Ember Feral XL is a Illustrious merge model built specifically for semi-cartoon furry and anthro character generation. It fuses the strengths of two carefully selected base models to deliver a unique visual signature — warm, expressive lines with enough realism to give fur, eyes, and anatomy genuine weight, without tipping into full photorealism.
What it does well
Semi-cartoon style
Sits naturally between cartoon and realistic — clean outlines, expressive faces, stylised proportions while keeping believable anatomy and texture detail.
Furry & anthro characters
Optimised for bipedal anthro characters, feral poses, and creature-adjacent designs. Handles a wide variety of species without heavy per-species prompting.
Warm, fiery lighting
The merge leans naturally toward ember tones — amber, orange, deep reds. Dramatic rim lighting and glowing-eye effects come through with minimal prompting.
Base architecture
SDXL 1.0
Version
V1 (merged)
Optimal resolution
1024 × 1024
Recommended steps
25 – 35
Negative prompt recommend
(wrong feet),missing tail,hair,bad legs,3 nipple,3 breast,plump, Drawings, abstract art, cartoons, surrealist painting, conceptual drawing, graphics, (low resolution:1.3), (blurry:1.3), (worst quality:1.3), (low quality:1.3), collage, bad proportions, text, username, (watermark:1.3), letter, (abs), bad anatomy, bad hands, text, error, by diabloking03, missing fingers, extra digit, fewer digits, cropped, Six fingers, Low quality fingers, (EasyNegative), badhandv4, verybadimagenegative_v1.3, bad-hands-5, feral, 4 feet
Description
What's new in V2
Improved colorwork Skin, fur, and gradient transitions are noticeably richer. Hues feel more intentional — deeper saturation in shadows, better chromatic separation between light and ambient tones. The model no longer needs heavy color prompting to land where V1 sometimes struggled.
Broader theme support V2 handles a wider range of environments and moods beyond the default warm-fire palette — cooler night scenes, neon-lit settings, forest and nature backdrops, and overcast/moody lighting all produce consistent results without fighting the model's natural bias.
NSFW is better now