Quote by Pablo Picasso - Part 1

Post No: 11

Pablo Picasso was one of the most influential artists that started from Classicism and later turned to Surrealism. Picasso's style passed through many phases, from blue period to rose period to cubism. 

Pls. check his quote written on brainboard.

what do you elicit from that?

Study of Human Face : Part II

Post No 11:
Human Face >> General Information

Continuing from Post No. 5 : Study of Human Face : Part I 
Most important virtue that separated man from other animals is curiosity. Man is curious to know everything about universe and wants to reveal the grandness of everything in the universe, right from dust upto stardust. He prevailed through countless endeavors. But, from millions of years till date man had and will strive for only one goal. i.e. "How to Make life easier!".

While interacting with surrounding man started observing behavior of each thing. In this process even a subtle usual behavior sparked wonder that adjured to perceive the reason behind it.
Still there are myriad things that wonder us and one of them is "Human Face".

At a very broad level, two cognitive approaches are art and science. 
To understand human face requires incredible artistic and scientific knowledge and much more. The ultimate goal is to understand and explain, describe, categorize, reproduce human face.

Art is subjective, based on emotions and synthesis of thoughts whereas science is rational, objective and analysis of thinking. Art deals with aesthetic pleasure without utilization value on the other hand science finds purpose in every action. Human face study was initiated by artists and then scientific analysis started in the renaissance. In 18th century with the revolutionary development in science emerged many diverse streams. There is immense information on human face scattered in different pockets of these new streams. 

Taxonomy is identification and documentation of every distinct component in diversity. At initial glance you may confront few confusing and ambiguous terms. There are many such terminologies used while stating theories about human face. For example: facial modeling, facial simulation, facial detection, facial identification, facial recognition, facial reconstruction, craniofacial reconstruction. Please bear with me, in upcoming posts I will discuss various topics and things will sort out and these terminologies will start making sense. But for now lets check the taxonomy of literature on human face. 

Taxonomy of Human Face Study based on Approach

Above table explains various streams from Art, Science and other activities which has documented enormous material on human face. After gathering the literature from each field, next natural step is to categorize and keep them connected with relevant rational liaisons for further collaboration. I strongly believe that in the absence of these liaisons knowledge-bases soon become effete information bloats. 
Please note the taxonomy string at top in this post. That's enough for now.

Thx for reading. Keep Sharing and give your comments on the blog.

Let every being be free from delusion and ignorance and face the truth.

What will be the future of Human Face?

Post No: 10 

Continuing from the post 7:  Evolving framework of Human Face 

James May answering few oddball questons

An interesting study was published by Artist and researcher Nickolay Lamm on Forbs site.

Today's human face is end result of 5-7 million years of evolution. It is very clear that as skull changed its shape face also morphed. If face of ape reflects rudimentary lifestyle, modern man face witnesses epic control over nature.

But What's next?

10000 years down the line how human face will look like?

Are we going to settle down on with existing features or we will modify it with according to future needs or whole human race will turn into Cyborgs?

Although it is a debatable topic. Post your comments and opinions.

Spotlight: FacePlus from Mixamo

Post No: 9 

Today spotlight is on FacePlus plugin from Mixamo for Unity3D game engine.
Game Industry is moving with fast pace. Now you can capture facial expression and apply it it any character.
Face Plus is a plugin that enables developers to create high quality 3D facial capture and facial animation, in real time, directly within the Unity game engine. Leveraging Unity’s blendshape technology and Mixamo’s unique facial tracking and facial animation algorithms, Face Plus empowers game developers to be even more ambitious with storytelling and bring compelling, emotionally rich characters to life in record time, at extremely low cost.

Virtual world will never be the same again !
Its changing....

Spotlight: Facial Substitution

Post No: 8 

Till date my mind was engraved with an idea that face is my identity, whole life I will have to live with it. 
What if you can change that identity, at least on e-world?
Woooosssshhhh!  mind boggling idea.
But can we really do that?
Just have a look at this interesting experiment. This is a technical demo for face substitution technique. But certainly achievable in near future. 

