DEV Community: Evelyn Dimaculangan

One Sheet or Multiple Generations? Testing AI Character Expression Generation

Evelyn Dimaculangan — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 08:03:51 +0000

How do you make your character look happy, angry, sad, and surprised without changing their appearance in every image? That’s the challenge when creating a character reference sheet for a visual novel, comic, or character profile. The results can vary depending on the AI tool and workflow you choose.

I tested two methods using the same OC on PixAI: generating all expressions in one sheet or creating each emotion separately. Both have their uses, but I’d pick Route A for character profiles or design preferences and Route B for visual novels and comic panels.

What Makes a Character Expression Sheet Actually Useful?

A good expression sheet needs more than six nice-looking faces of your OC. To make it useful, each expression should:

Be easy to recognize without needing a closer look.
Look noticeably different from the other expressions.
Preserve the OC’s appearance, from facial features, hairstyle, eye color, accessories, and clothing.
Maintain the same framing so you can swap expressions without adjusting the layout.

Remember, a convincing expression involves more than just changing the mouth. You also need to describe how the eyebrows, eyelids, and cheeks should look to make the emotion clear.

Step 1 — Decide Which Six Emotions to Include

Start by deciding which six emotions your OC will show before moving on to prompting and generation. Write them down along with a short instruction explaining how the facial features should change for each emotion.

Having this list ready makes writing your prompts much easier. For this experiment, I’ll use six expressions: Neutral, Happy, Angry, Sad, Surprised, and Embarrassed. You can swap them for other emotions depending on your character.

Neutral: Keep the mouth closed and relaxed, eyebrows in their natural position, and eyes looking straight ahead.
Happy: Add a gentle smile, slightly raised eyebrows, and bright, cheerful eyes. Include a subtle blush.
Angry: Keep the mouth firmly closed, eyebrows lowered and furrowed, and eyes narrowed.
Sad: Turn the corners of his mouth slightly downward, raise the inner eyebrows, and give the eyes a soft, droopy appearance.
Surprised: Slightly open the mouth into a small O shape, raise the eyebrows, and widen the eyes.
Embarrassed: Add a small, shy smile, slightly raised eyebrows, and eyes looking downward or away. Include a subtle pink blush on both cheeks and a tiny sweat drop.

To keep the test consistent, I'll use these exact expressions for both routes.

Step 2 — Start with One Neutral Reference Image

Already have an image of your OC? You can use it as your reference as long as it has a neutral facial expression. If not, you can create one with PixAI.

Ideally, your reference image should:

Show your character facing forward, from the head to the shoulders.
Keep both eyes and eyebrows visible.
Have a relaxed face and closed mouth.
Use a simple, uncluttered background.

I’ll be using my Yakuza anime OC for this experiment:

I went with a Yakuza OC because, honestly, a love-interest lead is exactly the kind of character you'd want to give a full set of expressions in a visual novel.

No matter which route or generation I use, his hair color, eyes, neck tattoo, black suit, and dress shirt should all stay the same. Only his expressions should change.

Step 3 — Route A: Create the Entire Expression Sheet at Once

With your OC's neutral portrait ready, it's time to set up your generation options. Choose your aspect ratio, model, and other settings in PixAI by following these steps:

Open your PixAI account and select Generate from the upper-left panel to access the canvas.

Once you're on the blank canvas, check the right panel for Model, Styles, and Settings. For this experiment, choose PixAI Edit Pro as your model.

The total cost for this setup is 8,000 Credits.

Next, go to Settings Selection. Because all six expressions will appear on a single sheet, we'll need more horizontal space. Choose a 5:4 aspect ratio, set the resolution to 1K, and select Standard quality.

With the settings ready, it's time to add your neutral OC image as a reference. Find the image uploader icon beside the prompt box, then choose your character image from your library or upload it directly from your device.

Let's write the prompt! Building one from scratch can be tricky since we have to figure out the cell layout and assign an expression to each one. For this test, though, we don't need to worry about arranging everything ourselves. We can use the expression-sheet prompt from PixAI’s OC/VTuber character sheet guide.

All we have to do is replace the template's descriptions with our own character details. Remember the list of emotions from Step 1? We can use those descriptions here by copying them into the appropriate parts of the prompt.

Here's what I got:

[Use the uploaded image as the only character reference. Create a six expression character sheet arranged in exactly three columns and two rows.

