came across (via j-walk) this cool little experiment going on at the moment called meanface. from the site’s info section: meanface is the result of combining all of the user submitted faces to form one average (or mean) face. the more face submitted the more evolved and definite the meanface should become. the thumbnail is a scaled down version of the current mean of the 2163 submitted thus far. go visit and add your own. see below for more.

a few points of interest:

it seems that in drawing the indication of a nose far more people draw a line (between the eye and the nostril) on the right side. it shows up pretty clearly in the mean. wonder why?

it seems most people are using the full space and cropping the face at forehead and chin for the most close up view possible. wonder why? i drew a full head, the eyes, then nose, then lips, only adding the actual head indications last. perhaps this is the most common method for drawing a face and in that the actual head is an afterthought this explains the cropping of forehead and chin?

lastly i was curious whether the mean would end up representing the symmetry that human’s evidently prefer and find more pleasing to the eye. i took the current mean and split it to test this-

actual mean of first 2163

left side of face mirrored.

right side of face mirrored.

so, thus far, no symmetry. perhaps as it resolves itself further? right now it actually looks like one side of the face is happy while the other is sad. neat.