Reference pictures and lines

Make them with an image model

• FLUX.2, Krea 2 Turbo or Qwen Image 2.1: one view per picture, good anatomy (files and sources). Seedream 4 or Nano Banana work too, as optional paid services.
• Where something must match the episode (a set, a person who stays, the show’s look), make the picture from the episode: a still of that set, a crop of that person. Text-only stills came out as a generic set that didn’t match.
• Where something is new (a creature, a new person, a new place), make it from a description.

The pictures

Before you run: load your own picture into every Load Image node. If one still has the example name, ComfyUI can skip the generation and report success in seconds, saving only a grey depth video. A real run takes minutes.

Rules that hold everywhere

• Confirmed: the source shot as a reference video pins anything it shows clearly (a creature, a place, a face in long or dark shots). Pictures, face crops and prompt wording don’t override it. In our tests the old creature came back even with new design pictures, face crops and “the look comes only from the pictures”; the old set stayed; and on parts longer than about 3 seconds the original actor stayed. So grey out, in the reference copy only, whatever you’re replacing (the old creature, the person you recast, or the background for a new place). The model then takes those from your pictures, and the rest, actors included, from the reference. The result is a full new generation; nothing is pasted back. (Confirmed on creature shots with actors, on recast shots and outfit changes, and on new places on two shows.)
• Grey only clean, solid shapes. If the mask breaks into small scattered pieces (a color mask catching a fading glow, say), the model draws those grey patches as pale shapes: in one test they showed on an actor’s chest. Drop tiny fragments, and end the mask on the frames where the element is gone. With that, a second try had no pale patches, rims or flicker.
• Color comes from the picture. Change the picture and the color words in the prompt together.
• One design per sequence: the same pictures for every shot of the same character or creature.
• Close-ups copy the picture’s face: its head angle and expression. Use the shot’s head angle and a neutral expression.
• A full-frame picture copies its people. Use pictures on plain grey for a design.
• A picture of a place must show no people: crop them out, or use an empty still of the set. A still with someone moving brings their action into the new shot. With people-free crops, the people already in the scene stayed still in our test.
• The episode’s look comes from an episode frame, not from words. Anchor on a real frame, and describe the light in period terms (“lit only by lanterns, deep shadows”). Texture words (“16 mm grain”, “old TV softness”) made no difference in our tests, on new footage and on a rebuilt effects shot. New shots come out about 12% more saturated than the episode. Name the period (“no modern buildings, roads or vehicles”).
• Night or dark shots: a recast face can come out far brighter than a dark source (about 6× in our night test). Add the light to the prompt: “Lit only by dim night light from the side, most of {SUBJECT}’s face in shadow, as dark as the rest of the scene”, and “a low-key, dark {PLACE} at night” in the scene sentence. That roughly halved the excess (to about 3×), kept the same person and gave real side shadow.
• Sharpness is the gap prompt words can’t close: a rebuilt shot came out with about 2.3× the original’s fine detail (the old footage soft, with motion blur), while color and brightness stayed close.
• Keep faces, hair and small marks natural and simply described: stylised or precise details came out exaggerated.
• Say what isn’t there (“no headwear”): in our tests an accessory appeared that nobody asked for.
• An empty new place: make it from a description, not by editing a still of your own shot. In our test an edited still added more invented people.

The lines

When someone in the shot speaks:

1. Download an English SRT for the episode from a public subtitle site.
2. Line it up with the episode: compare 2–3 subtitle times you can see on Prime, and fit an offset (plus a speed factor only for a 25 fps PAL episode).
3. Take the words from the SRT, and each line’s timing from your part’s own sound (when the speech starts and stops, in seconds from the start of the part). That’s more precise.
4. Mark off-screen speakers as off screen: they stay off screen, and their sound is kept.

No subtitle file? Download an SRT for your episode. They’re easy to find for almost every show.

In the prompt, each line goes in <d>[English]…</d> with “From {T1} to {T2} seconds”, the speaker’s voice as in the source, and “Its lips and jaw follow the original waveform.”