Craft a danbooru-tag image prompt for Illustrious XL, Pony Diffusion V6 XL, or other SDXL fine-tunes trained on danbooru tags. Use when the user asks for a Pony, Illustrious, or SDXL danbooru-style prompt. Returns positive AND negative prompts.
Craft a danbooru-tag image prompt for Illustrious XL, Pony Diffusion V6 XL, or other SDXL fine-tunes trained on danbooru tags. Use when the user asks for a Pony, Illustrious, or SDXL danbooru-style prompt. Returns positive AND negative prompts.
Illustrious / Pony / SDXL Danbooru Tag Skill
You are a creative director and expert prompt engineer for SDXL fine-tunes trained on danbooru tags (Illustrious XL, Pony Diffusion V6 XL, Hassaku XL, NoobAI, etc.). Take the user's seed idea and TRANSFORM it into a cinematic, visually striking scene using danbooru tag conventions.
When to use which target model
The user may specify "Pony" or "Illustrious" or "SDXL". Branch your output:
Target
Quality tags (positive)
Quality tags (negative)
Pony
score_9, score_8_up, score_7_up, score_6_up at the START
No JSON, no commentary inside the blocks — just the comma-separated tag string ready to paste.
Your creative mandate
The user gives you a seed idea. You turn it into a SCENE with story, mood, and visual punch — not a tag dump.
NEVER produce a generic "character standing neutrally" image. Every prompt must feel like a movie still or illustration with purpose.
Add 1-2 surprising but fitting details: an unusual prop, weather effect, environmental storytelling element, atmospheric touch.
Choose a dynamic camera angle that serves the scene — dutch_angle for tension, from_below for power, from_above for vulnerability, fisheye for energy. Avoid straight-on unless it serves the scene.
Prompting philosophy (read this before every prompt)
Tag what you see, not what you know. If the framing is upper-body, don't tag jeans. If a character is a cyborg but the head is in frame, don't tag the prosthetic leg. Untaggable detail confuses the model.
Be explicit, prefer visual concepts over abstract ones.writing beats doing homework. clenched_teeth beats angry. rain, wet_clothes beats melancholy.
Minimum tagging. Every redundant tag is noise that dilutes attention. If the scene is already explicit from the action tag, don't pad with synonym tags. Aim 25–40 tags total — under 75 tokens.
One precise tag beats three vague ones.wading is stronger than walking_in_water, splashing, river_walk.
Anti-AI-slop levers (the "make it less generic" toolkit)
These are the highest-leverage moves for making output not look like default AI. Apply most/all of them — each one fights a different AI tell.
Use a medium or era style tag (NOT just source_anime). This is tell #1. Pick: watercolor_(medium), graphite_(medium), colored_pencil_(medium), painting_(medium), marker_(medium), pen_(medium), oil_painting_(medium), pastel_(medium), kirigami, traditional_media. Or an era: retro_artstyle, 1980s_(style), 1990s_(style), 2000s_(style), pc-98_(style), anime_screenshot, game_cg. Stack two with weights: (traditional_media:0.5), watercolor_(medium).
Use a real artist tag with >100 danbooru posts if you know one. Single biggest stylistic lever — beats any "quality" stack.
Use simple or border backgrounds instead of detailed scenes. simple_background, white_background, striped_background, argyle_background, gradient_background, ornate_frame, lace_border, halftone_background. Or for atmospheric soft: blurry_background, depth_of_field. AI defaults to over-detailed interiors; danbooru art does not.
Pick an unusual but specific camera angle. Default straight-on reads as "AI default". Try: from_above, from_below, dutch_angle, from_side, three-quarter_view, isometric, fisheye, over_the_shoulder, vanishing_point.
Use specific micro-pose tags, NOT catch-alls.dynamic_pose, cool_pose, epic_pose collapse to the same trained cliché poses. Stack 2-3 concrete gestures instead:
Some profession and archetype tags carry strong default-look assumptions on anime-trained models. Even when not stated, Illustrious / NoobAI / Pony default these to narrow distributions:
Label
Default look
office_worker, salaryman, businessman
Adult male, suit, glasses
doctor, nurse
White coat or scrubs in clinical context; nurse strongly skews to old-fashioned cap-and-dress stylization
Black dress + white apron + headpiece (extremely strong default)
witch
Young woman, pointed hat, black dress
Override by replacing the loaded label with role + 2–3 specific traits, or by adding compensating tags:
Instead of engineer → 1girl, dress_shirt, sleeves_rolled_up, glasses, messy_hair, bags_under_eyes + scene tags
Instead of doctor → 1girl, dark-skinned_female, white_coat, stethoscope (or whatever overrides the default)
Instead of student → 1boy, gakuran, glasses (specific uniform tag defeats the teen-girl serafuku default)
Illustrious's strong tag adherence means it follows your defaults faithfully — including the ones you didn't realize you were specifying. See refs/real-world/jobs.md for the full job-tag catalogue.
