Illustrious expression prompts, tested

Twenty-two expression tags on the same face, framed as a portrait so you can read each one. Same two seeds for every tag.

The test

Every tile below uses the same prompt with one tag swapped in, on the same two seeds (1001 and 1002), on SirenRender’s free anime tile: WAI-Illustrious-SDXL v17 with the DMD2 LoRA, 8 steps, CFG 1, 832×1216. {TAG} marks where each tag goes:

general, solo, mature female, long black hair, amber eyes, white shirt, black jacket, portrait, simple background, {TAG}

What we found

Expressions with a physical sign render best on WAI v17: teeth for grin and laughing, a wink for one eye closed, color for blush, brows for angry and determined, wide eyes for surprised. Quiet emotions came out faint: pout, frown, tears and sad barely moved the face, and closed eyes only got halfway on both seeds. For those, try stacking related tags, such as sad, tears, crying, and frame the shot as a portrait or close-up so the face is big enough to read.