Midjourney creators introduce --sref 3438423518 for 80s dark-fantasy manga

The new code is being presented as a style reference for gritty manga illustration, not a broad fantasy preset. In Artedeingenio's examples, faces are etched with dense pen texture, armor is rendered with metallic scratch detail, and the scenes sit in red-black skies or barren landscapes. One image pushes a Berserk-like armored silhouette; another pairs a ruined car, rifle, and skull with a desert backdrop. The common thread is harsh ink structure plus muted color, with bright eyes or red fabric used as the main contrast.

That makes the code useful for concept sheets, key art, and story beats that need “printed manga gravitas” fast, without prompting every material and shading choice from scratch.

Alongside the dark-fantasy code, creators also posted --sref 2509259129 as a European retro-futurist sci-fi look. That reference points to Moebius-adjacent bande dessinée, with sun-bleached deserts, yellow-blue vehicles, brutalist transit structures, and contemplative sci-fi framing. It lands in a very different register: cleaner skies, brighter palettes, and architectural detail over menace.

A separate thread from Promptsref highlights a “retro dreamy soft-focus” style built around halation, diffusion, film grain, and saturated-but-hazy light. Their linked guide PromptSref library and a similar orange-gold cinematic breakdown orange-gold guide show how creators are turning sref discovery into categorized look-development workflows. Even the engraving-style post fits that pattern: a single code attached to a tight visual grammar instead of a vague mood board.