Thank you for participating in my bounty

Hello everyone! I want to take this opportunity to once again thank all those who participated in my bounty for their hard work! There were a lot of beautiful submissions.

I'm going to take this opportunity to update on the bounty rewards. In the end, there were so many cute pictures I felt bad about not rewarding everyone, so I added a baseline 1000 Buzz reward for every user who submitted an entry.

On top of that, I increased the reward pool for the 15 runner ups from 32k to 40k (for a total of 55k Buzz taking the baseline rewards into account) and increased the first place reward from 8k to 9k (for a total of 10k considering the base 1k), for a total of 73k Buzz in rewards. I actually should have gone up to 80k, but I messed up my counts and skipped out on 7k Buzz which would have gone into the 15 runner-up pool, increasing the pool to 47k or 48k (62k - 63k in total). I apologize for this mistake.

Now with the rewards breakdown out of the way, let's celebrate my favourite entries! Each user will be represented by their highest rated submission only.

1st Place!

whity00 (10k Buzz) with this colorful baseball girl Takane-chan! This submission broke through my preconceptions of what Takane-chan would usually wear with an eye-pleasing, yet oddly fitting interpretation of a sporty girl with a smug demeanor while also respecting Takane-chan's original design. Absolutely flawless.

15 Runner-Ups! (Not necessarily in this order)

fateno4455131 (5310 Buzz) with this beautiful sunset Usami-chan. This submission was practically a single coin toss away from stealing the first place. Character accuracy is on point, and the artistry is incredible. If I hadn't hosted a bounty dedicated to Usami-chan in the past, there is a very real chance this submission would have taken the first place. (Fun fact; fateno4455131's average score across their 3 highest rated images was higher than whity00's)

LordBrapSniff (3700 Buzz) with this cute autumn Takane-chan. This submission really struck my fancy. While all submissions had their own appeal in their own way, this one really stood out with its very eye-catching style. Another strong contender for the first place.

iveren (2770 Buzz) with these lovely sunset pier sisters. I don't know why, but something about this submission was really appealing to me. Also, having both sisters at once combined with superb character accuracy gave this piece a strong boost. The only issue is that iveren posted only one submission, which means their reward was much lower than it could have potentially been. If I host another bounty, I need to find a way to deal with these edge cases.

Ocean3 (4060 Buzz) with this soaring hawk girl. Very straightforward, high quality and true to the bounty's namesake. The quality is superb, the character accuracy almost absolutely perfect. If I had to pick one detail to mention, it would be that the colour pattern of Takane-chan's wings is not being strictly followed, which in all honesty, didn't actually affect the submission's score. If you like the style of this picture, I strongly encourage you to take a look at Ocean3's profile and play around with the Plant Milk series. They are absolutely gorgeous models.

Zlia (4040 Buzz) like always coming in with their last moment submission of a colourful magic girl Takane-chan to steal one of the top places. Absolutely gorgeous entry. Any deviation from the original character's design is absolutely justified by the theme. There is nothing wrong to point out about this picture. Unfortunately, it was just outpaced by other entries.

ravemry9 (4130 Buzz) with this adorable serafuku Usami-chan. This is just an adorable entry, and the theme of Usami-chan receiving her sister soaring above is just great. However, the theme was drowned out by the volume of entries, meaning it could have potentially ranked higher under better circumstances. Overall, a beautiful submission.

CandyAurora (3750 Buzz) with this Usami-chan in a field of flowers. CandyAurora knew how to strike at my weakness and they struck hard with a bunny girl with a very tastefully accentuated, perfectly flat chest, looking cute in a field of flowers. If you were to weaponize a picture against me, this would be it. Unfortunately, the picture was just outpaced by other contestants.

SSLIME (3860 Buzz) with this Usami-chan in a grassland. Beautiful, cute and tasteful. A solid, high quality entry. Unfortunately, it just wasn't as eye-catching as some of the other entries.

zirneklislion (3530 Buzz) with this Takane-chan - chibi combo. I love the art style and the tiny chibi makes for a nice eye-catching detail. Overall, a solid entry, just not as unique as some of the other higher ranked entries.

awesomes05803 (3440 Buzz) with a stunning astral Usami-chan. A truly breath taking piece. The colour coordination is on point, the ethereal astral theme is delightful and the character likeness is on point. Truly deserving one of the top spots on the competition.

