( 1 ) My Second Note on Experiences, About "2boys" ( 1 )

A quick recap— in a previous article, I talked about how I first fell into the world of AI-generated images, and how I started trying out LoRA training. I also shared some of my thoughts and experiences along the way. (Here’s the link: https://tensor.art/articles/868883505357024765)

Looking at that article now, I have to say—some of the opinions in it feel a bit outdated at this point, though some parts are still valid and usable. I’ll be referencing a few of those ideas later in this article, so feel free to check the first one for additional context.

I also made a promise in that post—if I ever learned more, I’d come back and share the updates. So here we are. This time, I’m going to talk about something I’ve been completely hooked on for a while now: making 2boys fanart and training LoRAs for "2boys".

Before we jump in, let me say this clearly: English isn’t my native language, and honestly, I’m not very good at it either. So, like last time, this article was written in Chinese first and then translated into English with the help of AI tools. I’ll also be uploading the original Chinese version in case anyone prefers to read it directly or wants to translate it themselves. (As for the first article, I won’t be uploading a Chinese version—because for that one, I actually edited and tweaked the English draft a lot after translating, and never went back to rewrite a proper Chinese version.)

As you already know, when it comes to AI-generated images, randomness is the absolute king. Everyone has their own go-to settings, and the results vary wildly depending on the model, the prompts, and personal aesthetic preferences. So this article is just me sharing my own experience—or maybe “impressions” is a better word—and the techniques I’ve picked up along the way. This is not a serious technical guide or a step-by-step how-to. Any theory I mention is only a surface-level take based on what I’ve felt from experimenting, and both the image generation and LoRA training discussed here are focused entirely on ACG-style boy characters—specifically, pre-existing characters from anime, manga, and games. That means no AI-randomly-generated “boys,” and definitely no real people involved.

All of the image generation in this article is based on NoobAI and Illustrious derivative models. As for LoRA training, I only use the official Illustrious 2.0 model—unless otherwise stated later on, you can assume everything is built on top of that.

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed that platforms like X , pixiv, Civitai, and all kinds of posts have been flooded with more and more 2boys content—and even multi-boy group images. Of course, most of it is NSFW, and a lot of it is the kind of thing you swipe past in a second: instant gratification, forgettable the next moment. But there are also some incredibly polished, undeniably well-made images that make you stop and wonder—how did they even make this?

Back then, I was still a total beginner, so my very first thought was: They must have used two separate character LoRAs, right? And obviously, I had to try it myself. It just so happened that I found LoRAs for two of my favorite boys—both from a super obscure anime, with a ship that literally no one cared about (Maki x Arashi)—and somehow, it... kinda worked? Yep, it was an R-18 image, and I was way too excited to think clearly. I didn’t even care about the generation quality. The characters looked more or less correct, so I assumed I’d done it right. Full of confidence, I made another one with a different ship from the same series (Tsubasa x Shingo). Again, it kinda worked—yes, the characters would sometimes get blended together, but not always. So I doubled down on this misunderstanding that “2boys” images could just be done by loading two LoRAs together.

Then came a total shocker: a well-known (actually, legendary) creator in the community released a dual-character LoRA for Yuta x Yomogi, and I was blown away. So this is also possible? Just one LoRA, and both characters in the same image? I posted a whole bunch of images using it (they’ve since been hidden on Tensor), and I misunderstood again—thinking oh wow, making a 2boys LoRA must be super easy! I got so hyped, thinking there’d be tons of dual-character LoRAs coming out soon, and that making fanart for my favorite ships would become a total breeze.

By now, I bet you’re already laughing. Yep, it was a huge misunderstanding.

If you’ve ever tried this yourself, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about: when it comes to boys LoRAs, their individual features almost always end up getting blended together. Whether you're loading two separate LoRAs or trying to use one of those rare dual-character LoRAs, it's incredibly hard to get a clean, correct image. And dual-character LoRAs are slightly more manageable, but trying to load multiple LoRAs together? That’s not just “difficult,” it’s borderline impossible.

You can mess with the prompt order, used "BREAK" and “different boys,” tweak the LoRA weights all you want—but the characters’ features still end up all mixed up. Looking back now at the images I made—and a lot of the ones I’ve seen on social media—they were mostly just wrong, only I was too hyped at the time to notice. Sure, there are a few images that look “perfect,” but I never dared ask the creators how they did it. And to make things worse, there’s barely any discussion online about how these images are actually made. You’ll find some info on mixed-gender or girl-girl LoRA combos, but boy-boy? None.

So let’s skip the unnecessary storytelling and jump straight to the point. After a lot of experimenting (and failing), I’ve sorted out a few methods that more or less work:

So after all that trial and error, here are the main approaches I’ve figured out so far:

1. The checkpoint already “knows” a lot of characters.

Sometimes, you can just write their names directly in the prompt. By checking the model’s README or checkpoint notes, you can find out which characters are already embedded into the model. For those that are, you can generate “2boys” images by simply using their recognizable names. In fact, many popular or classic characters work perfectly without any LoRA at all, and you can even mix them across different series.

This should be the easiest method, but the catch is—the pairings people want to draw usually aren’t in the checkpoint. Even when the characters are there, their fidelity varies a lot. Some characters are only partially recognizable, and you’ll often need to add extra tags like eye color, hair color, hairstyle, and other traits to boost accuracy. But this method is only good for generating 1boy images. If you try to do 2boys, these extra tags end up interfering with each other.

2. Img2img or inpainting.

A common and pretty straightforward method. You can load two LoRAs and generate a base image, then selectively redo the mixed-up parts by enabling just one LoRA at a time and using inpainting. This is just one version of the process—there are many ways to implement this idea.

3. Regional control.

This requires plugins and complex workflows in WebUI or ComfyUI. The idea is to divide the canvas into different regions and assign different LoRA weights to each region. I won’t name specific extensions here—you can look them up yourself. Sometimes this works surprisingly well, but I’ll explain later why I eventually gave up on this method.

4. Dual- or multi-character LoRAs.

Although there aren’t many of these around right now, most of the ones that do exist work decently. Some are a bit unstable, but others are quite effective. I’ll talk later about how I create 2boys LoRAs, so I won’t go into more detail just yet.

5. And this one’s huge: NovelAI.

Still the most powerful commercial anime image model to this day. It supports an insanely large number of characters—far more than any open-source model. While most open models only include the main characters from a handful of franchises, NovelAI can generate even obscure side characters, and it updates new character data pretty fast.

It also supports built-in regional control. So not just two boys—you can specify position and action for even more characters. It’s incredibly powerful, though yeah, the subscription isn’t cheap. A lot of those beautifully done crossover images you see on social media are actually NovelAI creations. You can usually spot them too: the art style is super consistent across characters, and clearly distinct from open-source models.

6. Other new methods—like Flux Kontext.

This might be one of the biggest breakthroughs of the year in image generation models. I haven’t had time to explore it deeply yet, but it is capable of generating fanart. If you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend giving it a shot. People often talk about how Flux is #1 for photorealism, but it’s also surprisingly strong with anime-style content. The downside is the high cost and complexity—especially compared to SDXL-based workflows for LoRA training.

So yeah, those are the main approaches I’ve explored so far. I’m sure there are other methods I haven’t discovered yet. But out of all these, I eventually chose to go with making "2boys" LoRAs.