Roman nerdery on main

I've recently come across Photoreal Roman Emperor Project: 54 Machine-learning assisted portraits. In particular, I liked seeing, in the detailed posts, what sources the artist used as his bases for each portrait.

I will admit that three things I find odd:

- The difference in lightsources in the composite end-portraits. Some are lit softly, some harshly/with higher contrast and some even look washed out/over exposed.

- Hair textures. Okay, wtf? Pretty much everyone's hair is straighter in the end-portraits than in the busts. It's most aparent in say Lucius Verus but it's pretty obvius in most of them. Starting with Augustus!

Does this not look like two different hair textures to other people?! He went from having wavy/wide curl hair to having straight hair. Maybe I'm just used to mediterranean hair mad because OG Augustus has hair v similar to mine and the composite does not.

- Ulpia Severina appears to have been composited entirely from gendershifting her husband Aurelian.

Whici is certainly A Choice but ok! I am more mad that zero effort appears to have been made to recteate the hairstyle shown in the coins. I know recreating numismatic hairstyles is a pain and a half -- having myself tried to recreate Carthaginian female hairstyles based on coins depicting Dido etc -- and it's not like I expct everyone o know who Janet Stephens is, but it took me less than five minutes, starting onthe wikipedia page for Roman hairstyles, to find this video of her recreating a similar, though earlier, hairstyle.


On an only vaguely related note, I wonder when Elagabalus became known as Héliogabale in French. The Ela -> Helio shift likely happened because sun cult but when?