K1D/Th3K1D style with OCs - Illustrious

Trained using only 12 images.
- 7 on Artist's OC Marci. TRIGGER WORD: marci3k.

- 2 on Artist's OC Jessie. TRIGGER WORD: jessie3k.

- Further images to stabilize the style into a less scribbly note.

Might need addition color tags from prompts to keep coherency (especially Jessie), but otherwise the LoRA's stable.

Wai-NSFW recommended instead of Noob because the latter, for some reason, fails to pick up some of the design elements (like mismatching colors on Marci's loose socks).

This has been a successful experiment on how pruning tags and training on specific few images can achieve desirable results. Using a plethora of mismatched images from different periods can lead to a bricked LoRA if the result doesn't suit your taste.

It started when I found https://rentry.org/ezlora and how it emphasized how important tag pruning and dataset quality were.

Training jargon goes here:

The key is to leave a few images depicting the character's standard appearance and associated art style instead of overloading the tags themselves. The model itself isn't stupid; it will recognize that specific 'vibe' as the default appearance of the character without you wasting tokens on more tags.

Some characters, with only a few training images (even as few as two), tend to divert in terms of colors. That's when you add additional correction tags to your prompt itself, not your training images.

- Features that a character always has should not be tagged; otherwise, the AI won't understand what "marci3k" means on its own, and you would have to use a dozen tags for the job of one. If there were images of Marci in a business suit or a bikini or with blonde hair, you would add the relevant tags, because it's different from what she normally looks like.

- Above applied to character-specific LoRAs or style LoRAs with a heavy amount of single-character influences.

- Weakness: Extreme alternate costumes will sometimes fail as the default appearance bleeds in. Wrangling through prompts can work, but exhausting.

- Is not always the best option if you want the character to have some extreme alternate appearance.

Nerd talk done.

Artist: https://k1d.newgrounds.com/

https://x.com/Th3K1D_/media