How to keep your characters the right size relative to each other
Ask Vizard Agent to write explicit height notes onto the cast sheet and to review every generated scene for scale as its own pass. A reference sheet anchors faces, costumes and colours; it says nothing about how tall anyone is, so relative size has to be stated as a rule and then checked separately from whether the character looks right.
What is the short version?
Reference sheets are drawn as a row of figures at the same size, because that is how you read a cast sheet. Nothing in that image tells the next scene that one of them is a child and another is seven feet tall.
- Ask Vizard Agent to add height notes to the cast sheet.
- Ask it to confirm every character is actually on the sheet.
- Ask for a scale review of every scene before retakes.
What do you need before you start?
Your character designs and a statement of who is tall and who is small. Vizard Agent reads appearance from your references, but relative height is information the drawings usually do not carry — a figure on its own panel has no one to be measured against.
- Every character design. All angles you have.
- Relative heights. Even roughly: "shoulder height to him".
- Which pairs meet. Those are the shots that expose scale.
- Species or age differences. They drive the rule.
- The number of characters. Large casts need checking.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
State scale to Vizard Agent as a rule rather than as an adjective. "A child" is a description of who a character is; "reaches the dockhand's chest" is a constraint that the next scene can actually be checked against afterwards.
Prompt
Variants worth knowing:
- "Explicit height notes." The instruction that carries forward.
- "Reaches his chest." A comparison beats an adjective.
- "Check all eighteen made it." Large sheets drop people.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
Here is the sequence on a real animated short with eighteen characters. The cast sheet is built, found to be wrong, and repaired three times before a single scene is generated — which is the right order, because every scene inherits from it.
- Reviews every supplied character design, angle by angle.
- Organises all eighteen into one shared production reference.
- Checks the generated sheet against the original designs.
- Finds three characters missing from the sheet and repairs it.
- Enforces the full layout and consistent accessory placement.
- Re-checks the sheet in larger sections so small details stay readable.
- Corrects identity errors — wrong ears, hair untied, wrong species.
- Locks the corrected sheet with explicit height notes.
- Generates the scenes using those identities and stature rules.
- Reviews every scene for scale and builds staging references for retakes.
Step four is the failure that catches large casts. A sheet asked to hold eighteen figures will quietly come back with fifteen, and because it looks like a complete cast sheet nobody counts.
Step six is a practical detail worth copying. A full sheet inspected at full width shows you the layout and hides the details that identify each character, so it has to be read in sections.
Step ten separates two judgements that get muddled. Whether a character is drawn correctly and whether they are the right size next to the person beside them are different faults with different fixes, and reviewing for both at once means catching neither reliably.
What does the result look like?
Scenes where the cast stands in a believable relationship. The child is a child next to the adult, the creatures stay knee height, everyone is recognisably themselves, and Vizard Agent tells you which shots it flagged for scale and what the staging reference for the retake looks like.
When does this not work well?
Scale is hardest where there is nothing to compare against. A character alone in frame has no reference, so their size is set by the props and the framing, and a shot with no familiar object in it can read at any scale.
- Single-character shots. Nothing to measure against.
- No familiar objects. Doors and chairs set the scale.
- Extreme perspective. Foreshortening defeats the rule.
- Very large casts. More pairs to keep straight.
- Stylised proportions. Chibi and realistic figures do not compare cleanly.
How do you fix a result that came back wrong?
Name the pair of characters. Scale is a relationship rather than a property, so "she is too tall" leaves Vizard Agent guessing, while "she should reach his chest and she is level with his eyes" is something it can build a staging reference against.
- "She is level with his eyes." The height rule is restated and the shot retaken.
- "A character is missing." The sheet is re-checked and repaired.
- "His ears are wrong." That identity is corrected on the sheet, not the shot.
- "The creature is too big here." A staging reference is built for that shot.
How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?
By hand you build the sheet, generate ten scenes, and then notice the scale is wrong in six of them. Fixing it means regenerating those six from a sheet that still has no height information in it, which produces six new scale problems.
| By hand | Vizard Agent | |
|---|---|---|
| The sheet | Appearance only | Appearance plus height notes |
| Missing characters | Not counted | Verified against the originals |
| Reading the sheet | At full width | In sections, so details show |
| Scale | Noticed after generating | Reviewed as its own pass |
| Retakes | Regenerate and hope | Staged against a reference |
Common questions
Why does the sheet not fix scale? Because a cast sheet draws everyone the same size. Vizard Agent adds notes for that reason.
How should I state heights? As comparisons. Vizard Agent uses "reaches his chest" far better than a number.
Does it check the sheet is complete? Yes, if you ask. Vizard Agent counts the characters against your originals.
What about characters who never meet? Their relative scale matters less, but Vizard Agent still records it.
Can it fix scale in a finished scene? Sometimes. Usually Vizard Agent stages the shot again against a reference.
How many characters is too many? None, but past a dozen ask Vizard Agent to check the sheet in sections.
What if my designs are different art styles? Vizard Agent adapts them into one style first, which is where identities get lost.
Will it keep accessories in the same place? Yes, that is part of enforcing the layout on the sheet.
Can I add a character later? Yes. Vizard Agent extends the sheet and re-locks it with the heights.
What about non-human characters? The same rule. Give Vizard Agent a comparison to something human.
Does perspective break it? It can. Vizard Agent will flag shots where framing is doing the work.
Should I check the sheet myself? Yes. It is the cheapest review in the whole job.
Can it show me the scale problems? Yes. Ask Vizard Agent for the flagged shots and the staging references.
What if two characters are the same height? Say so. Vizard Agent treats that as a rule too, not as an absence of one.