AI Artifact Field Guide

How to use this guide #

Each artifact has:

• Looks like: how to recognize it
• Usual causes: why it happens
• Prevent: what to do before or during generation
• Fix: what to do after generation
• Hide: editorial tricks when a fix isn't possible

General rules:

• Re-roll is a fix, not a strategy. If a shot fails the same way three times, change the approach (reference image, shorter clip, simpler action, a different model) rather than the seed.
• Fix at the earliest stage. Repairing a start frame is cheaper than repairing 120 frames of video.
• Score by impact. A flaw in the hero shot matters more than one in a 12-frame cutaway.

Tool names below are examples current as of October 2026. See Creator Tools for up-to-date options.

Quick reference #

1. Consistency artifacts #

Identity drift #

• Looks like: a character's face, age, ethnicity, hairline or build changes between shots, or within one shot.
• Usual causes: relying on text descriptions; long clips; big angle changes; mixing models.
• Prevent:
  • Build a character sheet (front, three-quarter, profile, expressions).
  • Use character or subject references, or train a character LoRA.
  • Generate a locked key frame, then animate it with image-to-video.
  • Keep clips short.
• Fix: face detailer or face restoration using the reference; regenerate only the affected frames; inpaint.
• Hide: cut to a different angle at the drift point, use a reaction shot, or keep the face smaller in frame.

Wardrobe and prop drift #

• Looks like: a jacket changes color, buttons appear or vanish, a mug becomes a glass, a sword changes length.
• Usual causes: props and costume not described or referenced in every shot.
• Prevent: add costume and props to the character sheet; reuse the exact same wording and references; keep a continuity bible.
• Fix: inpaint or object-replacement tools on the first frame, then regenerate the motion.
• Hide: frame the prop out, or use an insert shot made separately.

Style drift #

• Looks like: one shot is painterly and the next photoreal; the film grain or palette changes from shot to shot.
• Usual causes: different sessions, models or prompts; style words placed at the front of the prompt and overriding everything else.
• Prevent: a fixed style reference image and style block; one model per sequence where possible.
• Fix: a unifying color grade, a consistent grain and texture overlay, shot matching.
• Hide: a motivated transition such as a dream sequence or a new location.

Location drift #

• Looks like: the room's layout changes between angles, windows move, the city skyline shifts.
• Usual causes: video models don't keep a persistent 3D memory of the space they generated, so every new angle is a new guess.
• Prevent:
  • Generate an establishing key frame, then derive other angles from it with multi-reference or camera-angle tools.
  • Draw a simple floor plan.
  • Consider a 3D blockout (Blender, Unreal) or a captured Gaussian splat, and use depth or edge control.
• Fix: composite a consistent background plate; replace the set by outpainting from the master.
• Hide: tighter shots with shallow depth of field so less background shows.

2. Temporal artifacts (video) #

Flicker #

• Looks like: brightness, texture or small details pulse from frame to frame.
• Usual causes: frame-by-frame image-to-image processing, high denoise in video-to-video, unstable upscaling.
• Prevent: use native video models rather than per-frame image passes; lower the denoise strength; use temporally aware upscalers.
• Fix: a deflicker plugin (e.g. in Resolve), temporal noise reduction, frame blending on static areas.
• Hide: add film grain, which masks low-level flicker.

Morphing and melting #

• Looks like: objects or bodies change shape without reason; a hand merges into a cup; people blend together when they cross.
• Usual causes:
  • Complex or overlapping action.
  • Too many subjects.
  • Long clips.
  • Fast motion.
  • Stacked camera moves.
• Prevent: one clear action per shot; fewer subjects; shorter durations; motion or pose control; avoid characters crossing in front of each other.
• Fix: trim to the clean frames; regenerate from the last clean frame with first/last-frame conditioning; paint and roto.
• Hide: cut on action just before the morph; a cutaway; motion blur.

Boiling or crawling textures #

• Looks like: fabric, foliage, hair, water or skin texture "swims" while the subject is still.
• Usual causes: detail regenerated every frame without temporal coherence; aggressive creative upscaling.
• Prevent: generate at the model's native resolution; choose temporally consistent upscalers.
• Fix: temporal denoise; mask static regions from a held frame; a lighter upscale pass.
• Hide: grain, slight softening, and shallower depth of field on backgrounds.

3. Anatomy artifacts #

Hands and fingers #

• Looks like: extra or missing fingers, fused digits, bending in impossible directions.
• Usual causes: hands are small, varied and often hidden in training data.
• Prevent: pose control with hand keypoints; simple hand poses; hands holding objects (which constrains them); avoid hand close-ups unless you're prepared to fix them.
• Fix: inpaint hands on the key frame before animating; hand-specific detailers; roto and paint for video.
• Hide: pockets, gloves, holding props, framing the hands out, motion blur.

Faces and eyes #

• Looks like: asymmetric eyes, misaligned pupils, dead stares, skin like wax.
• Usual causes: faces small in frame; a low-resolution first pass; no reference.
• Prevent: generate faces large enough in frame; use references; check catchlights (no eye light looks lifeless).
• Fix: a face detailer pass; eye inpainting; adding catchlights in the composite.
• Hide: wider shots, profile angles, sunglasses and hats where they suit the story.

Teeth and mouths #

• Looks like: too many teeth, a single tooth band, smeared lips during speech.
• Prevent: closed-mouth expressions for stills; a dedicated lip-sync pass for dialogue.
• Fix: inpaint the mouth region; lip-sync tools (see Mouth mush below).

Extra, missing or merged limbs #

• Prevent: pose control (OpenPose/DWPose); simpler staging; avoid tangled poses such as hugging, dancing and fighting without control inputs.
• Fix: inpaint, roto and paint; regenerate with pose guidance.
• Hide: crop, cutaway, or a faster cut.

