Anime prompting with Danbooru tags: how-to and examples

Q: How do I write a Danbooru-style prompt?

Use short tags separated by commas, not a sentence. Instead of "a beautiful woman in a short black pleated skirt sitting in a field", write: 1girl, skirt, black skirt, short skirt, pleated skirt, sitting, field Start with a count tag, such as 1girl. The examples on this wiki use the same pattern for animals: 1kitten, 1giraffe. One tag per detail: "pink hair, short hair, wavy hair" rather than "short wavy pink hair". Add pose and framing tags, such as standing, sitting, looking at viewer, from above, from below, upper body, cowboy shot, full body or dutch angle. The Danbooru tag lists above have many more. Add a character or artist tag if you want one. Spaces and underscores both work; the examples below use both (wildflower hill, kurororo_rororo). Put a backslash before any parentheses in a tag, as in naguru_\(cyoroama\). End with quality tags such as masterpiece, best quality, very aesthetic. Each model's page lists the ones its makers recommend. For Illustrious XL, WAI-illustrious and Nova Anime, the Illustrious Prompt Guide covers quality, artist and character tags and a negative prompt in more detail.

¶ Danbooru Tags - The Language of Anime

Most anime AI models work with Danbooru tags. This means, for example, it is better to say "1girl, beautiful," than “beautiful woman,”. And instead of saying “short black pleated skirt”, it may work better to say “skirt, black skirt, short skirt, pleated skirt”.

Looking for a character's name tag? Use Anime Character Preview to search the WAI Illustrious reference and copy the exact tag.

This is a web database of Danbooru tags: Danbooru Tag Groups

And here are a few favorites:

Danbooru Tags for Poses

Danbooru Tags for Verbs (activities)

Danbooru Tags for Attire

Danbooru Tags for Locations

Danbooru Tags for Image Composition (includes angles, techniques, patterns, and more…)

¶ Questions

¶ What are Danbooru tags?

Danbooru is a large anime-art image board. Every picture on it is described by short community tags: who is in it (1girl), what they look like (long hair, blue eyes), what they wear (pleated skirt), what they are doing (sitting) and how the picture is framed (upper body). Danbooru sorts its tags into five types: general, character, copyright (the series), artist and meta (facts about the file, such as its resolution).

Anime models such as Illustrious XL, Nova Anime and Animagine learned from pictures labelled with these tags, so they follow a prompt best when it is written in the same words. Writing a prompt as a list of Danbooru tags is often called a "Danbooru-style" or "booru-style" prompt.

¶ How do I write a Danbooru-style prompt?

Use short tags separated by commas, not a sentence. Instead of "a beautiful woman in a short black pleated skirt sitting in a field", write: 1girl, skirt, black skirt, short skirt, pleated skirt, sitting, field
Start with a count tag, such as 1girl. The examples on this wiki use the same pattern for animals: 1kitten, 1giraffe.
One tag per detail: "pink hair, short hair, wavy hair" rather than "short wavy pink hair".
Add pose and framing tags, such as standing, sitting, looking at viewer, from above, from below, upper body, cowboy shot, full body or dutch angle. The Danbooru tag lists above have many more.
Add a character or artist tag if you want one. Spaces and underscores both work; the examples below use both (wildflower hill, kurororo_rororo). Put a backslash before any parentheses in a tag, as in naguru_\(cyoroama\).
End with quality tags such as masterpiece, best quality, very aesthetic. Each model's page lists the ones its makers recommend.

For Illustrious XL, WAI-illustrious and Nova Anime, the Illustrious Prompt Guide covers quality, artist and character tags and a negative prompt in more detail.

¶ What does 1girl mean in a prompt?

1girl means one female character and 1boy one male character; solo means nobody else is in the picture, and 2girls or 2boys ask for two.

¶ What does absurdres mean in a prompt?

absurdres is Danbooru's tag for a very large image (at least 3200 pixels wide or 2400 pixels tall). In a prompt it asks for that detailed look; it does not change your image size.

¶ Which anime model should I use?

This guide recommends Nova Anime v18, with WAI-illustrious v17 as another great choice. Animagine 3.1 and 4 developed separately from Illustrious and give a different look.

At the bottom of this page, you can see many examples of artworks and prompts created with MonAI that use Danbooru tags. But first, let's talk about the best anime AI models.

¶ Best of the Best - the most popular anime models

We recommend Nova Anime v18, the newest update to the Nova Anime series. It adds more characters and styles, improved posing and more vivid colors. The Nova Anime series offers great prompt adherence and anatomy, and works well with artist references.

WAI-illustrious v17 is an extremely popular anime model and another great choice. It works best with Danbooru tags, and Anime Character Preview helps you find the exact tag for a character.

Nova Anime and WAI-illustrious are both based on Illustrious XL. Illustrious is an amazing model, though not as refined as Nova. Illustrious can create a unique look for your prompts, and it does amazing things with artist references. Use the Illustrious style to easily apply the recommended prompts, negative prompts, guidance scale and steps.

Animagine v3.1 and Animagine v4 are also incredible anime models. Animagine has developed separately from Illustrious, so the results you'll get from Animagine are different but very high quality. Use the styles Animagine 4 and Animagine 3.1 to easily access these models and their recommended settings.

For best results, please visit the MonAI wiki pages for these models. Each model was created with prompting recommendations that will help you recreate your favorite characters.

For photorealism, try CyberRealistic CyberIllustrious v12, a realistic model based on Illustrious XL. Prompt it with plain words or keywords rather than Danbooru tags, and use woman or man instead of 1girl or 1boy. It can render risqué content, so describe the clothing you want.

¶ Anime Artists

The best way to customize the look of an anime artwork is to reference an anime artist. There are thousands of artists whose names can be used in these anime models. Here are some great references to see examples of the artists' styles:

MonAI Artist Tags MonAI's own gallery of AI images. Filter it by artist, tag or model to see what an artist tag does.

NovelAI Anime Artist Tags This reference is newer, and these artists should all work with the Nova Anime series.

Animagine v3.1 Artist References This one is older. It was created using Animagine v3.1.

MonAI Artist Study using Animagine This is a small sample of artist references created in MonAI