Illustrations bring each page to life — but it's the characters that make a book feel personal. AnyTale is built to keep your hero looking like the same person on every single page. This guide covers both, with a close look at how characters work.

Working with illustrations

Illustrations live in the Pictures tool on the left toolbar. From there you can:

Generate an image — describe a scene and let AI illustrate it in your book's art style.
Upload images — bring in your own artwork or photos.
Browse the library — pick ready-made pictures by category (Nature, Holiday, and more), or reuse ones from Recently used and Generated.

To change an image already on a page, select it — from there you can move, resize, replace, regenerate, or remove its background. Your book's overall art style (Artbook, Storybook, Watercolor, Anime, and more) is chosen when you create the book and keeps every illustration visually consistent.

Characters: your story's heroes

Why characters are special. In most tools, every AI image is a fresh roll of the dice, so your hero changes face from page to page. AnyTale solves this: you create a character once, and then reuse that same character across every page — so Sofia looks like Sofia from the cover to the very last scene. This consistency is the heart of AnyTale.

The Characters panel

Open the Characters tool on the left toolbar. It's home base for your whole cast:

Item	What it does
Generate character	Create a brand-new character from a description or a reference image.
Create avatar	Build a character from customized elements.
Main characters	Your book's leading cast, ready to drop onto any page.
Recently used	Characters you've placed lately, for quick reuse.
Generated characters	Everything you've created — your reusable character library.

Generating a new character

Click Generate character to open the character studio. You describe who they are (up to 2,000 characters) or upload a reference, and fine-tune the look:

Option	What it controls
Model	The generation model (e.g. Pro model). More powerful models use more tokens.
Style	The art style for the character (e.g. Storybook) so they match your book.
Colors	Guide the character's color palette.
Poses	Choose the pose the character is generated in.
Reference	Upload an image to base the character on — great for a specific look.
Description	Describe the character in words (at least 10 characters, up to 2,000).

Press Generate character and your new hero is added to your library, ready to place on any page.

Magic Characters — same hero, a new pose

This is the tool that keeps your hero consistent. Once a character is on the page, you can regenerate that same character in a different pose to fit the scene — same face, same outfit, new position.

Add a character to the page, select it, then click Magic Characters in the toolbar that appears at the top. A side panel opens, already tied to your character, where you can regenerate them:

Select the character on the page.
Click Magic Characters in the top toolbar — the side panel opens with your character pre-loaded.
Open Poses and choose a category (Women, Man, Girl, Boy, Animals) and a pose — e.g. Main, Standing, Sitting, Ground sitting, Lying, or Running — in a Realism or Chibi style. You can also adjust Colors or add a Reference.
Press Generate character. The same hero reappears in the new pose, ready for the scene.

Repeat across pages, always regenerating the same character, and your hero stays recognizable from cover to finish.

Turning a real child into a character with Avatar tool

If you don't want to use original photoes of your child, you can use Avatar tool to make the hero look like your own child. Once created, the avatar behaves like any other character — reuse it across pages so your child stars in every scene.