I should be working today, but I had to play around with
this "which celebrity do you look like" application.
I uploaded some pictures of myself and got some very strange results. Then I uploaded a couple pictures of my wife (she wanted to play, too) and it only recognized two of the four pictures of her. I guess it doesn't like profiles.
Then, my wife suggested I try it with a picture of Emily the Strange (
this picture, in fact), but it didn't recognize a face at all.
Which isn't surprising--that's a very basic representation of a human face.
Well, this got me to thinking...what would my very own comic-book heroine
Locus look like?
I submitted this picture:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQyejcEsCDInK4svMKQ4j-1nTHBrhw8_ED5C4o4q9Cy5CdsaDgnp39_Fa6UxQWy9gpf1hrHsD8efWxGTK0Qs26XrRZwSSrkYeGHdlfk5YsOHWhnXw2Y8Rbpkc-PSXguR_hqviRqYZ34Fc/s400/locus.jpg)
And again, it didn't recognize a face at all.
So I started thinking about colors and such, but especially file size. I did a quick, 10-minute sketch of Locus in a straight-on, boring face shot. The kind of thing she'd have on her driver's license:
(note that these drawings are all scanned in at full color and 300dpi, in order to give the recognition software more data to work with)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyGiQUBRZDhKu8sxtqeg8Shanb7YIWpHL-QTHs2XPMzSo-93uu_X6UppwM-iDTcCb9PjWnaTw7V15MqXysmAtEQrMXrhrMXCIx_nyauz7wTbmUT1HZ29HaGLLi0mhkHka2mHdx3d7bAT8/s400/locus01.jpg)
I wasn't expecting it to recognize a thing, but it did! It gave some interesting matches, too:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkn7x6kt3cMGfOoxDmhGPrg2EaqzdxLOvZWGQHgBGbxyNDG8Yc7B5GuGsIxyU32dNEiIKsILg_gtMy4donqceIqw3_iKHtu51JSLSAtIiZOd-OPwL7toPvp4AUxy4O0eWNtWr35TMN9TU/s400/locus01a.JPG)
Now I was getting interested in how this thing worked. It actually picked up some quick and sloppy pencil work. What would it do with old-school black & white inks?
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhUY8kN2V78Iy7GxGAdq3XRFuYEguNyu0z9o4D_Az15uOUx_S3IHymQp0EeNtVUQPJdOwc86ZcrRE0A0VMXDDJJhrKrCy72llvlIB_qPovnUvF9Br6R9cVQP3vfjHm04S3D8pIz7Ohzzo/s400/locus02.jpg)
Here's what it gave back to me after thinking about it for a minute or so:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQEFmmT7IKRiLUvp5bJ1pa8dPX5a67xnU7rl-DHy9iaHI0TsUzaImiYrbgkWWWqGNOdDsT3R6wcIB8boejdtMdYZ5-2RtJ-ijh87E8vW9EvbaC1tUjkU8EPUvLdx9SUg2mYYxSHhDTSkg/s400/locus02a.JPG)
At this point, I was having a lot of fun. The next logical step was color. Nothing fancy--I should be working, after all. So I stuck some quick flats behind the inks.
(If you've never heard the term, "flats" means a flat base color which a colorist uses to block off major shapes for coloring later)
Note that these are the base flats I use to color Locus in the comic.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvzpBZrKs6EaGnSKNEBVm0vS7SS9THMY3HNuHdtat37Vkynsznk1PEqzcl8sax8beYO3scewIuwRg4XkZCaxcvD8cF6SKx-JaVZNvjgmsAyRUyMsJ7gdzjjPqONuKd696VLxU_AcFtEP4/s400/locus03.jpg)
And here's what the software spit back out:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1PJF1QkIjLhbSNRYwyTY7F_m3C-HS9kGz2azGFeN_r_27qit-uhf8aPl-XWKjmnVWcbXiKawQXAsq6qfFG2i5dornh8vtuxaR6eI8HE1agNoPOqzdZh4EyvvlhUBFgCwzJRXrLLaEVY/s400/locus03a.JPG)
Very interesting.
I decided to do a quick coloring job--just modeling the forms as quickly as I could. I really didn't spend more than five or six minutes on this. Used a lot of Color Dodge (brush set at 19%). It's nasty-looking, but this is what I ended up with:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwAJ5oHK6vs1ZyKxC3FK7xdjfd5qJ8C3oKISlX71qbrlFy6bJtgumhNkohEtPPjDir9Uwpkz8KHd_w95Uzy7f_VJ8wUhlREoC8Bx_qGrQ9enrnl-hNG6SDJbbmPJ2fU5TW-D7-cJESrNA/s400/locus04.jpg)
The software couldn't recognize a face anymore. It must've been the awful job I did on the left side of the face (her right side, if that makes more sense to you). I really didn't do that cheekbone right.
It also might've been the inks, I thought. All that weird cross-hatching might've made sense to the program when it was just black and white or flatly-colored. So I touched it up a bit and removed the inks altogether. I also added a very basic gradient background to sort of half-ass show where the light was coming from. I figured I'd help the software out a little that way.
And again: this isn't a very good piece of art. I'm experimenting here--trying to see how this thing thinks--not trying to make an actual portrait.
Besides, I
really should be working right now. :)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4_6ZRl6GwfQIAMQWqe3_xMGnxYu8UgYI_tV3bIUan_WG3ThApJgprs0htNQsfmwaPGgJ369eP89TqoBFEcdFqQoCpDmtJ6uAx8wd78rp6KmQOFG7TDITK3OLQax9wa2BiPA07fn4MzAI/s400/locus05.jpg)
I uploaded the inkless Locus and...it recognized her face again! Here's what it gave back to me:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhiQCz3Hup9hF960rLc7JruMkO-r53pHA1DiIzz6tPrNJGedZLVhatN-MOkDYYFpvCKgDTLKDOiAEvi6vkigvQpHwU9UBRUPZo1D9d4bG4AA1RM4SPfQpxM7ehKGyPoxiQ5pr738qt8ZQ/s400/locus05a.jpg)
At that point, I realized it was getting late in the day and I should knock it off and get back to work.
This was a fun experiment. Educational, too. Note the duplicates:
Jessica Simpson showed up in the pencil and ink results, with 66% match for the pencils and 66% (again) for the inks.
Aishwariya Rai shows up with a 70% match with the pencils, but disappears from the results until I put flat colors behind the inks. Then she returns at a 68% match.
Alicia Silverstone matches the inks at 67%, and the flat-colored inks at 73%.
The final image (as terrible as it looks) manages to match with Billie Piper and Helena Bonham Carter, which is interesting. I never noticed Locus bearing a resemblance to either of those two ladies, but now that I look at it...
Then again, that final image "matches" some very weird photos--like that black & white almost-profile of Oscar Wilde.
At some point, I think I'll try this again--but not till I have more time to do a better job. Something painterly, maybe. Who knows?
Also: I really want to try this with Spook now. Really bad. :)