Evil Queen- Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics- Meisaku Gekijou

Evil Queen from the multi-parter episodes of Snow White on Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, aka Grimm Masterpiece Theater, or グリム名作劇場 Gurimu Meisaku Gekijō in Japan. I'll wax nostalgic a bit here, then talk about the character/lora. If you were around in '89, '90, you maybe remember this one, you can still find most of the episodes out there on Youtube and occasionally it comes around again on Amazon Prime.

So's, why this one? Well, I have real nostalgia for the series, used to watch it on Nickelodeon back in the day. Especially if you remember that era, it was a who's who of anime dub voices, I won't list them off individually, but if you watched Robotech you'll recognize more than a few, none other than Rick Hunter was the platonic squire buddy in this episode. Similar animation style too, just a good solid retro style and character designs, serious where it needs to be, goofy when it wants. They stayed closer to the classic tales, giving them a dark, dangerous edge for something aimed at the early grades, usually they also put a creative twist in there, and you always, always, felt like you got your full 20 minutes worth no matter what episode it was. My understanding is a few of them didn't even get localized because they kept the material dark, but plenty enough did.

The Snow White episode was a two parter, if you watch the entire thing its basically a full length movie, and holds up pretty well for its age, and frankly, remains superior to some of the crap live action reimaginings that have been put out since then. One thing I always liked about it is its very much a different style but all the character designs make perfect sense. You get a few additional subplots and life with the dwarves gets fleshed out, that's probably half the episode (but its entertaining), they had really goofy, unique cartoony designs that worked. I related to the Grumpy expy (Thursday), and the Dopey expy (Sunday?), which oughta tell you something about what kinda kid I was.

So, aside from extra stuff, I noticed the queen (which should also tell you what kind of kid I was). She's got a very calm, regal design but the more you look at her eyes you think, oh yes, she's crazy. They do a good of portraying the murderous narcissism, and if I might get a little simpy here, she has awesome hair. Under that big old duchess hat of hers (I'll give you the proper term for that further below, pay attention now cuz you'll want to know it for genning), she's got just some wild massive early 90's Jean Grey red hair going on.

Another cool thing about her is the prince and the squire show up and try to take her on, she knocks the stuffing out the squire, fights the prince to a standstill and he's really trying, and finally only gets taken down by like 100 wolves, and she does all that with nothing but a wooden walking stick.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling they cut some stuff to localize it, particularly that last fight, it kind of ends with an offscreen "And the queen was mobbed by wolves, moving right along..." sort of thing.

So's, back to the lora! In the grand tradition of these, I'll gen some better showcase pics by tomorrow or so, but this was 44 samples, I expect it'll favor anime cel style, but we can try some different things. The queen has 2 looks:

1. Wearing her heart shaped head dress, which is called a "hennin" or "escoffion", I've tagged it with escoffion, though you might have luck with veil. Her dress is a purple dress with pink puffy long sleeves with wide sleeves. She has pale blue eyes although due to animation and lighting sometimes it appears black, and ALWAYS wears lipstick, usually a pearl or ruby pendant necklace. I'd say she's an unholy preserved supermodel 40, but this being anime on top of everything, who knows?

2. Without the dress, hair free, she's in shadow with a yellow glow so the dress has more of a yellow look, her hair more brown (its red), and eyes more green.

3. Bare headed in disguise (with the hag look worn off of course), this is when you can appreciate her long red hair, usually wears a ragged brown cloak.

So things you should watch for I can tell you without even testing yet:

1. Her escoffion is easily mistaken for blond hair. You may want to put that in negatives. If you are going to give her blond hair for whatever reason, be mindful in your prompts.

2. Again, she has red hair and blue eyes, though this shifts a bit on samples depending on the lighting. I strive for accuracy but if you don't care, give her whatever you like.

3. Retro artstyle in prompts would probably help if you want to stick closer to this style, these initial gens she's too young and "nice" looking, I'll post some stuff once I've got the recipe down but if you're a stickler for the right age like I am you might try emphasizing some prompts, maybe something like elegant or villain or smug features.

This was 11 epochs, 14 repeats, 1694 steps, and ran me 667 buzz, which was almost as metal as you can get.