admin Anime images have a vocabulary of their own: line weight, shading style, eye style, colour palette and the era of animation they recall. Getting those words right is the difference between “generic anime” and the exact look you want. Start by uploading a reference to the image to prompt generator with the Vivid tone, then refine it with the terms below.
Anime styles and their keywords
| Style | Useful words |
|---|---|
| Modern TV anime | clean line art, cel shading, vibrant colours, sharp highlights |
| 90s retro anime | 90s anime style, film grain, muted colours, hand-drawn cels |
| Studio-style backgrounds | painted background, lush scenery, soft clouds, warm light |
| Chibi | chibi, super deformed, big head, small body, cute |
| Manga | black and white manga, screentone, ink lines, panel |
| Semi-realistic | semi-realistic anime, detailed shading, soft lighting |
| Watercolour anime | soft watercolour, pastel tones, light line art |
Describing a character
- Basics: age group, hair colour and length, eye colour, expression.
- Outfit: school uniform, kimono, hoodie, armour; plus colours.
- Pose and action: looking over shoulder, running, holding an umbrella.
- Framing: portrait, upper body, full body, dynamic angle.
- Background: cherry blossom street, rainy city at night, classroom at sunset.
Tags vs. sentences
Many anime-focused Stable Diffusion models were trained on images described with short tags, so they respond well to comma-separated tag lists such as 1girl, long silver hair, blue eyes, school uniform, cherry blossoms, smile. Sentence-style prompts work better in Midjourney, Flux and ChatGPT. ph-imetix gives you both: use the keywords list as tags, and the prompt as sentences.
Which generator to use
- Midjourney Niji mode: polished anime illustrations from sentence prompts. See the Midjourney prompt generator.
- Anime Stable Diffusion checkpoints: maximum control with tags, LoRAs and ControlNet. See the Stable Diffusion prompt generator.
- Flux and ChatGPT: good for scenes with several characters or text in the image.
Worked example
Prompt (sentences): “Anime girl with long silver hair and blue eyes standing under cherry blossoms, school uniform, gentle smile, soft spring sunlight, clean line art, cel shading, pastel colours.”
Tags (from the keyword list): anime, girl, silver hair, blue eyes, cherry blossoms, school uniform, smile, spring, sunlight, pastel, cel shading
Original characters and artists
Describe the style instead of naming living artists or copying well-known characters, especially for anything you publish or sell. Your own original characters are always the safest choice. See our Disclaimer.
Related articles
- AI Image Prompt Glossary: 80+ Words for Style, Light, Camera and Mood
- Midjourney vs Stable Diffusion vs Flux vs ChatGPT: How to Write Prompts for Each
- How to Get the Prompt From Any Image (Step-by-Step Guide)
Try it free: Image to Prompt Generator · Midjourney · Stable Diffusion & Flux · Stock keywords · Bulk