✨ Designing Characters in MidJourney 7: From Paper Dolls to a Living Paper World 🎭

From Paper to Pixels: Character Design with MidJourney 7

What happens when you take a handmade paper doll, train MidJourney on its aesthetic, and let AI imagine a whole world around it? That’s the essence of Paper World—a project where physical craft meets generative intelligence.

In this guide, we’ll unpack how MidJourney 7 can be used for consistent character design, using Paper World as a case study. You’ll learn how references, moodboards, and parameter tweaking combine to give your AI characters soul, style, and cohesion.

Why Consistent Character Design Matters

Whether you’re making concept art, an animated short, or a game prototype, consistency is the backbone of worldbuilding. Without it, characters feel stitched together rather than belonging to the same story.

Traditionally, consistency requires an art director and a team of illustrators. With MidJourney 7, creators now have access to powerful tools that can unify style—if used deliberately.

Step 1: Starting with a Physical Reference

Paper World began with something tangible: a paper doll hand-drawn and crafted manually.

• The doll had skinny, puppet-like proportions.

• Costumes were decorated with childish doodles.

• The overall vibe was eerie yet graceful—part fairytale, part uncanny dream.

By feeding this physical reference into MidJourney’s training workflow, along with an effective prompt, the AI wasn’t starting from scratch. Instead, it absorbed the artisan, handmade aesthetic as the foundation.

👉 Pro tip: Starting with physical references (sketches, collages, sculptures) anchors your AI generations in a style that feels “lived-in” rather than generic.

👉 Work in Portrait Format with Matte Backgrounds: When focusing on pure character design, always generate in vertical portrait format with a matte background.

• This signals to MidJourney that your intent isn’t a wide scene or landscape, but a subject-focused composition.

• The AI then allocates more detail to anatomy, costumes, and textures, rather than scattering attention across a background.

• The result: sharper, more consistent character details.

Step 2: Building a MidJourney Moodboard

Next came a style moodboard—a curated set of images guiding MidJourney toward a coherent visual identity.

• The moodboard reinforced proportions (skinny puppet bodies).

• It highlighted textures (paper grain, hand-drawn doodles).

• It set the emotional tone (childlike but eerie).

This visual “north star” ensured every new character variation still belonged inside Paper World.

👉 Pro tip: A MidJourney moodboard works best if it combines direct references (photos of your craft) with “style-adjacent” images that capture atmosphere, color, or vibe.

Step 3: Iterating with MidJourney Parameters

Once the foundation was set, the magic came from playing with MidJourney’s generation parameters:

• Stylization (--s): Controls how strongly MidJourney adheres to the aesthetic.

  • Lower values kept closer to the paper doll reference.

  • Higher values exaggerated the doodle-like surrealism.

• Weirdness (--weird): Unlocks unexpected twists.

  • At moderate levels, characters gained subtle quirks (offbeat proportions, stranger costumes).

  • At higher values, they leaned into uncanny territory.

• Variety (--v): Adjusts how far variations drift from the seed image.

  • Useful for exploring multiple directions without losing cohesion.

By carefully mixing these, the Paper World cast expanded into a family of puppets—each unique, but unmistakably part of the same universe.

👉 Checkpoint: After 3–5 iterations, pause and compare results against your original moodboard. Consistency is easier to maintain when corrections happen early.

Step 4: Recognizing the “Eerie Grace”

Every successful character system needs its core aesthetic DNA. For Paper World, this was the “eerie grace” of the puppets.

• Grace came from elongated, delicate proportions.

• Eeriness was amplified by doodled costumes that felt childlike yet haunted.

By naming and articulating this core trait, it became easier to decide which AI generations fit and which didn’t.

👉 Pro tip: Always define your project’s “core aesthetic phrase.” A two- or three-word mantra helps guide creative decisions when parameters spin out of control.

Why MidJourney 7 Excels for Character Design

Compared to earlier versions, MidJourney 7 is better at preserving fine stylistic details across multiple prompts and iterations. For Paper World, that meant:

• Maintaining consistent puppet anatomy.

• Preserving the paper-like surface texture.

• Carrying over hand-drawn doodle patterns across costumes.

Instead of reinventing the wheel with each prompt, the AI reliably stayed within the handmade world.

Practical Takeaways for AI Creators

• Start physical: Use a handmade or analog reference for more organic results.

• Moodboard first: Build a visual compass before diving into endless generations.

• Parameters are levers: Stylization, Weirdness, and Variety are your main tools for exploration without chaos.

• Define a mantra: Summarize your style in a short phrase (e.g., “eerie grace”) to check alignment.

• Iterate like a director: Don’t settle for the first good output—treat each generation as a storyboard pass.

The Future of AI Character Design

Paper World is just one experiment, but it points toward something larger: AI isn’t replacing craft—it’s extending it.

When you start with handmade input, MidJourney doesn’t erase the human touch; it amplifies it into new dimensions. For filmmakers, animators, and storytellers, this workflow bridges old-world artistry with AI-driven possibility.

The result? Characters that are both consistent and alive, ready to inhabit entire worlds.

Below a short animation using Kling 2.5 and MidJourney Video.