A thousand faces of me
Jun. 27th, 2007 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annwfynI found an odd little online toy the other day. It's a face transformer which can morph a photograph into a different race, or age, or even gender. I've been fiddling with it, and it's thrown up some interesting pictures, which have made me poke my own identity a little bit.
First of all, here is the photo I fed into it:
It's a reasonable nice picture of me, originally me wearing a corset, but the program requires a head and shoulders shot, so the corset had to go. As per usual, I muttered to myself about the irritating way I always seem to smile from one side of the mouth, creating a weird and asymetic look, and cursed how blocky and square my face always seems to me.
However, overall, it's not a bad pic, if a little fuzzy.
I then ran it through the transformer.
First of all, I experimented with what I would look like if I were Asian:
One of the interesting things that this threw up the extent to which that which I think I see, is actually a mixture of what I see, and what I associate with what I see. You see, I generally tend to assume that Asian women will be of a somewhat smaller build than me. Therefore, as I looked at that face, even though it was my face, I saw someone who seemed lighter, and probably should be attached to a much shorter body than my own.
Next, I ran my picture through the transformer to se what I would look like as an older woman:
This, by the way, was weirdly reassuring. I didn't look nearly as bad as I've always feared I would as an old woman. I looked quite dignified, although I suspect that me being able to keep my own shoulders and dark hair in this picture may have helped with the 'well preserved elderly woman' effect.
After that, I transformed into a man:
(as a note, I also removed the long hair in photoshop, as it looked really silly for some reason)
I don't think I make a very attractive man, which is mildly depressing. In fact, I look very weasally. I'm not sure if that's me seeing new things in my own feaures, however, or just the java program I was using.
Either way, my reaction to that picture seemed to discount the old myth that you're sexually attracted to people who look like you!
Finally, there were a couple of arty filters, one which claimed to make me look like a Modigliani picture:
And another which said it would make me look as if I'd been drawn by Mucha:
The latter two, by the way, were massively my favourite pictures - maybe because it was much less mentally jarring to see my picture, stylised and idealised, than it was to see my picture subtly altered with a bunch of new visual associations added in. I'm still trying to sort through my own mental responses to some of the earlier pics - why I look smaller and slimmer if I've got different shaped eyes, why I was so relieved than an older me didn't look entirely freakish and unrecognisable. Maybe it's worth poking my odd and possibly issue laden brain.
First of all, here is the photo I fed into it:
It's a reasonable nice picture of me, originally me wearing a corset, but the program requires a head and shoulders shot, so the corset had to go. As per usual, I muttered to myself about the irritating way I always seem to smile from one side of the mouth, creating a weird and asymetic look, and cursed how blocky and square my face always seems to me.
However, overall, it's not a bad pic, if a little fuzzy.
I then ran it through the transformer.
First of all, I experimented with what I would look like if I were Asian:
One of the interesting things that this threw up the extent to which that which I think I see, is actually a mixture of what I see, and what I associate with what I see. You see, I generally tend to assume that Asian women will be of a somewhat smaller build than me. Therefore, as I looked at that face, even though it was my face, I saw someone who seemed lighter, and probably should be attached to a much shorter body than my own.
Next, I ran my picture through the transformer to se what I would look like as an older woman:
This, by the way, was weirdly reassuring. I didn't look nearly as bad as I've always feared I would as an old woman. I looked quite dignified, although I suspect that me being able to keep my own shoulders and dark hair in this picture may have helped with the 'well preserved elderly woman' effect.
After that, I transformed into a man:
(as a note, I also removed the long hair in photoshop, as it looked really silly for some reason)
I don't think I make a very attractive man, which is mildly depressing. In fact, I look very weasally. I'm not sure if that's me seeing new things in my own feaures, however, or just the java program I was using.
Either way, my reaction to that picture seemed to discount the old myth that you're sexually attracted to people who look like you!
Finally, there were a couple of arty filters, one which claimed to make me look like a Modigliani picture:
And another which said it would make me look as if I'd been drawn by Mucha:
The latter two, by the way, were massively my favourite pictures - maybe because it was much less mentally jarring to see my picture, stylised and idealised, than it was to see my picture subtly altered with a bunch of new visual associations added in. I'm still trying to sort through my own mental responses to some of the earlier pics - why I look smaller and slimmer if I've got different shaped eyes, why I was so relieved than an older me didn't look entirely freakish and unrecognisable. Maybe it's worth poking my odd and possibly issue laden brain.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 02:06 pm (UTC)I know I shouldn't criticise because what they are doing with image manipulation probably isn't easy but the firs tone looks like you've just gone at yourself with heavy makep except for the patches on your cheeks and its given you weird uneven eyes (and reduced the picture quality significantly).
The older you has some interesting looking wrinkles but hidden by that same dodgy makeup, this time applied with a sponge for that blotchy effect. And all with a thick mist between you and the camera giving it all that slightly whitish blurry look. Oh, and somebody melted your neck. I'm sure you'll look fine when you're old and grey but I hope for your sake you don't look like that. :)
And I'm not going to start on the bloke image.
The arty ones were much more worth looking at though. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 02:16 pm (UTC)Some of the other transforms were much much shonkier - the afro-carribbean transform was just hideous! I didn't look Black. I looked like a really bad golliwog! It truly was cringeworthy. The one which said it would make me look Indian was really not much better.
You're right tho - the arty ones were the best by far. I found them quite cute.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-27 05:35 pm (UTC)Don't worry dear, I'd do you. :P
no subject
Date: 2007-06-29 11:15 pm (UTC)Um...
It might just be me, but you as a man looks a bit like me.