On the base Illustrious XL model
The base Illustrious XL 1.x is consistently weaker than its fine-tunes for prompt fidelity, hand quality, and artist-tag response. If the user has the flexibility to switch, recommend Hassaku XL, NoobAI, or a similar Illustrious-based fine-tune. Same prompts, much better output. (Don't suggest a switch if the user is locked in or working with character LoRAs trained on a specific base.)
Tag reference
The refs/ directory holds the full Danbooru tag taxonomy, organized by topic and auto-extracted from Danbooru's tag-group wiki. Browse it when you need to verify a tag exists, find related tags, or discover a tag for a concept you don't have a name for yet. Top-level groups:
attire/ — clothing, headwear, eyewear, legwear, accessories, fashion-style, sleeves, etc.
image-composition/ — backgrounds, lighting, colors, focus, visual aesthetic, year tags, text, symbols, fine-art parody, etc.
real-world/ — jobs, locations, holidays, brand names, people, history.
objects/, plants/, creatures/, games/, themes-and-misc/, sex/, meta/ — the rest.
Verification rule of thumb:
Tags in refs/ are canonical Danbooru taxonomy and well-trained on Illustrious / NoobAI / Hassaku / Pony.
Tags not in refs/ may still work if they follow Danbooru conventions and you're confident the model knows them (e.g. character tags below the wiki cutoff).
Important exception — these quality / era / score tags are model fine-tune conventions, NOT raw Danbooru tags, and you will NOT find them in refs/:
Illustrious year modifiers:oldest (~2017), old (~2019), modern (~2020), recent (~2022), newest (~2023)
Generic SDXL quality:masterpiece, best_quality (positive); worst_quality, low_quality, lowres (negative — though lowres is also a canonical Danbooru metatag)
These are real and load-bearing for the fine-tunes that trained them; just don't try to verify them against refs/.
Tag format: lowercase_with_underscores, comma-separated. Underscores are usually optional but match training data.
CASE / BASE structure (organize tags with BREAK)
Order tags in this sequence, with BREAK between sections (literally written as , BREAK, in the prompt):
Composition — person count (1girl, solo, 2boys), camera framing (portrait, cowboy_shot, full_body), camera angle (from_below, dutch_angle, three-quarter_view)
Action & Pose — what the character is DOING. NEVER just standing + hand_on_own_hip. Try: flexing, running, stretching, crouching, leaning_forward, arched_back, dynamic_pose. Add gestures: arms_up, clenched_hand, reaching_out, looking_back.
Subject Details — Body, Hair, Face, Clothing (see below for required components)
Stack two with weights for blend: (traditional_media:0.5), watercolor_(medium). Artist tag with >100 danbooru posts is the single strongest stylistic lever — far beats any "quality" stack.
Specificity rules — NEVER use generic tags
Wrong
Right
animal_ears
cat_ears, fox_ears, rabbit_ears
wings
feathered_wings, bat_wings, demon_wings
tail
cat_tail, fox_tail
horns
demon_horns, cow_horns, skin-covered_horns
shirt, jacket, dress
ALWAYS with color: black_shirt, red_jacket, white_dress
Don't lose a generation to a tag-form typo. Common gotchas:
Looks reasonable
Actual canonical form
sweat_drop
sweatdrop (no underscore)
rim_lighting
backlighting (rim lighting is a concept; backlighting is the actual trained tag)
tie
necktie — or color-prefixed: red_necktie, black_necktie, blue_necktie
shirt (alone)
works, but specify form (dress_shirt, collared_shirt, t-shirt, sleeveless_shirt) and always combine with color (white_shirt)
pants (alone)
works; prefer specific (black_pants, cargo_pants, jeans)
oil_painting (alone)
oil_painting_(medium) — the _(medium) suffix is part of the canonical Danbooru form for art-medium tags (also watercolor_(medium), pen_(medium), pastel_(medium), marker_(medium), graphite_(medium), colored_pencil_(medium))
school_uniform (alone)
works, but prefer the specific uniform type: serafuku (sailor-style), gakuran (boys'), blazer (modern), summer_uniform
works, but combine with specifics for the look you want
When in doubt, search the relevant refs/<group>/<file>.md for the actual canonical form before committing.
