How Do I Make an AI Movie Poster?

What makes a cover work

Posters and thumbnails are where most viewers decide whether to watch, and the advice from people who make them for a living is not about tools. In a thread in r/NewTubers about AI versus hand-made thumbnails, the practical answer was:

Just remember the basics of having a clear focus, not being redundant with your title, not having too many elements

The same thread had the warning that goes with it: plenty of viewers say they skip anything that looks generically AI-made. A poster built from your own characters, in your own series' look, avoids that problem better than a generic image does, because it looks like your show rather than like every other thumbnail. Social platforms are one of the largest topics in the community corpus, about 15,000 posts, and covers are where a series first meets that feed.

Build it from your cast, not from a prompt

On SceneMixer the poster is painted from your leads' reference art, so at least one lead needs a character image first. That is the point: the face on the cover is the face in the episode. Open the Cover art tab in the characters and scenes step, and fill in a few things:

• Title — drawn right into the poster; twelve characters or fewer works best.
• Lettering — four styles: Brush, Gold, Rounded and Serif, with one marked as recommended for your genre.
• Genre mood — twelve moods, from Romance and Suspense to Horror and Sci-fi, setting the colours and atmosphere; the site pre-selects one from your story.
• Cover characters — up to two, people or animals, from everyone who has a character image.
• Tagline — optional, one line to hook viewers, laid out on top rather than painted in.

Three options, then sizes and episode covers

Press Generate 3 options; the three come back in about a minute or two, and you pick one. Each option is priced as one image on the image tier you have selected, and your account's first project gets its first set of three free. Portrait 9:16 and landscape 16:9 versions are always included, with other sizes made on request, each priced as one image.

Treat the three as a small casting call for the cover rather than a lottery. Look at each at thumbnail size, because that is how most viewers will first see it: is the lead's face readable, does the title survive being small, is there one clear focus? The one that works at the size of a phone grid is usually the right one, even if another looks better full screen.

Once the series has a cover, Make episode covers makes one per episode with its episode number, in every size, priced per episode; after that, changing the tagline or picking a different cover is free. An option that does not come out is refunded, and so is an episode-cover run that fails. On a free account the AI badge is on the cover, as on videos; members can remove it.

Titles, tiers and what to check

Lettering inside generated images is better than lettering inside generated video, but it is still not guaranteed. Keep the title short, check each option letter by letter, and generate again with another lettering style or image tier if a letter comes out wrong — the site does not correct it for you. Image tiers whose makers stress lettering are a reasonable first try for covers. The image itself is quick: a character or location image on the site took a median of 17 seconds over the 30 days to November 6, 2026.

The full walkthrough is in making a promo cover poster for your AI drama, and the movie poster generator page covers key art for films. For the trailer that goes with it, see how to make an AI movie trailer.

Limitations of cover art

• The cover is built from your characters' reference art, not from an uploaded photo; at least one lead needs a character image first.
• Lettering can come out wrong; check it and regenerate. The site does not fix misspelled titles.
• Ad projects do not have cover art.
• Posters for existing films, real actors and known characters are not what this is for; the IP and face checks refuse them.
• The site figure is one month of SceneMixer image tasks, refreshed monthly; the community count is a keyword approximation.

FAQ

Related: making AI drama videos for TikTok covers where the covers end up, keeping the same characters in every episode explains why the cover face matches the show, and the community counts follow the collection method.