About this model
Retro Cel — 90s Anime Checkpoint
A retro 90s-anime checkpoint — cel shading, grainy film bloom and that VHS-era OVA palette, standalone.
Retro Cel is a complete checkpoint for 1990s anime nostalgia: flat cel shading with hard shadow shapes, muted film-stock colour, gentle bloom and the soft grain of a VHS-era OVA. It is deliberately not the clean modern look — it wants to feel like a frame you paused on late-night cable.
This is a complete, standalone checkpoint. Unlike a LoRA, it needs no separate base model — load it directly as your base and generate.
Model details
| Developed by | @nova-labs |
| Model type | Full fine-tuned checkpoint |
| Base architecture | wan 2.1 (full fine-tune) |
| Parameters | ≈ 2.5 B |
| Precision / format | fp16 · safetensors |
| VAE | baked in |
| Weights | retro_cel_v1.safetensors — 5.5 GB |
| License | Personal ($45.00) · Commercial ($219.00) |
| Category | anime |
Uses
Direct use. Retro anime character and scene art, nostalgic key visuals, album and zine art with a 90s OVA feel.
Out of scope. Modern high-gloss anime or photoreal work — Retro Cel leans into period grain and muted colour on purpose.
Recommended settings
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Sampler | Euler a |
| Steps | 24–28 |
| CFG scale | 5–7 |
| Resolution | 832×1216 or 1024×1024 |
90s anime style, a pilot in a rain-soaked city, flat cel shading, muted film palette, soft bloom, VHS grain, retro OVA key visual
Lower steps suit the flatter shading. Keep the palette wording muted — vivid modern colours break the period feel.
- Strengths — retro anime characters and scenes; muted, nostalgic palettes; cel shading with hard shadows.
- Weaknesses — modern glossy anime; photoreal imagery.
Samples
| OVA key visual | Retro scene |
|---|---|
Training details
A full fine-tune over a licensed corpus of period-style illustration produced in the 90s-anime idiom by partner artists; no scraped frames from copyrighted works.
Procedure. A full fine-tune of wan 2.1 (not an adapter), fp16, multi-stage: a broad concept pass followed by an aesthetic refinement pass on a hand-scored subset. VAE was fine-tuned and baked into the checkpoint.
Bias, risks and limitations
- Very large checkpoint (~5.5 GB).
- The grain-and-bloom look softens fine detail by design.
- Hands remain a weak point; a hand LoRA helps.
License & provenance
A full fine-tune on a licensed, period-style illustration corpus. Purchasing the commercial offer ($219.00) grants a commercial redistribution license for outputs; the personal offer ($45.00) is for non-commercial use. The checkpoint may not be resold or re-uploaded, and merges must credit this model.
Citation
@misc{nova-labs_00000024,
title = {Retro Cel — 90s Anime Checkpoint},
author = {Nova Labs (@nova-labs)},
year = {2026},
note = {TensorForge marketplace checkpoint, LST-00000024-0000-4000-8000-000000000024}
}