Make sure everyone
sees the same person.

Storyflow has AI image generation on the canvas, and people do use it to sketch a look quickly. But that is not what this page is about and it is not the reason to build a character board. The value here is in organizing real references, photographs, costume shots, palettes, textures, film stills, into a structure that a costume designer, an illustrator, or an actor can work from. Generated images are useful for showing a direction that does not exist yet in any photograph you can find, and they are a poor substitute for the specificity of a real reference. If you want dedicated character art generation, Midjourney and similar tools are far more capable at that single job.

Seven things, and boards that skip the last two tend to produce a character who exists from the neck up. Face and casting references, with a note on what quality you are pointing at. Costume grouped into complete looks rather than individual garments. Hair and makeup. A color palette the character owns, placed beside the project palette. Props and objects, including the one thing they never put down. Environment, so you can see where they live and what that says. And physical vocabulary: how they stand, sit, take up space, or refuse to. The last one is what turns a lookbook into a character, and it is the one most boards leave out.

Not during early access. Storyflow is paid-only right now, with plans starting at $9.99 a month, and a Free plan for solo use launches before the end of 2026. Anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free today, so an actor, an illustrator, or a costume designer can review and comment without paying anything. If you need free this minute, Milanote's free tier is a genuinely nice canvas within its board and item limits, and Pinterest is free and better than everything else at surfacing references. Neither will lay out the board for you from a character description, but both are honest free options.

Give them intent alongside every reference, because a reference without a note reads as a request for a copy. Under a face, write what you are pointing at, the wariness rather than the jawline. Group costumes into complete looks and say which act each belongs to. Include the palette and the project palette together so they know what the character is allowed to wear. Add a physicality section, because posture communicates more than any single design choice. Then send a view-only link rather than a zip: they can comment on individual references to ask what you meant, which is far cheaper than discovering the misunderstanding in the first delivery.

Yes, and this is where an infinite canvas beats a document decisively. Put each character's board in its own region of one canvas and step back. You are now looking at what an audience sees: whether two characters read as too similar to distinguish in a wide shot, whether the antagonist is visually louder than the protagonist, whether the palette gives someone a color that contradicts their arc, whether the cast belongs to one world. None of these questions can be answered from a stack of individual character pages, which is exactly why productions keep discovering them at the fitting instead of at the desk.

You describe the character in a prompt: role, age, era, class, the impression they should leave, and anything already decided. The AI lays out a structured board from that description, with sections for face and casting, costume and silhouette, hair and makeup, palette, props, environment, and physicality, plus cards ready to fill. You start from a board with a shape rather than an empty canvas. From there it works with what you build, using the whole board as context, so you can ask it to add an act-three look or build a matching board for a new supporting character, and re-prompting adds around your existing references without moving them.

Yes, and it is the main reason to do this on a canvas rather than in a separate moodboard app. Put the character boards on the same canvas as the story plan, beat sheet, or scene cards. A costume change is then attached to the beat that motivates it, an act-three look sits beside the scene where the character breaks, and a prop is next to the moment it pays off. Character work drifts from story work when the two live in different tools, and the drift is invisible until someone notices the wardrobe arc and the emotional arc are pointing in opposite directions.

Not to see it: send a view-only link and they open the full board in a browser with no signup. To leave comments directly on the references they are reacting to, they sign in. That is usually the right level of access for an actor or an external artist: they can see and respond, but there is no chance of anyone dragging your board apart. If someone should actually contribute, invite them to the canvas instead, and invited collaborators join free, so bringing a designer in does not cost you a seat. Sharing, commenting, and reviewing work on every paid plan.

Yes, and the best character work uses both. A profile is written: backstory, wants, fears, the contradiction at the center, the voice. A moodboard is seen: face, silhouette, palette, objects, posture. Profiles are good at interiority and bad at telling a costume designer what to make. Moodboards are the reverse. The failure mode of using only a profile is a character everyone imagines differently; the failure mode of using only a moodboard is a character who looks great and wants nothing. Storyflow lets you write the profile in the built-in document editor on the same canvas as the board, which is why most people building characters here end up doing both at once.