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 3 alternate looks, same as any character. See character avatars.
• 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.

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, or turning a screenplay into a Story Video — 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.

Updated on: 02/08/2026