GAN tutorials that actually show you the cats
A self-described toy project for learning deep learning by generating and styling cat pictures.

What it does This repo trains Generative Adversarial Networks on a dataset of cat photos to synthesize new cat images, plus applies fast neural style transfer to turn real cats into “art.” It implements DCGAN, WGAN, WGAN-GP, and LSGAN with PyTorch, outputs to TensorBoard, and includes preprocessing scripts to sort cats by resolution.
The interesting bit The author is admirably honest: this is a learning project, not a product. The value is in watching someone work through multiple GAN variants in public, with working code and actual results you can compare. The README even links to successor repos where the same author refined these ideas into more serious tools.
Key highlights
- Implements four GAN variants (DCGAN, WGAN, WGAN-GP, LSGAN) plus fast style transfer
- Generates both 64×64 and 128×128 outputs; SELU activation option for larger images
- Includes dataset preprocessing script and TensorBoard logging setup
- Results blogged at ajolicoeur.wordpress.com/cats with epoch-by-epoch samples
- Author’s later repos (RelativisticGAN, relativistic-f-divergences) supersede this code
Caveats
- Marked as a “toy” project by the author; some objectives (BEGAN, CycleGAN, FID) are listed but not marked done
- Requires Python 3.6 and a specific archived cat dataset; setup is manual
- Superseded by the author’s newer work; this repo appears frozen circa 2019
Verdict Good for someone who wants to see how a working GAN pipeline fits together without abstraction layers hiding the wiring. Skip it if you need production code or modern best practices—the author already wrote that elsewhere.