Art Direction

Art direction is the look of your storyboard — cinematic live-action, graphic novel, watercolor, anime, claymation, and so on.

You pick it once for the project. Ciaro then applies that look when it writes shot descriptions and when it generates storyboard images. You do not need to keep repeating “watercolor” or “anime” in every prompt.

What you should expect

• One look for the whole project (you can change it later).
• New images follow the current look.
• Images you already generated keep their old look until you regenerate them.
• Character portraits stay as clear identity photos. They are not restyled into the project look, so the same person can still be recognized in every frame.
• Cinematic is the default: photoreal film-still images, without an extra illustrated treatment.

Where you pick it

Story Wizard (new projects)

After you paste your story, the Style step shows a grid of looks. Click a tile, then continue. You must pick one before Build. Cinematic is selected by default.

Create View (anytime later)

Open a shot (hover it on the Board and click Create or Edit). Look for Art direction on the generation workspace — a pill with the current look name, or a small image icon on the canvas. Click it and choose a different tile. That change is for the whole project, not just this shot.

Built-in looks vs your own look

The grid has two kinds of tiles:

• Built-in looks — ready to use (Cinematic, Graphic Novel Noir, Watercolor Storybook, Cinematic Anime Film Still, and others).
• Your looks — styles you created for this story. They appear at the end of the same grid once they are ready.

You can only have one active look at a time. Picking a custom look replaces the built-in one, and vice versa.

How to get the best results

• Pick the look before you generate a lot of frames. Changing it later means regenerating.
• In shot prompts, describe who, where, and what is happening — not the drawing medium. Ciaro already has the look.
• Keep the same look across a sequence unless you want a deliberate shift (dream, flashback).
• For a unique brand look, create a custom style, then select it in Art direction — do not paste a long style essay into every shot.
• If a custom tile is grayed out, it is not ready yet: it still needs a look plate (see Creating your own look).

What Art direction is not

• It is not a trained character or style model. Custom looks are example images plus a look plate you select in this picker.
• It is not a reference slot you drag per shot. Ciaro attaches the look automatically when generating shot images. Slots are for who and what (see Reference-based generation).
• It does not restyle character, prop, or background portfolio images in Entity Builder. Those stay identity and location references.

Read next: Built-in looks vs your own look, Creating your own look, Getting a consistent look, Reference-based generation.