TheCatte (2800 Buzz) with this casual Takane-chan. Beautiful setting, great quality and strong character likeness. The only issue would be the inconsistent background, but definitely not a deal breaker. Overall, a strong submission, just lacking an element of uniqueness. Other submissions by TheCatte were subject to a higher score, but they were hurt by poor character likeness due to character bleed.

user_328145878 (3310 Buzz) with a high-speed Takane-chan. Gorgeous submission. Excellent quality, and a concept fitting to the character. I am particularly fond of the high quality of the feathers in Takane-chan's wings. If you are interested in the style being used, please take a look at user_328145878's style LoRAs.

Takiyashamaru (3760 Buzz) and the dreaming girl Takane-chan. Beautiful image and lovely concept. Great contender to be used as a phone sleep screen background. Overall, a delightful entry.

marklai (3310 Buzz) with this aviator Takane-chan. Solid entry and fitting concept, however, the glasses don't look quite right, the right arm is not continuous to the shoulder after going behind the hair and the wings are larger than I would have personally liked. Overall, the image is carried by the raw quality, but drawn back by consistency errors. Also, I am just now realizing marklai's profile picture is a leaf and not a cute, colourful dinosaur. Don't ask me why, but that's what I saw.

Smoochy77 (3310 Buzz) with a flying Takane-chan. Admittedly, this entry should have ranked higher. The art style is beautiful and the character likeness is top notch. The only drawback is that I had to compare it with images of sharper quality, which, when I have to do a lot of comparisons on a row, negatively affects this art style in particular. Great submission.

Please don't be discouraged (Participation prizes)

Tezotica with a pair of flying sisters. Cute entry, though the quality isn't great. The idea to generate a set of assets and combine them in different configurations isn't bad, but saving the images as screenshots doesn't quite produce good quality images.

markmuligan with an angelic Takane-chan. Absolutely gorgeous image. I am sad (and a little bit confused?) she didn't rank higher. It is possible she could have ranked higher if I ran more comparisons, but I reached my limit at around 1000 ELO image comparisons. I would love to see more of you if you participate again on a future bounty!

DaliTKP with a skater Usami-chan. Gorgeous image. The only drawbacks were the relatively low quality (specially noticeable on things like the fingers) and the very long hair not respecting the character likeness guidelines. I believe a single hi-res fix pass would have catapulted this image despite the long hair. Tons of potential.

unexpectedlyprovided with a colorful idol angel Takane-chan. Lovely entries in general, but the style chosen is just not a great match with me. Also, similarly to DaliTKP, a hi-res fix pass may have given this picture a serious boost in ranking.

SilverCuriousW with a busty Takane-chan. I can see what you were trying to do, but when using Illustrious models, I strongly encourage you to prompt based on booru tags rather than using natural language. You usually get better results this way. As for your other posts, if you are generating locally using Forge, Forge Classic or Automatic1111's WebUI, I strongly recommend you use Regional prompter for making two characters at once. It helps a lot with character bleed mixing both characters.

gigglybroom with a pair of bunny sisters. Similarly to SilverCuriousW, if you can run diffusion locally, I strongly suggest you look into Regional Prompter. It allows you to tell the model where to limit the range of certain prompts, so you can do things like tell the model you want it to do two girls, and then on one half of the image you prompt for a girl with rabbit ears, white hair, etc (usami-chan) and on the other you prompt for a girl with blonde hair, bird wings, twintails, etc (takane-chan). This way you strongly reduce character bleed and produce much higher quality images.

k0utarou with an innocent pair of loving sisters. This piece was beautiful, and I believe it would have been a strong contender for one of very top spots if it had had either a higher quality image or better character likeness. It was a beautiful idea and honestly, what dragged it down the most was the lack of purple lower hair and sidelocks on Usami-chan. Even at its current quality, it kind of looks like it could be a classical painting.

mokuba_attack with an alternative Usami-chan. I'm sorry... But this is just not Usami-chan. Disregarding the race swap, the entry doesn't follow Usami-chan's hair style and hair colours. It looks like you could have been using a Pony model, and Usami-chan in particular does have a Pony LoRA you could have used.

Closing thoughts

I want to once again thank everybody who participated in my bounty. If you won a prize, congratulations! And if you didn't, I still enjoyed your submission!

I hope you have better luck if I host a new bounty! Thank you so much for taking the time to make a submission! <3