My attempt at making a 2D anime model that has a nice, textured look to it. Admittedly, it's not something I spent a whole lot of time on - mostly because I didn't use cosine merges or anything, just model block weights - but I do think it turned out pretty good.

Disclaimer: This model is intentionally focused on generating women and is slightly NSFW leaning - which shouldn't come as much of a shock since that's the majority of models on CivitAI. If you're not using it for that, your mileage may vary.

Usage Guidelines:

(Note: Updated for v2)

Positive Prompt:

Start with "(masterpiece, highest quality, illustration)". Add "comics style" and/or "thick outlines" to emphasize outlines - note that this also leads to more exaggerated female proportions. "arms by side" helps with keeping messed-up hands out of portraits.

Negative Prompt:

"(worst quality, low quality:1.4), poorly drawn, bad anatomy, wrong anatomy, blurry, open mouth" seems to work best for most things; you may occasionally need to prompt against other things.

VAE:

I just use vae-ft-mse-840000-ema-pruned.

Sampler:

DPM ++2M, 25 steps, discard penultimate sigma, karras sigma algorithm

CFG 6-8 (The example images all use 7, but you may have to tweak to get the eyes right)
Upscaler Model:

ESGRAN 4x-AnimeSharp seems to be the best choice for getting that textured look. ESGRAN 8x-Superscale can emphasize the textured look but is messier. ESGRAN-4xAnime-6B produces a flatter look.
Upscaler Settings:

10 steps, 0.5 strength, 2x upscale, secondary sampler DPM 2M++ (if your webui gives you that option)
Adetailer:

For faces, use face_yolo8vn with no prompting. If you want to use it for hands as well, use hand_yolo8vn with "hand" in the positive prompt - I don't usually use Adetailer on hands since it doesn't work that well.

Formula:

V2:

Part A: Argent - v1.0 + Occidental Mix - v3.0 with GradV MBW Preset

Part B: Kilkenny Mix - v1.0 + Part A with Cosine MBW Preset

Part C: Part B + Arthemy Comics - v 7.0 with MBW [0,0,0,0,0,0,0.1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,0.1,0,0,0,0,0]

Mix: Part C + Part B with Ring08_5 MBW Preset

V1:

Part A: Argent - v1.0 + Occidental Mix - v3.0 with GradV MBW Preset

Part B: Arthemy Comics - v6.0 + Part A with Ring10_03 MBW Preset

Part C: Part B + Kilkenny Mix - v1.0 with Cosine MBW Preset

Mix: Part B + Part C with Ring10_03 MBW Preset

(Note, MBW stands for Model Block Weights)