Every panel shows the same light blonde-haired, ocean blue-eyed man. Preserve his facial proportions, hairstyle, dragon neck tattoo, black suit, white dress shirt, lighting and light-gray background.

Use matching straight-on head-and-shoulders framing and equal head sizes across all six panels. Keep the complete head visible in every panel.]

Expressions in reading order:

Top left – NEUTRAL: Keep the mouth closed and relaxed, eyebrows in their natural position, and eyes looking straight ahead.

Top middle – HAPPY: Add a gentle smile, slightly raised eyebrows, and bright, cheerful eyes. Include a subtle blush.

Top right – ANGRY: Keep the mouth firmly closed, eyebrows lowered and furrowed, and eyes narrowed.

Bottom left – SAD: Turn the corners of his mouth slightly downward, raise the inner eyebrows, and give the eyes a soft, droopy appearance.

Bottom middle – SURPRISED: Slightly open the mouth into a small O shape, raise the eyebrows, and widen the eyes.

Bottom right – EMBARASSED: Add a small, shy smile, slightly raised eyebrows, and eyes looking downward or away. Include a subtle pink blush on both cheeks and a tiny sweat drop.

Keep the gaze toward the viewer, the head upright and the soldiers still. Change facial expressions only. Use equal-sized panels with clear spacing. Exactly one portrait per panel.

No labels, speech bubbles, emotion icons, hands or extra portraits.]_

Now, hit Generate and see what results we get!

The overall result looks pretty good! Our OC kept his facial features, outfit, and neck tattoo throughout the sheet. The expressions also followed the prompt, and the cells have enough headroom with a consistent background. Let's look at them individually, though.

Most of the emotions came out as expected. Neutral, happy, sad, embarrassed, and surprised are all recognizable. The surprised expression could use a more open mouth, while the angry one has a small issue: the eyebrows have changed, but the eyes still look like those in the original reference. We can probably fix these details with a few edits. Still, we managed to get all six expressions in one sheet.

For the timing, I recorded how long the generation took and how many attempts were needed. Route A finished in 39.43 seconds, all in one generation.

Step 4 — Route B: Create One Expression per Generation

This time, let's try generating all six expressions individually instead of putting them into one sheet. Here's how I set things up:

Click + Create a new Image in the upper-left corner to open a fresh canvas.
Select the same PixAI Edit Pro model under Model Selection.
Use these settings: 1K resolution, 1:1 Portrait aspect ratio, and Standard quality.
Add the same neutral OC image as a reference by clicking the reference icon in the prompt box.
You don't need to build a shorter prompt from scratch. I reused PixAI's expression-sheet prompt template for individual generation and replaced some of its descriptions with my own character details. Here's what my prompt looks like:

[Use the uploaded image as the only reference. Change the character’s expression to (listed character expression goes here).

Preserve his facial identity, light blonde-haired, ocean blue-eyed man. Preserve his facial proportions, hairstyle, dragon neck tattoo, black suit, white dress shirt, lighting and light-gray background.

Keep the same head angle, gaze toward the viewer, shoulder position and head-and-shoulders framing. Keep the complete head visible. One portrait only. No text, symbols, hands or additional panels.]

For each expression, fill in the parentheses with the character expressions from your list.

I'll generate the happy expression first. Here's how I'll add it to the prompt:

[Use the uploaded image as the only reference. Change the character’s expression to HAPPY: Add a gentle smile, slightly raised eyebrows, and bright, cheerful eyes. Include a subtle blush.

Keep the same head angle, gaze toward the viewer, shoulder position and head-and-shoulders framing. Keep the complete head visible. One portrait only. No text, symbols, hands or additional panels.

I'll repeat these steps until I have all six expressions. Since we already have a neutral reference image of our OC, there's no need to generate that one again.

Here's what I got:

Generating the expressions separately worked! All of them came out successfully, and the framing, headroom, and head size stayed consistent. His hair color, eyes, outfit, and neck tattoo also remained unchanged. The expressions were easy to tell apart, and I got more detailed results compared to Route A.

The angry expression looks much more convincing this time because his eyes are narrowed, something we didn't get in Route A. The surprised expression is also more noticeable. The embarrassed one, though, still needs work. He looks like he's simply blushing rather than feeling embarrassed. We can try fixing that later.

