BFF project: drawings of two friends as one person

Police forensic artist Shawn Feeney launched an interesting side project where he's combining the faces of 64 pairs of friends into single drawings. Send him the photos and he'll hand-morph you into a single being. The project is titled BFF. From the BFF page:

I'm drawing 64 facial images of composite friends. Then I'll draw a series of composites from the composites; 32 drawings combining four faces each, 16 drawings combining eight faces each, and so on until finally there is one drawing derived from all 128 faces...

Link (via Drawn!)

• [pollyannacowgirl]

  I have IMMENSE respect for and awe of police forensic artists. That’s all.

  And Metronicity, I loved your link.

• [controlbroke]

  looking over this again. I notice this is a very different kind of mixing, (i wont call it averaging anymore)
  the strongest facial features of the two seem to have survived more or less intact.
  therefore I suspect this character is only going to get uglier as the most extreme aspects of each face are preserved. I (wildly) guess this is a result of the way we are conditioned to recognize faces (which some people can’t do btw)

  anywhoo thanks once again and I will keep my eye on this very talented pig

• [kvivian]

  This reminded me of a short little video by Rob Wright (aka Robbie Dingo), where he morphs his real face into a Second Life avatar and back to his real face almost imperceptibly. It’s well made and a little spooky. :)

  http://robbiedingo.blip.tv/#231211

  There’s another related film he made where he morphs about 50 Second Life avatars from one to the next and ends with himself. It’s really mesmerizing.

  http://robbiedingo.blip.tv/#483321

• [Fish]

  Didn’t the face on the right open up for Eurovision?

• [Brendan West]

  Creepily like the (only somewhat) deranged kid in “Murder by Numbers” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264935/)

• [buddy66]

  Bravo!

• [Metronicity]

  “Just how do we remember a face? The upper part of the face seems to be more important for recognition than the lower part. The hair turns out to be the most important factor, followed by the eyes, then the nose, and then to a lesser extent, the mouth and chin. If you’re going to rob a bank, wear a wig, and don’t bother with the fake beard.” and then have a look at this group photo where the faces are all the same and the hair is different – you’d swear they are different people – exploratorium.edu

• [Chemical Orphan]

  Welcome to the 20th century – look up “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and his “If They Mated” sketches while you’re there.

• [mark zero]

  I would expect that, no matter what the input faces look like, when you average enough together they’re going to end up approaching the same composite picture.

• [Takuan]

  I want a nose with a blow-up pump implant. It could have other uses too. What else is possible? Cheekbones with variable tilt? The pop-out chin?

• [richlb]

  Is that K.D. Lang on the right?

• [Anonymous]

  Virtual police sketch artist site.
  http://flashface.ctapt.de/

• [controlbroke]

  there have been a number of different takes on this

  this is the most thorough I have come across

  http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average

  people are so pretty when mashed together

• [sfeeney]

  Thanks Boing Boing for posting about my project. I got tons of submissions from this and all 64 spots have now been filled.

  Just to clarify, I’m a civilian (not a cop). I’m doing some averaging of features, but I am primarily combining individual features from the photos – it’s very similar to the way I draw composites of criminal suspects.

• [Zach Hoeken]

  check out this photoshop pic of my friends Streeter and Sarah: http://www.flickr.com/photos/streeterseidell/2243727860/

• [Halloween Jack]

  As much as I like my friends, I can’t think of one that I’d want to be in a transporter accident with.