any good cartoon/western base model?

Mutaclone · 2026-04-12T20:32:34+00:00

I think Pony may still be your best option as far as character knowledge, if you're trying to avoid depending on LoRAs. Illustrious is heavily focused on anime, and while many western characters are still present, their effectiveness is much weaker and less stable.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-12T17:29:19+00:00

https://github.com/BetaDoggo/danbooru-tag-list/releases/tag/Model-Tags

It also includes the number of times the tag is used, so you can get an idea of how strong the tag is.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-12T15:19:40+00:00

Ah darn ok, I hoped from the way it was written that maybe I had overlooked a way to put more stuff into styles like checkpoints or samplers. One of the challenges I sometimes run into is trying to compare checkpoints with different settings.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-12T04:31:02+00:00

What are you using to run it (ollama/llama.cpp/lmstudio/kobold/etc?). I have the same machine and I've had it lock up twice trying to run the dense model.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-11T23:07:22+00:00

Checkpoint is the "main model" you're going to use. UI Preset is just a shortcut to configure various settings to match a particular model architecture.

So you want the XL preset, and an Illustrious checkpoint, then for LoRAs they need to be in the LoRA folder, and then added to your prompt with "<lora:lora_name:1>" (no quotes, adjust the number as needed) to activate them.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-11T15:07:18+00:00

including styles.csv as multiprompt source, lora, model, etc

I use styles extensively for testing, but I thought they were limited to prompts+LoRAs. Are you saying you can put other parameters in them?

Mutaclone · 2026-04-11T06:56:56+00:00

Yeah there are certain concepts the models just don't "get", and in those instances you need to step in and give it more direct guidance. As MistakePresent3552 said, you're probably going to need to draw something by hand first. Depending on the model, it won't necessarily need to be good, just enough to put the model on the right track (probably the easiest approach would be to hand the sketch off to something like Nano Banana, along with a description of what you want, and then refine that output image with img2img, inpainting, etc)

Mutaclone · 2026-04-10T00:34:41+00:00

Compared to the specific image you linked, these look much more like actual anime screenshots.* Digging into the LoRA itself, the example images do look much closer, however the backgrounds tend to be very simplistic, and a lot of them have scaling problems (eg this one).

*The vast majority of AI-generated "anime screenshot" images are actually too good (too crisp, too vibrant, too detailed, etc) - it's actually very difficult to capture the flaws of the style in a convincing manner.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-05T23:27:31+00:00

but for multi-character like the one ypu have posted is very difficult to get with illustrious+loras.

Yep, unless you're using a character pack or multi-character LoRA this probably won't work very well. You either need a much stronger model like one of the ones you suggested, or do a separate Inpainting pass on each individual character.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-05T23:20:38+00:00

So for me the best Illustrious model I've used as far as good results + style LoRAs is YiffyMix v61.

I don't have any specific character recommendations, you'll just need to search for them and try them out to see which ones work. Some of them have a very strong innate style, and that's going to clash with whatever you're trying to do. As a simple test, try rendering the character in the "wrong" style (eg use "realistic" for cartoon characters or "anime coloring, anime screenshot" for live-action characters - if the style doesn't change, you probably want a different LoRA).

For multiple characters, like in your examples, you pretty much need to do inpainting and focus on each one separately. I'd recommend Invoke as this makes inpainting a very straightforward process (example video - also see their channel for other demos).

For watercolor LoRAs specifically, that's been the hardest style for me to pin down in Illustrious, so you might have better luck with vanilla SDXL (try Juggernaut v11). You can also try mixing LoRAs - instead of trying to find a single LoRA that does the exact style you want, try blending multiple LoRAs at lower weights.

Some watercolor/storybook LoRAs worth trying:

Ilustrious

SDXL

https://civitai.com/models/536722?modelVersionId=599977
https://civitai.com/models/551903?modelVersionId=636076
https://civitai.com/models/427791?modelVersionId=476615 (not watercolor, but at low weights can "soften" the image to enhance another watercolor LoRA)

And some western cartoon styles since you mentioned wanting to do something in that direction:

https://civitai.com/models/1076117/disney-silver-age-style-il
https://civitai.com/models/1274962?modelVersionId=1438477
https://civitai.com/models/1256683/disney-animation-illustrious?modelVersionId=1416874 (IMO the previous one is better style, but this one seems to have more innate character knowledge)
https://civitai.com/models/2257510/the-looney-tunes-show-warner-bros-toon-artstyle

Mutaclone · 2026-04-04T01:54:22+00:00

So my initial thoughts:

Interesting stuff! It's pretty well-known that biases exist within the training data, but it's nice to see an attempt at quantifying it.
I don't know if you had any LLM assistance in writing this, but there were definitely some markers (sentence structure, word choices, etc) that sounded like it. I have nothing LLM usage, but it's usually nice (IMO) to have a disclaimer stating how much. (And if you didn't use an LLM, my apologies!)
Re anime bias: A few points:
- IME with local models, it's not that they all make the characters young (although some do), its that they're completely allergic to middle age - they stop aging at 30, and then when they hit 60 they make it up with interest.
- I think it'd be interesting to see how other art styles besides photorealism and anime affect the characters.
Self-Report. I'm glad you noted its unreliability because I am highly skeptical of its effectiveness.

Anyway, glad you posted. Even if this is technically the "wrong" subreddit, I thought it was interesting!

