In fact it was I who suggested this back in '94. Suing all of you!

that i agree on, but photo-realistic renders are going out of fashion, cos now a piece of 3D software can do it all from a million angles just as well as well as performing finite element analysis, cfd and allowing for CAM

I wasn't alive for most of 94, therefore i can't have copied

This is funny because it sounds like something I thought of in '93.

I, being alive for most of '94, can confirm that it was Brian who suggested this. Please give all credit to Brian for his wonderful suggestion. Well done Brian!

In all seriousness the community has gone down the drain because everyone keeps mass producing the same drivel. The reason I said what I did about two years ago was that I already noticed the trend developing back then. I felt the creative things needed to get the spotlight in order to encourage others.

The problem with social media like Facebook is it's easy to get the word out but the visitors there are completely desensitized, thanks to millions of other pages and ads trying to get their attention. They dont commit. That's why we need to anchor them to where the real activity is - Autemo. But as long as it's Audis on Rotiforms that keep getting the attention no one's gonna want to know more, let alone give constructive feedback.

I know what you mean Construct, but I think there is little we could have done (or that we can do) to prevent this shift. Whether you like it or not, Audis on Rotiforms, Mercs on Vossens, Ferraris on ADV.1s, etc. and the general "stance" movement is all the craze at the moment. And with all of this has come a general shift towards simpler modifications. And with the trend of simpler modifications comes less opportunities to produce something original, so as you said we're seeing the same stuff over and over again - same rims, same kits, same cars, etc.

But is this any different to 5-10 years ago when this was the craze? Back then, there were a lot of chops in the "Street race" theme - crazy bodykits, vinyls, bright colours, artistic/atmospheric brushing - and all of this was started by the F&F, NFS Underground, media attention. Could this be seen in the same light, as you see the stance drivel of today?

I think whatever happens, chops are going to reflect on what is currently "in trend", and at the moment that's stance, whether you like it or not.

I do believe it's different. Even though the F&F trend had recurring elements, at the core was always the personalization of the car. It wasnt like people pasted the Blitz R34 front bumper over and over, regardless of the car they were chopping. No, people used aftermarket kits and added their own flavor. Some took it to the extreme, but that's another story.

There's one main difference between that trend and the current. Everyone then wanted to turn their car into a street racer and used photoshop to imagine what they couldnt do, given their budget. Right now everyone's slamming cars and dropping cambered rotiforms under there, something that takes one brain cell to imagine, is affordable and widely applied to showcars, but no one in the real world actually wants on their car.

Tbh, considering all the 'donors' for so many of these chops are actual real cars that people have already bought/built. I'd say you're wrong.
I think one of the reasons auto styling/tuning has become boring in the last years is that the manufacturers have 'upped the game' a lot when it comes to interesting/wild styling. There's not so many ways you can customize the cars to make them look even better. Therefore many take the 'subtle approach on the bodywork and slam them to h**l. Real life customizers had the same problem in the late 50's, and then in the 70's. Boring looking cars that really need work will return

I love reading through threads like this, I find it interesting to see peoples' opinions. My own personal opinion is that everybody who has said something in here has their own valid point. You'll see different trends dying, and then being brought back to life again, and right now we seem to be at the bottom of the curve for "chopping" as it used to be, but at the height of the curve for "renders" that we're more accustomed to seeing now.

It's one of those things that just happens... There's not a huge amount you can do about it to bring it back to life, or revitalise it, it'll happen in it's own time and on it's own terms. People in general are more geared towards stance at the minute, something which takes no imagination to do, and is indeed cheap, meaning the entire market in general is diluted with people actually building these cars, in turn meaning that even if we spewed out a ton of stance chops, most of them go under the radar when they're alongside actual cars that have been built.

The other side to the coin is we could go back to mass producing f&f chops as mentioned above, but nobody's really interested in that anymore, so that too would go under the radar. It's a tricky one, you have to decide if you want to chop for yourself and your own creativity, or to chop for other people and likes on facebook.

Going back to the original point of the thread, stop whining about who came up with the idea first (Although I am pretty sure I mentioned something in '91), and let's look at actually implementing it as I do agree with Sean that the front end could use a little bit of sprucing up. It's something myself and Mark have discussed in the past regarding updates to the site, and we have a nice plan laid out for when Mark has the free time to code it in.

Even though we're a "photochopping" forum by reputation, we're also an automotive design studio, so sketches, concepts, artwork, photography in general is more than welcome.

We'll definitely look at everything in here and see what we can do to improve the place. There's always room for improvement so we appreciate the thoughts everybody puts forward.