Core :: bvga Style

This is my personal-use style LoRA that I created so I wouldn't need an 8-style-LoRA stack to get the style I liked. With the release of more advanced models like Anima and Krea 2 it's even more important, as it's the only way I'm able to transfer that style over.

My aim with this is to address the generic-looking oversaturated, flat, glossy, and grainy look of the anime checkpoint models. It does that by blending a number of styles and aesthetics together, giving it a distinct painterly and semi-realistic feel.

Anima version notes:
- No LoRA trigger tag is needed.
- Anima itself has issues with fingers and a lack of detail leading to flat or mushy features, which for whatever reason this LoRA seems to draw out. Adjusting quality modifiers (especially removing score_7) seems to help with hands. While to improve detail you can use hi-res fix (or for comfyui, upscaling then a low denoise pass like what I've put together in my workflow).
- For quality modifiers I personally just use "masterpiece, best quality,"
- Adding "glossy skin" to the negative prompt will give natural skin texture.
- Er_sde normal, 4 cfg, and 30-50 steps works best in my experience. I've tried other settings, but this just seems to work best for my style (and with Anima generally).
- 0.5-0.7 LoRA strength works best.

Krea 2 version notes:
- No LoRA trigger tag is needed.
- Works great at 0.7 strength when mixing with other style LoRAs. Krea 2 seems especially good at this sort of style mixing.
- The appearance of the character was learned along-side the style, and as such it has a strong influence on character anatomy, facial features, and eyes.
- Style is strongest when prompting for female subjects. Occasionally has issues with giving male characters female features.

Illustrious version notes:

My intention was to have a single LoRA that both strongly captured that style while being cleaner and more flexible to use than the 8-lora-stack (like what Krea 2 is now able to accomplish). But due to limitations of Illustrious I've split it into 2 separate LoRAs.

Comparison Chart:

v2.0 is a typically trained style LoRA, which has a softer style and doesn't alter prompt understanding, ideal for flexible use and mixing with other style LoRAs.
(v2.0 is what most people will want to use)

v1.0 is an intentionally "overtrained" model that aims to capture that style as strongly as possible, at the expense of prompt sensitivity. As a result, with v1.0 you'll need to experiment with prompt weights, e.g. (character name:1.3).
(v1.0 was also an experimental proof of concept, so the quality of the dataset wasn't perfect.)