Locking One Character Across Ideogram Images Took Me Five Tries

I needed the same mascot across twenty posts and Ideogram kept giving me a different person each time. The first four batches were unusable because the character aged, changed hair, changed jacket between frames.

What worked: I generated one hero I liked, described it in plain words (red jacket, round glasses, short dark hair, left-facing), set a fixed seed, and referenced that description on every later prompt instead of saying 'the same as before.' The model responds to the words, not to my intention.

Even then, lighting drifted. I added 'consistent flat lighting, studio background' to every prompt and the set finally held together. Five tries to learn that the seed alone isn't enough; the description has to carry the look.

For a one-off, drift is fine. For a series, lock description plus seed plus lighting words or you'll be regenerating forever. The repeatable character was worth the afternoon it took to pin down.