4. Motion and physics #

Physics errors #

• Looks like: liquids pour wrong; objects pass through each other; gravity lags; footsteps slide ("skating").
• Usual causes: models learn appearance more reliably than physical cause and effect.
• Prevent: show cause and effect in separate shots (action, then result); keep interactions simple; use real or simulated reference footage with video-to-video.
• Fix: replace elements with stock or practical footage; composite simulated FX.
• Hide: cut away at the moment of contact and show the result. Editors used this trick long before AI.

Floaty or weightless motion #

• Looks like: characters drift, move at a constant speed with no anticipation, or land without impact.
• Usual causes: no sense of weight or timing; slow-motion bias in many models.
• Prevent: prompt for speed and force ("quick," "heavy," "stumbles"); use motion transfer from your own acted reference.
• Fix: speed ramps; trimming frames from the start of moves; adding impact through sound design and camera shake.
• Diagnose with: the 12 principles of animation (anticipation, follow-through, slow in and slow out).

Camera warping #

• Looks like: parallax breaks, buildings bend during a move, the background stretches.
• Usual causes: stacked moves (orbit + push + tilt); extreme focal lengths; long moves.
• Prevent: one camera move per shot; moderate speed; camera-control features or camera LoRAs.
• Fix: stabilize; trim to the clean section; replace the background with a stable plate.

5. Detail and optics #

Garbled text and signage #

• Looks like: nonsense letters, warped logos, text that changes every frame.
• Prevent: models with strong text rendering for stills; keep text minimal in video prompts.
• Fix: composite real text in post (motion-tracked if needed). Text-editing nodes can sometimes repair on-screen text.
• Rights note: make sure no real brand names or logos appear by accident.

Lighting inconsistency #

• Looks like: key light switches sides between shots; shadows point different ways; skin tones jump.
• Prevent: state the light direction and source in every prompt for the scene ("warm key from screen-left window, cool rim from behind"); keep a lighting diagram.
• Fix: relighting tools; normal and depth estimation for 2.5D relighting; grading power windows.

Wrong or missing depth of field #

• Looks like: everything is sharp when the shot calls for shallow focus, or focus sits on the wrong subject.
• Fix: post-focus tools (e.g. Resolve's AI CineFocus); blur driven by a depth map; a rack focus made in post.

6. Audio-visual sync and sound #

Mouth mush (lip-sync failure) #

• Looks like: mouth shapes don't match sounds, especially plosives (P, B, M) and closures; the mouth region blurs; the jaw floats.
• Prevent:
  • Clean, well-recorded dialogue audio.
  • Front or three-quarter angles.
  • Faces large enough in frame.
  • Avoid fast head turns during lines.
• Fix: dedicated lip-sync models (LatentSync, MuseTalk and similar); regenerate with native-audio video models; cut to over-the-shoulder or reaction shots for difficult lines.
• Check: watch the dialogue at 50% speed with sound on.

Audio artifacts #

• Looks like (sounds like): metallic or robotic voice texture, breaths in odd places, music that changes key or tempo, inconsistent room tone.
• Fix: dialogue repair tools (de-noise, de-reverb); add consistent room tone; regenerate with a better voice model or re-record; edit music on bar lines.
• Check: listen once on headphones and once on phone speakers.

7. Look and finishing #

Over-smoothing ("AI sheen") #

• Looks like: plastic skin, overly clean surfaces, everything evenly lit and perfectly saturated.
• Fix: film grain; halation; subtle diffusion; lower CFG; prompt for texture and imperfection; a grade with real contrast choices.

Overcooked or oversaturated images #

• Looks like: crunchy edges, neon colors, extreme contrast, burned highlights.
• Usual causes: CFG or guidance too high; too many LoRAs or LoRA weights too high.
• Fix: lower guidance; reduce LoRA strength; regenerate; pull it back in the grade.

Upscale hallucination #

• Looks like: new details invented by the upscaler (extra wrinkles, changed textures, altered faces).
• Fix: use precise or restoration upscaling modes for faces and key details, and creative modes only for backgrounds; compare against the original at 100%.

Interpolation warping and the "soap opera effect" #

• Looks like: rubbery in-between frames on fast motion; video that looks too smooth.
• Fix: interpolate only slow shots; keep a 24 fps delivery for a filmic feel; don't interpolate across cuts.

Compression banding and blocking #

• Looks like: stepped gradients in skies and shadows; blocky dark areas after upload.
• Fix: work and master in 10-bit; add fine grain or dither before export; use adequate bitrate; see the Finishing & Delivery Checklist.

8. Review passes #

Watch your film several times, each time looking for one thing only:

1. Faces pass: identity, eyes, mouths
2. Hands and bodies pass: fingers, limbs, poses
3. Continuity pass: wardrobe, props, screen direction, eyelines, lighting direction
4. Edges pass: where subjects meet backgrounds, especially in composites
5. Motion pass: physics, weight, camera warping
6. Text pass: every sign, screen and label
7. Sound pass: sync, artifacts, levels
8. Full-screen pass: watch on the largest screen you have, then on a phone

Log each issue with a timestamp, artifact name and severity (High, Medium, Low). Fix the Highs, decide on the Mediums, and accept the Lows that a normal viewer won't notice.

9. When to keep an artifact #

Not every artifact is a mistake. Surreal or glitch aesthetics can be deliberate. Treat an artifact as a style when it is:

• Consistent: it appears throughout, not randomly
• Motivated: it fits the tone, world or theme
• Disclosed: your breakdown says it was intentional

Judges are asked to check intent before scoring a stylized artifact as a flaw (see the Critique Rubric §4).