Higgsfield Character Design

Higgsfield Character Design — Story Bible

The rest of this skill library answers "how do I prompt this?" This skill answers the question upstream of it: "what am I prompting, and why this and not generic AI slop?" It is the pre-production layer — premise, world, character, story, and a locked visual style — that you build before writing a single generation prompt, then hand off to higgsfield-prompt and the model guides.

Attribution. The framework, worksheet structure, and the "world first" method are adapted from Higgsfield's official Character Design materials by @vavavinca. We reuse the schemas and method; all examples here are original. Credit Vinca when sharing.

QUICK FACTS

Routing aids — read the linked sections for the actual method.

• World first, always. Lock the world before you cast a character; the world is the gravity that shapes who they have to become →
• Six steps, each locks an output you do not revisit: Premise → World → Character → Story Spine → Style Sheet → hand-off →
• The flagship artifact is the 9-Question Character Sheet — thematic role, external/internal goal, psychological/moral need, wound, spark, silhouette, contradiction →
• The strongest anti-slop tool is the Forbidden List in the Style Sheet — naming what the world is NOT is often more useful than the palette →
• Specificity beats adjectives: if any character could say it, it's a stereotype; keep asking "why?" until the answer surprises you →
• Fillable worksheets live in ../../templates/character-design/ — hand them to the user or fill them together →
• Construction laws for the sheet as an artifact: plain grey background · creature sheets get two close-ups (mouth open + closed) · the face-lock crop · a size-ref frame for scale at extreme ratios no true landmark can express [FIELD] — grey and the one-face law are canonical in ../../templates/ad-asset-prep.md →
• Once the character looks right, don't jump to scenes — run a screen test: casting read → role options → playable lines → voice triggers → one audition prompt [EMPIRICAL] →
• This skill produces inputs; it does not generate. Hand the locked Visual DNA + character sheet to higgsfield-prompt →

The method: world first

A world is a system of constraints. Decide what the world will not let a character do, and you have decided who they have to become. So the order is not negotiable — each step locks an output the later steps depend on, and you don't loop back to relitigate it:

1. PREMISE      one arguable sentence, no characters yet
2. WORLD        six dimensions, filled before anyone is cast
3. CHARACTER    9 questions + a relationship web
4. STORY SPINE  10–20 beats, "therefore / but", never "and then"
5. STYLE SHEET  palette + lighting + materials + a FORBIDDEN list (the Visual DNA)
6. HAND OFF     feed the locked sheets into higgsfield-prompt + a model

The failure mode this prevents is the common one: open Higgsfield → generate a cool image → realize there's no story or consistency → quit. Build the bible first; the image is the receipt, not the recipe.

If the user arrives mid-stream ("I already have a character"), don't force them back to step 1 — locate where they are, check the upstream outputs exist (a character with no world is the usual gap), and fill the missing layer.

Step 1 — Premise

One sentence, no character names. It states an arguable claim about people or the world, not a plot. Four fields, then a pressure test (worksheet: ../../templates/character-design/premise.md).

1. Theme statement — a claim, not a logline. "Belonging is something you build, not something you're owed."
2. What it argues — the testable belief. "People who wait to be chosen stay invisible."
3. The counter-argument — the opposing truth the story must honor, or the theme is propaganda. "Some people are kept out no matter what they build."
4. Emotional promise — one word + one line. "Defiance — the thrill of a door forced open."

Pressure test (all five): compresses to ONE sentence (no "and", no semicolon) · contains NO character names · is arguable · has a real counter-argument · names a feeling, not just an event.

Step 2 — World Sheet (six dimensions)

Fill all six before casting anyone (worksheet: ../../templates/character-design/world-sheet.md). Each answer must be specific and must not change when characters arrive.

Done check: read it aloud — does it sound like one world (no contradictions)? Is every answer specific? Will it stay true once characters walk in? Lock it. See also Hard vs soft worldbuilding for how knowable the rules should be.

Step 3 — Character (9 questions + the web)

The 9-Question Character Sheet

The framework's flagship artifact (worksheet: ../../templates/character-design/9-question-character-sheet.md). Header: name, age, world, archetype. Then, in order — vague answers are the enemy; only this character should be able to give them:

1. Thematic role — what they prove or disprove about the premise. "That belonging can be built — he builds a crew out of other discards."
2. External goal — a specific, currently-impossible want. "Buy the deed to a square meter of dry land before the next Surge season."
3. Internal goal — what reaching it would mean about themselves. "Proof he's worth keeping, not just useful to keep around."
4. Psychological need — the flaw that hurts THEM. "He treats every kindness as a debt he has to discharge before it's used against him."
5. Moral need — the flaw that hurts OTHERS. "He recruits people for their use, then can't admit when he's done using them."
6. Wound — the specific past event that taught them the world hurts. "At nine, watched his mother trade her water ration to a landlord who let her drown anyway."
7. Spark — the specific past event that taught them what to become. "A stranger pulled him out of the tide and asked his name — the first person who wanted it."
8. Silhouette — what their shape says across a room. "Always half-crouched at a doorway, weight on the back foot, ready to bolt or bargain."
9. Contradiction — two things that don't match. "Pretends he travels light. Keeps a waterlogged ledger of everyone who ever did him a favor."

