Chevrolet Envision

I began this series with a few rough thought-starter sketches imagining a sedan of the future. As I’ve mentioned before, I love sketching one-box designs with a long wheelbase and no front or rear overhangs. An electric powered chassis would give me flexibility with the architecture. My design concept has no backlight to maximize rear storage and relies on cameras for visibility.

I deliberately put more reach into this design. I know how impractical it is to have this much glass. How do you roll down the side glass? What about the side impact regulations? The car would be much heavier. However, the glass area in this design visually lightens the car and creates a dramatic statement. It imparts the look of an aircraft fuselage. The glass would be tinted to minimize the feeling of being in a fish bowl. Portions of the glass area could be painted black to preserve the graphics without the sun load or weight problem. I’ll be the first to admit that there’s nothing new about putting a bone in the side glass. I did this design just for the challenge and because it’s fun to shake things up.

This design pays homage to the fabulous futurist Syd Mead, particularly in the front end. I’ve always greatly admired his work and have been influenced by it over the years.

I chose Chevrolet for the brand because I like how the blue bow tie looks on the wheel centers. There really isn’t any brand identity with this design. I style cars by thinking of shapes and proportions that interest me.

I rendered my design in Adobe Photoshop over the Fordzilla sketch by Keyu Deng which I’ve included. This is the first time that I put a driver in a car. It was fun to put him in an interior that I added from images I found online.

I improved portions of my rendering with Vizcom.ai then generated an AI video from this version in ChatGpT Sora. I rendered over a still frame from the video using Photoshop to create the featured image. I often like to see what AI will do to improve a sketch whether using Vizcom or AI video models.

I wasn’t satisfied with the rear quarter reflections of the featured image so I generated more versions to choose from in Vizcom. I cropped the area I wanted in Photoshop and added it to the finished rendering.

Sora was very confused about my car design and sometimes reversed the intended direction in its videos. It’s understandable since it is a double-ender.

I created the video for this post from Sora and Runway ML. The Sora videos were either very dramatic or completely bizarre with the car morphing into unrecognizable shapes, whereas the Runway videos weren’t as flashy but maintained the integrity of the design. I combined the videos using the Adobe Express video merger tool. The videos are in sequential order showing the development of the design.

I chose Hot Heat from the YouTube musical selection for my AI video.