Asymmetrical makeup face split-and-flip image

Artist Jim Gurney was interested in Cory's post about the woman who applied makeup to half of her face, and he did a split-and-flip on both sides of her face.

A few years ago in MAKE, Charles Platt wrote a short tutorial on how to flip faces.

• [Comedian]

  Wingnut’s look more like an actual human being.

  http://boingboing.net/2012/04/15/half-made-up-woman-is-very-asy.html#comment-498489343

  http://boingboing.net/2012/04/15/half-made-up-woman-is-very-asy.html#comment-498496977

• [mat catastrophe]

  This is only really slightly interesting and even then, really only the first ten or thousand times.

  • [Mark_Frauenfelder]

    “This is only really slightly interesting”

    As opposed to your comment, which is scintillating.

    • [mat catastrophe]

       The level of scintillation in my commentary is directly proportional to the level of interest to be found in the source material.

      I mean, if you’re still really fascinated by facial symmetry and silly photoshop tricks, that’s fine. But I’d rather find that on fark.com, where I expect to find things that are ever so slightly banal.

      I guess as long as the “artist” was wearing a black sweater or a beret while he did the work on those images, it’s all good.

• [Eileen]

  The reflection looks terribly angled, the natural portrait (no-makeup) is wider at top and significantly narrower at bottom (the paper behind her does not have parallel edges) making her face look disproportionate. Whereas the makeup portrait flairs outward at the bottom, making a more rounded jaw line and fuller lips. Neither one is a particularly accurate nor a true reflection of either side of her face.

  • [Mark_Frauenfelder]

    “Neither one is a particularly accurate nor a true reflection of either side of her face.”

    I’ll bet you could do a better job. Please post your results.

    • [Matthew Miller]

       Mark, someone _did_ post better results in the comments thread to the earlier post.

    • [twianto]

      Oh, if only somebody, anybody followed Rob’s recent “no snark” rule…

      …or at the very least made sure that one’s snark doesn’t horribly backfire;
      Better post-make-up photo from the original thread: http://boingboing.net/2012/04/15/half-made-up-woman-is-very-asy.html#comment-498489343
      Better pre-make-up photo from the original thread: http://boingboing.net/2012/04/15/half-made-up-woman-is-very-asy.html#comment-498496977

      Consider yourself informed. You’re welcome. ;-)

      • [Mark_Frauenfelder]

        I saw these images in the comments when they were posted, but I thank you for sharing them with readers who may have missed them. 

        I am more interested in Jim Gurney’s images, because they reveal how people’s faces are asymmetrical. That was the point of Charles Platt’s article. The images you linked to above, while quite lovely, do not reveal how asymmetrical most people’s faces are. 

        • [twianto]

          What the ‘symmetrical’ image here shows is how camera angles can distort faces, that’s all. They don’t show asymmetries. Look at the ears, her head is slightly tilted and rotated relative to the camera. As has been pointed out in the other thread.

          So yes, the other two photos _are_ much better in every respect.

        • [Mark_Frauenfelder]

          Your version of  ”better” bores the pants off me, Twianto.

        • [James Hall]

          I guess you missed Jim Gurney’s comment agreeing that the woman’s face was turned in the original photo and the lighting was uneven, so his flip exaggerated the asymmetry of her face.

      • [Antinous / Moderator]

        Is this a performance art piece on the theme of recursion?

• [ChicagoD]

  Wait, I thought we were voting.

• [Keith Tyler]

  Flip-faces are inherently flawed as representations of the whole face. No one’s face is symmetrical. Try mirroring either side of your own face, neither will look right.

  Her eyes are not different. But her right (our left) one is made up heavily with dark eyeshadow and eyeliner.

  http://kradeleet.com/images/makeupeye.gif

  Notice a line is added above the epicanthal fold to make it look like that is the size of her eye (but the eyelashes belie the truth). They also use eyeliner to bring the inside of her eye closer to the bridge, again to make it look larger, and then a faded eyeshadow on the other side to make it blend in with her face.

  BTW, I am Keiek Tylyt, president of Kradedark.

• [jsandin]

  I tried it with a scary photo of John Brown last year…..with both sides of his face.  The results weren’t nearly as scary as the original:
  http://www.tommymarkham.com/Lowry/John_Brown.JPG 

• [Kevin Pierce]

  Would facial recognition software recognize them as being the same person?

  • [Lemoutan]

    Twice.

• [MandoZink]

  For decades I have been in the habit of covering up one, then the other, side of a face I find intriguing. Most often one half of a person’s face will project a very different feeling or personality than the other. Try it.

• [Kevin Pierce]

  Beer goggles

• [AnomicOfficeDrone]

  If I didn’t know these were split-and-flips, I’d think they were CGI.

  Perfect symmetry is very “uncanny valley”.

• [Bad Juju]

  All Hail Unitinu