Each generation took just a few seconds: Happy: 28.06 seconds, Angry: 26.41 seconds, Sad: 26.86 seconds, Surprised: 24.28 seconds, and Embarrassed: 28.76 seconds. Altogether, that's 2 minutes and 14 seconds, which is longer than Route A.

Step 5 — Compare the Results and Fix Expressions That Didn't Work

We found a few expressions from both routes that didn't turn out quite right. But what if we only want to fix one or two cells without changing the rest? Let's see how we can do that in this section.

Route A: Fixing the Angry Face

The angry expression was the weak point in our Route A results. It didn't quite capture the narrowed eyes we asked for, so we'll need to make the prompt more specific.

Let's fix it using the Repaint option. Here's what to do:

Go back to the original six-expression result from Route A.
Click Edit, then choose Repaint.

Choose Fix Faces from the options.

Next, highlight the part you want to fix. Drag your cursor around the angry expression to create a box around it, like this:

Once the area is selected, type your editing prompt into the box next to the image.

Here’s my editing prompt:

“The angry expression looks subtle. Make the angry expression more pronounced with a sharply furrowed eyebrows angled downward, narrowed eyes with a strong, intense glare. and a slightly open mouth to show tension.”

Here’s what we got:

The angry expression looks much more intense now! We have a clearer version of what an angrier face should look like, without losing his main features.

Route B: Fixing the Embarrassed Face

The Embarrassed expression was the only one that missed the mark in Route B. Our OC looked like he was blushing, so we need to make the emotion more noticeable. This time, we'll use the same PixAI Edit Pro approach but change the prompt instruction.

Create a new canvas with the same Route B settings: PixAI Edit Pro, 1K, 1:1, and Standard quality. Then, upload the neutral OC image as your reference again.

We’ll use the same prompt that we used in Route B. Only this time, we’ll include a stronger emotion instruction for the embarrassed expression:

“EMBARRASSED: Add a small shy smile, slightly raised his inner eyebrows, and eyes looking to the side. Add a noticeable but soft pink blush on both cheeks, with a small sweat on his cheek.”

Our prompt:

[Use the uploaded image as the only reference. Change the character’s expression to EMBARRASSED: Add a small shy smile, slightly raised his inner eyebrows, and eyes looking to the side. Add a noticeable but soft pink blush on both cheeks, with a small sweat on his cheek.

Keep the same head angle, gaze toward the viewer, shoulder position and head-and-shoulders framing. Keep the complete head visible. One portrait only. No text, symbols, hands or additional panels.]

Here’s what we got:

The failed embarrassed expression and the edited result, side-by-side:

That's much closer to the expression we wanted! He now looks embarrassed instead of just blushing, especially with his eyes turned to the side as if avoiding the viewer. His framing, outfit, neck tattoo, and other recognizable features stayed consistent too.

Both routes gave us a solid editing process and good results. Let's compare the details that mattered most in this test:

Which Route Should You Choose?

The best route really comes down to what you're making and how you plan to use the expressions.

If you need a character profile or design reference for your OC, go with Route A. You'll get all the expressions in one compact sheet, so it's easier to compare how each face differs. And if one expression doesn't look quite right, you can use Repaint to strengthen its emotion without changing the rest of the sheet. It gives you better control over which facial details to edit.

For visual novels or game portraits, Route B is worth trying. Since you're generating each expression separately, you can adjust the emotional intensity of every face more freely.

The same goes for comic panels and other story materials. Route B lets you choose the exact expression you need for each panel. It also gives you more flexibility when arranging the images and positioning facial details.

Conclusion

You don't have to draw every expression yourself to create a consistent character expression sheet. The key is to start with the same reference image and planned emotion descriptions, regardless of which generation route you choose.

Here's a quick recap to help you get started: Choose your OC, plan the six emotions, create or select a neutral reference image, pick your preferred route (generate the whole sheet or one expression at a time), review the results, and refine any expressions that need improvement using the available editing tools.

Give your original character a complete expression sheet or experiment with different emotions using the prompts and tools available on PixAI.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Full-Body OC with an AI OC Maker

Evelyn Dimaculangan — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 05:32:29 +0000

You might know exactly how you want your OC to look, but finding a dress-up maker with the right hairstyle and outfit can be difficult. Some tools also limit the character view to just the upper body.

