The Deep Dark

The Deep Dark is an anime-style checkpoint that generates images that vary between an animated 2.5D look and a semi-realistic style. The model has undergone many iterations, and most of the information below applies to Version 6 models. Differences in other model versions are described in their version information.

Version 6.1 is a hybrid model created by fine-tuning a Pony XL model, surgically replacing its text encoder, and injecting it with unet blocks from a fine-tuned SDXL Turbo checkpoint. The result is a checkpoint with the desired stylistic appearance that responds well to natural language prompts, Danbooru tags, and anything in between. The Deep Dark has most of the conceptual knowledge and understanding of both SDXL and Pony models; however, it does not need Pony’s score prompts or other quality keywords required by other checkpoints – it always tries for the best quality. It produces excellent images in only 10 steps (at a CFG of 2 to 4).