Tonight is Christmas Eve and that means spending time with family, eating dinner, opening gifts under the Christmas tree and family and I’m really looking forward to that! I’ll be offline for a few days and I wish you a Merry Christmas! But I didn’t want to leave you empty-handed and present you with a gift as well!
I thought the best way to express that was by looking at the current state of AI and generating some Christmassy pictures with an AE86. For all four images, I used the following term: “White Toyota Trueno AE86 with popup headlights, Christmas trees and snowy landscape”. I did two in comic/cartoon style and two in photo-realistic style.
Cartoon style
I like the cartoon style of this image very much. The lines are nicely drawn and the background feels like a proper Christmas setting! The Trueno AE86 has the correct overall body shape, but at the front, it doesn’t seem to be right. The side marker seems to be lost and looks like the one that’s supposed to be at the rear quarter of a USDM GT-S model. The front bumper looks okayish, but it rather belongs on a generic Japanese car from the early 1980s than a Trueno. Also, the popup headlights are missing and instead, there is a front with fixed headlights that appear to belong to a facelift Toyota Starlet KP61.
Overall not bad if I compare it to the horrible results I got half a year ago!
This image looks much cheaper, and less precise and I wouldn’t say this was a great image by AI. The background, trees and car don’t match in style. The Trueno AE86’s overall shape is correct with huge overfenders. The front doesn’t have popup headlights, but fixed ones. However, there seem to be two rectangular boxes on the bonnet that could indicate there are some popups underneath it as well. The front bumper appears like one that could have been inspired by the USDM GT-S bumper.
Overall much worse than the other image, but still not bad.
Photorealistic
Again, the background, trees and car don’t match in style. The trees aren’t photo-realistic and look out of place. The Trueno AE86’s overall shape is correct. However, it does have an extra pillar inside the rear quarter window. Even though it has popup headlights (yes, finally!), the front bumper seems to be a copy of the AW11 MR2 front bumper. Also, we see a side marker that is completely out of place and a way too-modern Toyota logo. I do like the wheels on this car though!
Overall I would say not a great rendering of an AE86.
The last and final one is also very interesting. The snow seems to be cartoonish, the trees a horrible photoshop and the car actually seems to be okay. The overall shape is correct, it has at least popup headlights, and the grill seems to be correct. Only that bumper seems to be a bit weird. It’s as if it was cut in half and some fog lights were mounted to support it structurally. Also, the front fenders don’t have the correct angle. Yet again we see the side marker that is out of place and a way too-modern Toyota logo. If it weren’t for that Toyota logo, I’d probably have guessed it was a first-generation Honda CRX. These wheels look fantastic, but they are so deep that whoever modified this AE86, must have pushed the struts inwards a good 100 millimetres!
Overall I think this image is crap, but it is the best AE86 we have seen so far!
Conclusion
I’m not too unhappy about these results. I have been following the advances of AI photo/drawing for a while now and about 6 months ago the results were still a horrible mess. Wheels that had the wrong angle, tires with thread on the sidewall, an AE86 that looked more closely to a smashed-up Pagani Zonda.
If you would ask me which one I like the most, I’d probably say the first one. It took me some time to find out why, but my conclusion is that the Trueno AE86 in that image is the most Toyota of them all. As I said earlier, that last makes me think of a Honda CRX, the second to last one feels more like a Mitsubishi and the second one just doesn’t look right at all. So yes, the first one definitely has the most Toyota DNA in it!
I wish you a very Merry Christmas!
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