I decided to try an AI OC maker instead and created a full-body reference sheet using PixAI. Here's the final result:

Step 1 — Write a Simple One-Line Description of Your OC

Start by outlining what your OC should look like. You don’t need a complicated description yet. Just focus on a few recognizable features, such as their hair, eye color, outfit, and main color palette.

For this tutorial, I’m going with a sweet Lolita anime style. I want the character to have a soft, cute appearance, so I used the following description:

A sweet Lolita girl with long, voluminous pastel pink twin tails and ruby red eyes, wearing a short frilly cream dress with oversized pink ribbons, white thigh-high socks, and black Mary Jane shoes.

Step 2 — Use the “Character Reference Sheet” Recipe to Generate Your OC

Now that you have a basic description of your OC, it’s time to open the full-body OC Maker. You might think the next step is to write a prompt, but you can actually skip that part! PixAI has an OC Maker Character Reference Sheet Recipe that helps you create your character without manually writing all the prompts.

Here’s how to use it:

Go to the PixAI OC Maker. Once it loads, you’ll see a prompt box where you can enter your character details and a collection of OC artwork shared by other creators.

Inside the canvas, scroll down until you reach Prompts Recipes. Find and select the Character Reference Sheet from the available options.

Click Copy Prompt and paste the copied text into the prompt box at the top of the canvas.

For the generation settings, leave the aspect ratio at its default 3:5 and choose a batch size of 4.

Hold off on clicking Generate for now. First, we need to customize the character reference prompt by replacing some of its default descriptions with details about our own OC.

Go back to the one-line character idea earlier:

A sweet Lolita girl with long, voluminous pastel pink twin tails and ruby red eyes, wearing a short frilly cream dress with oversized pink ribbons, white thigh-high socks, and black Mary Jane shoes.

Before editing the prompt, identify which parts would stay and which ones need to be customized.

Keep these elements:

Full body
Front and side view
Plain background

Here’s what we’ll replace:

Default character description (hairstyle and main outfit)

Here’s how it should look:

[Full body character reference sheet of an original sweet Lolita anime girl with long, voluminous pastel pink twin tails and ruby red eyes, wearing a short frilly cream dress with oversized pink ribbons, white thigh-high socks, and black Mary Jane shoes, front and side view on a plain white background, clean line art, consistent color palette]

I only changed the parts that define the character's appearance, such as her hairstyle and outfit. The rest of the instructions stayed the same: a full-body reference sheet, front and side views, a plain background, clean line art, and a consistent color palette. This way, the recipe can keep its original layout while giving the character a look of her own.

Step 3 — Generate Your Character and Check the Results

We're ready to move on to generation! Click the arrow to open a new canvas in your PixAI account. The prompt you edited earlier should automatically appear in the prompt box.

Check the beginning of your prompt, too. You'll see that PixAI has added the instruction "original anime character" before your customized description. This is part of the default recipe setup, so there's no need to remove it.

Here's what the canvas should look like:

Let's prepare the model and settings before generating. For this example, we'll stick with the default Tsubaki.3 model.

Prompt writing can vary depending on the model you're using. Since we're working with the available prompt recipes, we don't have to worry much about writing everything from scratch. You can also read our guide on how to write Tsubaki.3 prompts if you need more tips.

After that, open Settings and choose 3:5 portrait and Batch (x4), just like the default setup in PixAI OC Maker.

With the model and settings in place, we're ready to generate. Click Generate and check out how my sweet Lolita character looks!

Choosing from several character sheet results isn't always easy. Before picking one, check for a few things:

Is the character fully visible, including the head and shoes?
Do the hands and feet look correct?
Are the outfit and colors consistent between the front and side views?
Does the character have the same height and build in both views?

If a result passes most of these checks, it's a good option to keep. For my Lolita character, I've decided to use the fourth result.

I actually liked all four results, but I had to look more closely at the side views before choosing. The first three followed the instructions well, although their side-view poses looked somewhat stiff. The fourth image did a better job of following the prompt, and its side-view pose looked more natural.

Step 4 — Make a Small Correction to Your OC Design

If some parts of the generated image don’t match your instructions, you can tweak the prompt to fix them. You can also add extra details, such as a hat or other props.

For my Lolita, I want to make the outfit color more noticeable. Her cream dress complements her skin tone, but it also makes the design look a bit flat. Let’s try changing it to black instead.