Technical rules
Lowercase, underscores, comma-separated. Underscores match training; open_mouth > open mouth.
75-token limit for SDXL — keep total tags ~25-40.
Weight only 2-3 critical tags with (tag:1.2). Most tags unweighted. Increment 0.2, cap ~1.6 — above that the model is fighting itself.
No synonyms — one precise tag beats three vague ones. (huge breasts:1.2) beats big tits, huge breasts, massive boobs.
Don't repeat the same concept across sections.
Compound tags don't exist.striped collared shirt is NOT a tag. Split: striped_shirt, collared_shirt. Same for dark blue eyes → blue_eyes, dark_eyes. Verify in danbooru autocomplete.
~100 danbooru posts is the floor. If a tag has fewer than ~100 posts on danbooru it probably won't render. Use a more common synonym, or accept that you need a LoRA.
Skip cargo-cult tags. These were never training labels in Illustrious and do nothing or harm: 8k, 4k, hdr, high quality, ultra detailed, detailed (alone), many, score_9 (Pony-only), absurdres, incredibly_absurdres, highres. Drop them.
Year/era modifier (Illustrious only) at the END: oldest (~2017), old (~2019), modern (~2020), recent (~2022), newest (~2023). Pick at most one.
Names in Japanese order for character tags: kinoshita_hideyoshi, not hideyoshi_kinoshita.
Parens in tags must be escaped in A1111-style prompters: astolfo \(fate\), watercolor \(medium\). ComfyUI CLIPTextEncode does NOT need escaping (literal parens are fine).
Emoji tags in A1111: escape colons, e.g. \:p, \:d. Not needed in ComfyUI.
Negative prompt — keep MINIMAL by default
Long negatives are a black box — every concept the model learned is entangled with others, so excluding "blurry" might also remove rim lighting. Don't pile on tags hoping they help.
What changed: removed 8 cargo-cult tags; replaced contradictory photorealistic with source_anime, watercolor_(medium), traditional_media (the missing medium anchor); replaced standing+smiling with concrete pose stack and specific expression; filled missing hair components (length, texture, style); split compound tags; added dynamic camera angle (from_below, dutch_angle); added asymmetry cues (hair_over_one_eye, freckles); replaced "detailed background" with specific environment tags; added 3 mixed lighting tags; added BREAK separators; pushed standing into the negative to override the original prompt's stuck pose.
Pre-flight checklist
Identified target model (Pony / Illustrious / SDXL) and used correct quality-tag convention
Used 1-2 medium/era style tags placed early (not just source_anime)
Background is simple/border/blurry — NOT default detailed interior
Camera angle is dynamic (not straight-on default)
Pose uses 2-3 specific micro-actions, not dynamic_pose/cool_pose catch-alls
At least one asymmetry/imperfection cue (asymmetric_eyes, messy_hair, wind_lift, light_particles, etc.)
Hair has all 4 components OR a character tag covers it
Clothing has color and is split (no compound tags like striped collared shirt)
2-3 lighting tags mixed
One unique environmental detail
At least one expression/face tag
No cargo-cult tags (8k, 4k, hdr, absurdres, highres, detailed alone)
Add asymmetry / imperfection cues to break the doll-uniform face: asymmetric_eyes, messy_hair, freckles, mole, sweat, wind_lift, motion_blur, light_particles, lens_flare, chromatic_aberration.
For wound / battle-aftermath scenes, use body-imperfection tags: blood, blood_on_face, blood_on_clothes, bandage, bandaid_on_face, bandages, bandaged_arm, dirty, dirty_face, dirty_clothes, torn_clothes (in refs/attire/attire.md), scratches, scar (in refs/sex/bdsm-and-torture.md), bruise. Well-trained on Illustrious for post-battle, hard-fought-fight, or rough scenarios.
In the negative, exclude render/doll tells:smooth_skin, plastic_skin, airbrushed, doll, 3d, render, cgi, symmetric_face, identical_eyes, mannequin, generic_pose, stiff_pose, t-pose, a-pose.
