Form**, and setting it to **Non-human** changes how the editor treats that character.

## Setting Form to Non-human

In the character editor, **Form** is the first control in the traits section, above Gender. It's a two-option choice: **Human** and **Non-human**.

- **Creating a new character**: pick Form before you generate the character's art.
- **Editing an existing character**: switch Form, then regenerate — see "Switching an existing character" below.

## What changes when you pick Non-human

- **Age Group, Build, and Ethnicity disappear.** Those fields only describe a human body, so the form hides them when Form is set to Non-human.
- **Gender stays.** A female dragon, a male sentient locomotive — gender is still meaningful without a human body, because it steers pronouns in the dialogue and narration the AI writes. It does not change the artwork.
- **The reference sheet is different.** A human character gets the standard turnaround — a front full-body view, a close-up on the face, a side profile. A non-human character gets a body-agnostic reference sheet instead, built around whatever views actually make sense for that character. Because there's no standard body plan to lean on, your **description** carries the full visual load — see the worked example below.

## What doesn't change

Non-human characters work exactly like human ones everywhere else:

- **Avatars** — up to 5 alternate looks, same as any character. See [character avatars](https://help.comicink.ai/en/article/character-avatars-different-looks-1cvlwsi/).
- **Dialogue** — non-human characters speak, narrate, and appear in the script like any cast member.
- **Panel appearances** — add them to a panel's cast and they render there the same way a human character does.
- **Cost** — defining or regenerating a non-human character's art is the flat **10 credits**, the same as any character. See [character costs](https://help.comicink.ai/en/article/character-costs-per-issue-1a8qmth/).

## Writing a description for a bodiless entity

With no default body to fall back on, be explicit about what's actually visible. For a character that isn't a physical creature at all — a ghost, a sentient AI, a swarm — describe:

- **What form it takes on the page.** A wisp of smoke shaped roughly like a person, a cluster of glowing drones, a shifting pattern of static on a screen.
- **How it expresses itself**, since it may have no face for ordinary expressions — does it pulse brighter when agitated, ripple, or flicker?
- **A consistent visual anchor** the AI can repeat across pages — a colour, a texture, a shape — the same role a recurring outfit plays for a human character.

Example description: *"A translucent, blue-white wisp of energy, roughly humanoid in silhouette but with no distinct limbs — trailing tendrils of light instead of legs, a brighter core where a head would be. Flickers and dims with emotion; flares brighter when angry."*

You can also attach an **approved reference image** to anchor the look, the same as for a human character — upload it in the character editor and it guides the generated reference sheet.

## The AI can set this for you

When the AI builds a cast automatically — generating a full cast from a synopsis, [converting a book into a series](https://help.comicink.ai/en/article/converting-a-book-pdf-into-a-comic-series-tudf6t/), or [turning a screenplay into a Story Video](https://help.comicink.ai/en/article/turning-a-screenplay-into-a-story-video-q84ei/) — it sets each invented character's Form based on whether that character has a human-like body. You can always override its choice afterward in the character editor.

## Switching an existing character

Existing characters are unaffected until you change their Form yourself. If you do switch a character between Human and Non-human, the art doesn't update automatically — regenerate the character's avatar afterward so the reference sheet matches the new Form. That regeneration costs the normal 10 credits, the same as any avatar regeneration.