Now, let's update our prompt with the new details. Here's the updated version:

[original anime character, Full body character reference sheet of an original sweet Lolita anime girl with long, voluminous pastel pink twin tails and ruby red eyes, wearing a short frilly black dress with oversized pink ribbons, white thigh-high socks, and black Mary Jane shoes, front and side view on a plain white background, clean line art, consistent color palette]

Here’s what we got:

Looking at the four results, image two is the closest match to our Lolita character. Let's choose it and view the two images side by side.

Here’s how it turned out! The dress is now black, and our OC still looks recognizable. I also noticed that the new image has cleaner and more defined line art, which is a nice touch. However, the ribbons on her twin tails are gone, the large ribbon on her waist has moved to her collar, and another large ribbon was added behind her. The thigh-high socks also have a new lace design.

Even with these differences, I think the updated Lolita looks good overall. I'll go with this version and move on to the next test!

Step 5 — Add an Expression Sheet to Your OC

Now that we have our full-body character sheet, let's create a matching expression sheet to go with it. Here's how:

Go back to the PixAI OC Maker and scroll down to Prompt Recipes. Select Expression Sheet this time, then click to copy the prompt.

Copy the prompt into the prompt box, then update the character details to match your OC.

Now, let's swap out “the same original character” and add our Lolita's character description instead:

[Six expression portraits of an original sweet Lolita anime girl with long, voluminous pastel pink twin tails and ruby red eyes, wearing a short frilly black dress with oversized pink ribbons: neutral, smiling, angry, crying, surprised, smug. Consistent face shape and hair, plain background, head and shoulders]

I left out the white thigh-high socks and Mary Jane shoes since they aren't necessary for this expression sheet. We only need to show our character's features from the head to the shoulders.

Click the arrow to return to your PixAI canvas. Choose the same Tsubaki.3 model, set the aspect ratio to 3:5 portrait, and select Batch (x4) images in Model and Settings.

The prompt will once again include an extra “original anime character” instruction. That's automatically added by default, so don't remove it.

With everything set, click Generate and select your preferred result. Then, compare it with the full-body sheet to see if the character's features match.

Looking at the four results, I think the second image is the closest match to our Lolita character. The parted bangs are especially similar. Let's choose it and view both sheets side by side.

The dress, ruby red eyes, and hair color stayed the same. However, her eyes look lighter in the surprised expressions. The generation also added ribbon bows to her twin tails, while the white ruffles on her collar disappeared. Still, her main features are recognizable despite these small differences.

You can use this checklist to compare the two sheets:

Is the hair the same color and style?
Are the eyes the same color?
Does the face look like the same character?

If one of these details doesn't match, edit your prompt to describe the changes you want, then click Generate again.

In my Lolita's case, the eye color isn't consistent. It becomes lighter in the surprised expression, so let's tweak the prompt a little.
Here's the original prompt:

[original anime character, Six expression portraits of an original sweet Lolita anime girl with long, voluminous pastel pink twin tails, and ruby red eyes, wearing a short frilly black dress with oversized pink ribbons: neutral, smiling, angry, crying, surprised, smug. Consistent face shape and hair, plain background, head and shoulders.]

Let's insert “eye color” right after [Consistent face shape] in our prompt.

Let’s see if we got it right this time:

Nice! This time, the eye color stayed consistent, and our Lolita still looks like the same character. However, the ribbon bows are still there, and the details of the dress's ruffles and ribbons changed a bit. Her hair volume, length, and bangs also look slightly different.
Overall, we were able to generate all six expressions while keeping our OC recognizable.

What to Do Next with Your Full-Body OC

Now that you've tried the OC Maker, you may want to test more of its prompt recipes. Here are some ideas for what you can do with your full-body OC:

Use the character sheet as a reference for drawing your OC.
Turn the character's face into a profile picture.
Generate your OC in different scenes or seasonal outfits.
Share the character sheet with friends or an art community.

Looking for more ways to develop your character? Check out this guide to build a complete character asset kit using PixAI's Tsubaki.3.

Conclusion

You don't need drawing experience or advanced prompt-writing skills to create your own character with an OC Maker full-body character or expression sheet. PixAI's OC Maker provides ready-made prompt recipes that you can use as a starting point. Just update the character details to fit your design.

To recap, here's the workflow: Start with a one-line OC idea, open PixAI OC Maker and find a prompt recipe, generate your first full-body sheet, check the result, then create an expression sheet. Visit the PixAI OC Maker page, copy a prompt, and give your own OC a try!