🎉 My First Illustrious Checkpoint Merge — and I'm Genuinely Excited About It!

After diving deep into Crody's Model Merge Guide v2.0, I've finally released my first proper checkpoint merge for Illustrious — and honestly? I'm really happy with how it turned out.

What went into this?

This model is a blend of three carefully chosen checkpoints:

• IlustMix v7 — bringing in the color pop and that gorgeous skin and face rendering

• Wai v16 — for that clean, polished anime-adjacent foundation

• Unholy Desire — adding edge, stylization, and a little drama

On top of that, I baked in two style LoRAs to push the aesthetic in a more distinctive direction, plus ADetailer to keep faces consistent and detailed out of the box.

The vibe?

Semi-realistic, stylized, and a little flashy. Think high-render anime meets modern digital illustration — detailed skin, strong lighting, bold style. It handles characters really well and loves a dramatic pose.

First results are attached — generated straight from the merge with minimal prompting. Would love to hear what you think!

Credits: Big thanks to the creators of IlustMix, Wai, and Unholy Desire — this wouldn't exist without their work. And shoutout to @Crody (https://civitai.com/articles/22739/crodys-model-merge-guide-v20-team-c) for the merge guide that made this actually make sense. And also @vovkka who pointed me to crodys guide🙏