Today Spotlight is on Kyle McDonald, who is an artist and researcher in New York with a background in computer science and philosophy. In October 2011, he released FaceOSC, a tool for prototyping face-based interaction. FaceOSC was based on the work of Jason Saragih, a research scientist at CSIRO. In addition to FaceOSC, Kyle has produced an addon for working with face tracking in OpenFrameworks as well as a growing body of work that uses face tracking in an artistic context, notably Face Substitution with Arturo Castro.

Keep guessing whats next, but with open mind.
Learn how to unlearn and face the whole new world!

Evolving framework of Human Face

Post No: 7 

Why Chimpanzees look like Humans? Is Human face is ever evolving surface?
Answer lies in prehistory, anthropology and archaeology. Let me explain in simple words.

Actually, Humans diverged and evolved from long lineage with its closest living relative, Chimpanzees.
Human face consists of multiple layers, hard solid bone, skull at base, muscles mounted at both ends on bones is the flexible and deformable layer, fascia surface, dermal-fatty layer variable tissue depth depends on health and environmental conditions and the top epidermal surface also called as skin. In simple words face is surface wrapped on skull, thus skull can be considered as the framework of face.

Although as late as the time of 'Charles Darwin', was common to find people who thought there was a independent creation of every species and life form do not change from one generation to another. But Darwin’s five theories suggested :

• Evolution: species come and go through time, while they exist they change.
• Common descent: organisms are descended from one, or several common ancestors and have diversified from this original stock
• Species multiply: the diversification of life involves populations of one species diverging until they become two separate species; this has probably occurred billions of times on earth!
• Gradualism: evolutionary change occurs through incremental small changes within populations; new species are not created suddenly.
• Natural selection: evolutionary change occurs through variation between individuals; some variants give the individual an extra survival probability.

Modern Humans are result of millions of years of evolutionary change and natural selection. 
Plan your visit to Smithsonian National Museum of natural History to have a look at preseved evidences of human origin.  

Image Credit: John Gurche
artist / Don Hurlbert, photographer

Sahelanthropus tchadensis

Sometime between 7 and 6 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Orrorin tugenensis

Sometime between 6.2 and 5.8 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Ardipithecus kadabba

Between about 5.8 and 5.2 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Ardipithecus ramidus

About 4.4 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Australopithecus anamensis

About 4.2 to 3.9 million years ago

Image Credit: John Gurche,
artist / Chip Clark, photographer

Australopithecus afarensis

Between about 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Australopithecus garhi

 About 2.5 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Paranthropus aethiopicus

About 2.7 to 2.3 million years ago

Image Credit: John Gurche,
artist / Chip Clark, photographer

Australopithecus africanus

About 3.3 to 2.1 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Homo rudolfensis

About 1.9 million to 1.8 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Australopithecus sediba


Between 1.977 and 1.98 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Homo habilis


2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago

Image Credit: Karen Carr Studio

Paranthropus robustus

About 1.8 to 1.2 million years ago

Image Credit: John Gurche,
artist / Chip Clark, photographer

Paranthropus boisei

About 2.3 to 1.2 million years ago

Image Credit: John Gurche,
artist / Chip Clark, photographer

Homo heidelbergensis


About 700,000 to 200,000 years ago

Image Credit: John Gurche,
artist / Chip Clark, photographer

Homo erectus

Between about 1.89 million and 143,000 years ago

Image Credit: John Gurche,
artist / Chip Clark, photographer

Homo neanderthalensis


About 200,000 - 28,000 years ago

Image Credit: John Gurche,
artist / Chip Clark, photographer

Homo floresiensis

About 95,000 – 17,000 years ago

Image Credit: Human Origins Program,
Smithsonian Institution

Homo sapiens

About 200,000 years ago to present

Following link shows the Human Family Tree and other variations of human faces.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-family-tree

Biology teacher Andrew Douch makes comparisions between the skull of an ancient Hominin (Australopithecus afarensis) and a modern hominin ( Homo sapiens)

But What's next?

Inspirational Quote by Plato

Post No: 6

Plato (469–399 B.C.E.) great Philosopher, regarded as one of the wisest people of all time. He was a student of Socrates and a teacher of Aristotle. His writings explored justice, beauty and equality, and also contained discussions in aesthetics, political philosophy, theology, cosmology, epistemology and the philosophy of language. Plato founded the Academy in Athens.