The Character Web

Characters reveal themselves in friction, never alone (worksheet: ../../templates/character-design/character-web.md). Map four spokes around the hero — Opponent (the primary opposite), Ally (who they lean on), Mentor (who taught them), Foil (the variation that exposes them). Characters can move through roles over the story (a mentor who becomes an opponent is a person; one stuck in a single bubble is a function). Diagnostic: if you can take one spoke away and the hero says the same line in every scene, the web is too thin.

Step 4 — Story Spine

10–20 numbered beats (worksheet: ../../templates/character-design/story-spine.md). Beat format:

Beat N: [character] [does / discovers / loses] [thing]. Result: [the next problem].

Connect beats with "therefore" or "but" — never "and then" (that's a list, not a story). Mark the Midpoint Turn: which beat flips the premise against the lead. Stop when the premise is proven — don't pad to hit 20.

Step 5 — Style Sheet (Visual DNA + Forbidden List)

Lock the look once, then inject it verbatim into every prompt (worksheet: ../../templates/character-design/style-sheet.md). Two ways to build it: (A) let the model draft it from the World Sheet (the worksheet carries a ready-to-paste prompt), or (B) fill it by hand. Six constants:

• Palette — 5–7 hex codes (#1B3A4B, #6FA8A0, …). Inject the hex, don't describe colors in prose.
• Lighting — the recurring light logic ("flat overcast noon, warm lantern pools after dark").
• Materials — what the world is made of ("wet rope, salt-bleached wood, hammered tin, oilcloth").
• Juxtaposition — one familiar + new pairing that fixes the world's identity ("a birthday party on a half-sunk rooftop").
• Age & proportion — the build/era language for characters.
• Real-life refs — 2–3 actors / paintings / films for the look (treat as look references, not identity to copy).

The Forbidden List is the most valuable field — name what the world is NOT. It's often more useful than the palette and it's your strongest anti-slop lever:

NO generic flooded-city teal-and-orange. NO neon. NO pristine surfaces — everything is salt-scarred. NO clear blue sky. NO photoreal celebrity faces. NO pure-black shadows; use deep indigo instead.

This Visual DNA — hex palette + forbidden list — is what gets pasted into prompts to keep a series consistent. See higgsfield-soul (Soul HEX) and higgsfield-style for how the color lock is applied at generation time.

Step 6 — Hand off to generation

This skill produces inputs; it does not generate. When the bible is locked, route forward:

• The prompt → higgsfield-prompt (MCSLA structure). Inject the Visual DNA (hex + forbidden list) verbatim, and pull the subject from the character's Silhouette + Contradiction, the action from the relevant Story Spine beat.
• The model → model-guide.md / image-models.md. For a character who recurs across many shots, train a Soul ID / Soul Cast identity (higgsfield-soul) rather than re-rolling one-offs; for a single hero image that won't reappear, a one-off generation is fine.
• Multi-shot sequences → higgsfield-cinema (Cinema Studio) for shot-by-shot continuity; the Story Spine beats become the shot list.
• Generic prompts get generic characters. A thin prompt ("a man's portrait, cyberpunk") cannot recover what the sheet would have supplied — the locked sheet is the difference between a function and a person on screen.

Ship the bible as a reusable artifact, not a paste

[EMPIRICAL — Joey story-bible-builder skill (2026-08-16), re-derived 2026-08-22] A bible that lives in a chat transcript gets re-explained every session, drifts a little each time it is retyped, and is the reason "the same" character comes back subtly different a week later. Write it out once as a single dense canon document and reuse the file — one artifact that every later prompt reads from, rather than context reassembled from memory.

Two ways it gets used, and they want slightly different shapes:

1. Standalone canon reference — you consult it while writing prompts. Optimised for a human reading it.
2. Context source for prompt work — it is loaded alongside the prompt so the world, characters, voices, tone and production rules are already known. Optimised for retrieval: short labelled sections, one fact per line, no narrative throat-clearing.

Keep it in workspace/input/ so it is found the way every other supplied document is (root ../../SKILL.md § Working Folders). For anything recurring, give each character a voice lock and a movement lock — one line each, fixed wording, reused verbatim — so speech register and physical signature stay pinned the way the Visual DNA pins the look. The locks fix the words, not where they go: the movement lock is copied verbatim wherever that movement can happen and transformed, not deleted, where it cannot (../higgsfield-acting/SKILL.md § Scene adaptation, ../shared/house-rulings.md P3-4); the voice lock goes into the audio field each time on Seedance 2.0 and into the role sentence on 2.5 — whether once per prompt or once per project is OPEN (../higgsfield-acting/SKILL.md § Voice, ../shared/house-rulings.md P2-2).

Build it by interview, not by questionnaire dump. Scope first (how big is this — one short, or a series?), then the spine (premise, thesis, timeline, aesthetic), then factions, locations and world rules, then characters, then relationships and ensemble dynamics, then the structural engines, then the production rules. Ask in that order and each answer constrains the next; ask everything at once and you get a pile of unrelated facts that contradict each other three sections later.

Only build the part that is needed. A single hero image does not need a faction table. Scope the interview to the work in front of you and leave the rest unbuilt — an unfinished bible is normal, an invented one is not.