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1. 6k Followers!!!
Alright… I’m about to hit 6K followers… and honestly I’m still trying to process that.
A little more than a year ago I made this account, and almost a year since I dropped my first model, FullMetalLady.
Since then it somehow turned into this:
20 models
2.7K likes
20.1K downloads
30.4K generations
318.8K reactions on images
2000+ posts… 9000+ images
I’m not gonna pretend I expected this… I really didn’t.
And I mean this for real… thank you.
Every reaction, every bit of buzz, every shoutout, every time you guys tag my stuff in chains or challenges… every download… every generation using my models…
That’s the part that hits me the most.
Seeing something I made being used by someone else to create something cool… I don’t think that feeling gets old.
So yeah… seriously… thank you for all of that.
2. How it all started...
It all started with a random YouTube video.
Some guy saying you could run Flux on 8GB VRAM… and I was like… “dafuq is Flux?”
I had tried AI images before, back in the early Stable Diffusion days… and honestly it was just pain. Slow, complicated, not fun.
But this time I said screw it… let’s try again.
Installed Stability Matrix, Forge… started watching every Flux video I could find… and slowly I kinda figured out what I was doing.
At first it was just the usual… generate a portrait of a beautiful woman.
Then I added… metal armor.
And it looked like trash half the time.
Foam armor, leathery nonsense, cosplay looking stuff, or straight up medieval tin can…
That’s when it clicked.
If I can learn to generate images… I can learn to make a LoRA.
So I did… and it was rough.
Conflicting info everywhere, mixing SDXL, Pony, Flux… nothing made sense at first.
And at the same time I jumped into ComfyUI… which didn’t help my sanity.
But I kept going.
Built my first dataset, tested things, made mistakes… a lot of mistakes.
Wasted like 9K buzz on a completely garbage model that made everything worse.
Back to zero.
Cleaned the dataset, simplified everything, went way more conservative…
…and that’s when FullMetalLady Mk.1 came out.
And that one worked.
3. ... the day I realized why I was here
I was posting images, getting reactions, likes, comments… and yeah, it’s cool, I’m not gonna lie.
But the real hit came from something else.
Seeing people use my models.
Scrolling and randomly seeing a render made with something I built… people tagging me, or sometimes not even… just finding it out there.
And thinking… damn, that came from my stuff.
That feeling is on another level.
Way more than posting my own images.
That’s when it really clicked for me.
I’m not just here to post renders.
I’m here to make the tools... I'm a model creator!!!
4. …when things got a bit messy
And then… reality kicked in a bit.
At some point I started looking around more… not just what I was doing, but everything happening on Civitai.
And man… there is a LOT.
So many creators.
So many models.
New uploads every single day.
And I’m not gonna lie… it started to feel overwhelming.
You spend time trying to make something good, something different… and then you realize there’s already 50 versions of something similar out there.
Some great… some not so much.
I’m not here to shit on anyone. Everyone starts somewhere, and experimenting is part of the process.
But let’s be real… there’s also a lot of low effort stuff.
And yeah… bots are a thing too, we all know it.
Sometimes it even feels like some models are just… 20 random watermarked stock images thrown together, trained quick, just to farm buzz or climb the leaderboard.
And that part… kinda sucks to see.
So at some point I started asking myself…
Why should I keep going?
Does it even matter?
Is it worth putting all that time into something that might just get lost in the noise?
5. …getting lost, then finding my way back
At some point I actually made it into the top 10 Flux model creators.
And I’m not gonna lie… that feeling was insane.
Getting that kind of recognition for something I was just doing for fun… I didn’t even aim for it. It just happened.
But then… I started trying to stay there.
Trying to climb. Trying to keep up.
And slowly… I almost lost the main reason I was doing all of this.
The fun.
The fucking fun.
I had none.
And the moment I realized I was in the wrong mindset… was kinda ugly.
I caught myself unfollowing creators… just because they were posting 3, 4, 5 models a day.
Seeing their numbers go up fast… while I was spending days on one model.
I felt jealous.
I felt cheated.
But at the end of the day… that was on me.
I was comparing myself… and trying to play a game I didn’t even understand.
The game of quantity over quality.
And that’s just not me.
So I stepped back.
Started posting less.
Mostly to showcase what I already made… and only promote new models when they’re actually ready.
I slowed down a lot on creation too.
Took more time on datasets… on direction… on quality.
And yeah… I scrapped a LOT of projects.
Stuff I could have easily uploaded.
Stuff that would have probably gotten some likes… some buzz…
But it wasn’t good enough.
And I’m not gonna push out half-baked models just to keep up.
Because honestly… that would feel like I’m just feeding you whatever, just to stay visible.
Like… here, take this… it’s “good enough”.
And that would send the wrong message.
Like you guys don’t deserve better than that.
And nah… fuck that.
If you download one of my models, if you take the time to use it, to build something with it…
Then yeah… you deserve more than that.
You deserve something I actually took time to craft.
Something I tested, refined, pushed as far as I could.
Not something rushed just to hit a number or stay on a leaderboard.
Because at the end of the day… if I start doing that…
Then what’s even the point?
I might be a nobody creator…
…but I won’t be a shitty nobody creator.
6. …and now, I want to build with you
At the end of all this… you guys are the reason I’m still doing this.
Seeing what you create with my models… that’s what keeps me coming back.
And that’s exactly why I want to try something new.
Something more community driven.
I’m working on a project that will involve you guys directly.
Your ideas, your participation…
…and yeah, some Buzz rewards too.
I won’t go into details here, this post is already long enough and I’m still figuring out a few things.
But it’s coming soon.
Thanks to everyone who made it all the way here… or at least survived the scroll.
And yeah… I used ChatGPT a bit to make sure my French Canadian ass didn’t completely massacre the English.
But all the “…” everywhere?
That’s 100% me.
Call it stress dotting while thinking haha.