Study of Human Face : Part I

8 September 2013
Post No: 5
Human Face >> General Information

I am interested to know firstly when, why and how mankind got obsessed with a human face, still is an unsolved mystery.

While tracing the roots from latest computer art to sculptures, portraits, illustrations, sketches, manuscripts up to cave paintings, we can see evolution of mankind. This progress also reflects cultural developments. 

Human face has fascinated many painters, poets, philosophers, physicians many other professionals, not only that but every pragmatist and even a pea brain. Amazing and interesting human face related information egressed from their writing, creations, experiments, findings and inferences. Collection of Human face related information and its synthesis is like viewing a diamond from various angles and appreciating each color from those color bands.

In a cultural rebirth from the 14th through the middle of the 17th century which is called as renaissance, many artists and illustrators made efforts to explicate the human face through their creations. We can easily make out pace of the study of human face in the last millennium  From centuries we are documenting our observations and from last 30 years it is at peak.

In 18th century, whole world was intrigued by many streams of science. One of them was Genetics, discipline of biology, the science of heredity and variation in living organisms. Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's study of inheritance are the most revolutionary concepts in the history of mankind. Human faces are ever evolving carrier of pattern and mutating surface. Till 19th century, Human group classification was mainly based on facial features. There are many theories about human races based on skin color, cranial or facial features and hair texture. Some of them are still topic of debate. The 0.1% genetic difference that differentiates any two random humans is still the subject of much debate. In the same period other streams like forensic science, plastic surgery and orthodontics also greatly evolved and added another dimension to the study of human face.

Since last 30 years, Computer science has made phenomenal developments and impacted each and every field. Because of its amazing data processing capability and speed the development pace was exponentially increased. With the help of Computer graphics, virtually every object can be simulated and visualized in 3D environment. Today scientists are performing anthropometry with three-dimensional scanners to calculate segmental volumes of an individual body scan. There are several examples in entertainment world that computer graphics has achieved ultimate realism. Human face has extremely intricate topology. In Hollywood movies facial modeling, texturing and
rendering is done in such a way that audience can not distinguish between fake and photo.

Everyday each field is evolving in different direction. Those inventions are revealing new dimensions of human face.

The fact that everyday new innovations are being made in all fields of science, every curious practitioner, thinker and philosopher is documenting his experiments and observations. This trend has picked up speed and complexity with the help of computer technology. Human Face related observations can be found in many different streams. The face related information scattered in various fields can be synthesized to form a solution that will address many questions raised over many generations. To navigate through this huge information ocean and extract the required data, one must have know-how of each stream. Keeping up with the flow of information in these fields is a difficult task.

I will discuss the most appropriate approach that I feel in the next blog post.

Aspects of human face

6 September 2013
Post No: 4
Human Face >> General Information

There are many other aspects of human face. Most significant are:

1.Tool for living, Biological importance

Face is just an outer surface of head. Biologically, Head is the most significant body part. Skull gives the form and shape to face and thus can be considered as the framework of the face. Skull is casing of brain - integral part of nervous system, eyes - entire visual system, nose - entire olfactorysystem and doorways of respiratory system, ears - entire auditory system, mouth - entire gustatory system.  

2. Tool for communication, Impression and Expression

Human face is the most favored communication tool inseparably associated with his emotions. Facial expression comes from the squashing and stretching of facial muscles which conveys emotions. The facial impression is observed by perception. It is psychological evaluation based on look of personality despite of internal details, thought process. By nature, facial impression may be biased as perception is subjective, synthesis based on personal thoughts and experiences. So sometimes it becomes controversial.

3.Tool for identity, Biometric, tool for identification

We come in this world with a face and everybody recognizes us with that face. Every person continuously refines his own face recognizing methodology and builds and modifies his own database of human faces in memory. Each brain in this world is an independent system. Based on uniqueness of features many biometric philosophies were developed based on retinal identification, ear Pattern and facial structure. Thus face has become premier tool of identification.