I really, really like the Artium v1.0 Model (credit to FrenzyX).But it sometimes kind of drifts off into photorealistic output, which is not what I desire from it, so I decided to make a merge variant that would mostly behave like Artium but be more likely to fall back to anime style than photorealistic.In the end I decided to merge in some amount of the anima_pencil-XL checkpoint, which itself is a merge of blue_pencil-XL and Animagine XL.Regarding permissions: I'm very much an amateur at this, so I just copied the more strict set from Artium.Regarding prompts and generation settings: Up to you really.I like to keep my prompts simple - see the sample images I uploaded. No need to overcomplicate things anyomore.I mostly use DPM++ 2M Karras with 20 steps, but that's a matter of personal preference and because these settings will work well with most models.I did a bit of trial and error before finding a merge recipe that seems to have achieved my intent.One of the experiments I did was take the weight differences between Artium v1 and SDXL and add 50% of that back into Artium for what I called Artium 150%. This resulted in a more anime-like model that near enough achieved all I wanted on its own without breaking.I also tried adding the weight differences between animapencil and sdxl into Artium, but the outcome had more more flat tones and less texture than where I was intending to go.The end model I uploaded here is a merge between those two models and another 10% of the weight differences between Artium and SDXL added in, giving the model effectively 135% of Artium and 25% of Anima_Pencil.I compared about 250 generated images between my model, Artium v1.0 and a 20% Weight-Sum between Artium and AnimaPencil to make sure I didn't break anything while I was at it. Looks good.About 50 of those images were specifically to check if hand generation got worse - which I'm happy to report it didn't. There were no statistically different outcomes looking at 90 different hands per model.

Artium_anima

Yeah, I skipped v2.0There's an internal 2.0, but it didn't achieve what I set out, being pretty hardcore flat colour anime. There's plenty of good models for that already.Overall making of:Artium 150%: Artiumv1 + (Artiumv1 - SDXL)*0.5-&gt; much less likely to default to photo styleArtium_Anima - V0.1: Artium 150% + (Anima_Pencilv1 - SDXL)*0.5Artium_Anima - V0.2: 0.5*Artium_Anima - V0.1 + 0.5*Artium 150%Artium_anima - V1.0: Artium_Anima - V0.2 + (Artiumv1 - SDXL)*0.1Prep1: BluePencil_v401*0.5 + AAM XL*0.5Artium_anima_v1.2: ArtAn+AAM+BPArtium_anima_v1.3: Artium_anima_v2: +quietGN_AD20-&gt; very good version, but didn't seem like a big enough change to publish Prep2: BluePencil_v5*0.5 + AAM XL*0.5Prep3: Artium 150%*0.5 + Prep2*0.5Prep4: Anima_Pencilv2.6 + (quietGN-SDLX)*0.6Artium_anima_v2: Prep3*0.6 + Prep4*0.4-&gt; Too much detail lost, flat colours, v1.3 is betterAttempts to improve AAv2:AAv2.1: AAv2*0.5 + AAv1.3*0.5AAv2.2: AAv2*0.8 + Av1.0*0.2AAv2.3: AAv2.1*0.5 + AAv2.2*0.5-&gt; none are good enough for what I'm trying to achieveAAv2.4: AAv2.1*0.75 + Av1.0*0.25AAv2.5: AAv2.1*0.75 + A150*0.25AAv2.6: AAv1.3*0.75 + AAv2.2*0.25-&gt; nearly indistinguishable from each other. Pretty good - I ended up using AAv2.6 for a whileAAv3.0: AAv2.6*0.6 + randomaxxArt*0.4The one I published here. I quite like the Randommaxx Art Merge.

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