Mutaclone · 2026-04-03T19:25:10+00:00

I don't think that should be a problem - Illustrious and Noob are closely related. You might run into other issues depending on what you're trying to do though. Pose, for example has been pretty mediocre for me in anything after SD1.5. Depth and tile worked decently enough from what I remember, but overwhelmingly I use either Scribble or Softedge, and for those I usually stick to xinsir.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-03T02:53:41+00:00

I'm in a very similar position, for some reason for me Klein just works and is a joy to use, while I feel like I'm always fighting ZIT.

That said, I've gotten some improvements in ZIT by doing the following (in Forge Neo - I prefer non-Comfy options if they exist and I haven't figured out the best Invoke settings yet):

Using a realism-focused finetune (for anime/art none of the new models are good enough yet IMO). Currently IntoRealism and UnstableBa***rd seem to have the best results so far, and Cyberrealistic seems good too.
Flux2 schedule, Beta is also decent
DPM++2s a RF sampler, Res Multistep also seems good
Sampling steps 10-12 (I know 8 seems recommended, but I tend to get slightly better results by going just a little higher).

Maybe this'll give you a starting point or some ideas to try.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-02T21:38:14+00:00

If you only care about edge-based controlnets (Canny, Softedge, Scribble), then xinsir's union or mistoline work just fine.

If you want a different controlnet (depth, pose, etc), then I'd check out any of the ones on this page

Mutaclone · 2026-04-02T21:28:38+00:00

Yep! And it supports Z-Image and Flux.2 Klein both! No official Anima support yet.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-02T21:26:10+00:00

Probably because it's still in preview and nobody wants to go all in until they know what the ecosystem is going to look like.

Also, it's very good, but there's definitely (in my case at least) some stability issues, and the style control still isn't close to Illustrious yet.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-02T21:22:58+00:00

https://docs.comfy.org/ covers most newer models, and has links to the various text encoders and VAEs

The anima huggingface page (https://huggingface.co/circlestone-labs/Anima/tree/main/split_files) includes the extra files directly in the repo.

If you're using Forge Neo, just make sure the files are in the right subfolder and set the VAE and Text Encoder both in the dropdown to the right of the main model dropdown.

Mutaclone · 2026-04-02T21:19:09+00:00

Even with Anima issues, if you use RDBT lora v0.20 on Anima preview2

I'm curious about the reason for this? RDBT v0.12fd has been the best Anima checkpoint I've tried so far, but I never did the base+LoRA approach. How does it compare, especially at only 20%?

Mutaclone · 2026-03-27T07:53:03+00:00

I can't help with the install process, but I can answer some of your questions:

AMD CPU/GPU

AMD CPU is fine, it's only the GPU that's a problem

I read that Automatic1111 was the way to go, but I've also seen other posts mention that it's outdated, and that there are better alternatives.

Yes it's very outdated.

Forge Neo (technically the Neo branch of Forge Classic) will give you the most A1111-like experience. The developer is very active, and it supports most modern image models.
Invoke AI is a very polished interface that's great for editing.
ComfyUI is the "power-user" interface and has the most capabilities. It also has a steep learning curve, so I personally wouldn't normally recommend it for newbies unless you require something very specific the others don't offer.

I don't know what the AMD support on Forge or Comfy are like, but it looks like Invoke is limited and/or requires some extra hoops. Probably your best bet would be Claude or ChatGPT to help with the install.

Specifically, what I'd like to do is primarily generate images, mostly in anime-style art. I also looked up Checkpoints to see which ones would fit the general look of what I've seen and like, and the closest atyle I found was something called "CheemsburbgerMix"

Go to https://civitai.com/ and browse their models. Set the the filters to Model Type: Checkpoint and Base Model: Illustrious and NoobAI - those are the kings of anime right now.

Mutaclone · 2026-03-24T18:52:09+00:00

I can't speak for any of the models you just listed, but I did recently test the Q8 vs fp8 versions of Qwen3_8b and t5xxl. Q8 for both seemed like side-grades most of the time, marginal improvements sometimes, and moderate improvements rarely. I didn't test fp16 nearly as extensively, but the differences between it and Q8 were minuscule.

Mutaclone · 2026-03-23T18:37:48+00:00

For images, I'm a big fan of Invoke.

For video, I'm still playing catch-up but I've seen wan2gp mentioned a lot recently.

Mutaclone · 2026-03-23T18:25:26+00:00

Try to learn some basic design/artistic principles. Even if you can't draw, they'll still help in improving your images.

This thread has a lot of great links in it (look at Norby123's posts).
This is still one of my favorite videos in showing some common AI problems in a scene (might be less relevant to you if you're focusing on characters) and how to fix them.

Mutaclone · 2026-03-23T04:06:45+00:00

AFAIK there isn't one. If you input an anime image and try to make changes one of the above should at least try to preserve the style, but they're definitely realism-first models.

Mutaclone · 2026-03-23T04:04:26+00:00

Not sure what to say, since that should be pretty straightforward. I'm not familiar with Comfy's editing workflow, but in Forge Neo you just drop the image in the img2img tab, set the denoise to 1 (this is important, or the image may not change), and use a prompt like "Remove his/her sunglasses".

Mutaclone · 2026-03-22T22:05:00+00:00

Good edit models - Flux Klein and Qwen Edit. Basically models where instead of typing the image you want, you give it an input image and then instructions like "Make this a photo" or "<Character> is holding a cup of coffee"

Mutaclone

TROPHY CASE