Monday 18 October 2010

Lynn Angell: Yet More Dodgy Images

These images are sourced from the archived 2001 version of Colleen Dunn Bates' tribute to Lynn Angell, which was originally written published in the October 2001 edition of Written By, a Writer's Guild of America monthly publication.

The first image shows David and Lynn Angell together.

There are numerous problems with this image:

  1. The lighting on Lynn Angell is completely wrong and Lynn herself resembles a cardboard cut-out that has been copied and pasted into the picture. In fact, she has been copied into the image because we can clearly see that Lynn's Mr Potato Head wig has erased part of David's cheek and distorted the left hand side of his face.
  2. Lynn's ear is devoid of detail and appears to be scraped back from the side of her head. In fact, the entire left hand side of her face looks flat and totally artificial, with a distinctly 'polygonal' shape that looks suspiciously like a section from a 'wireframe' face model. The malformed ear is a dead ringer for an identical anomaly seen in the "Lynn and David at Home" photo analysed in my very first post.
  3. When comparing the size of Lynn's ear in this picture with the third image in this sequence (the one showing Lynn wearing a tiara) there seems to be a discrepancy. One could argue that ears grow over time (they certainly do) and that this is a much younger Lynn. However, the apparent age of David in this picture suggests otherwise. In fact, David looks visibly older in this picture than he does in any of the other images. Even his hair seems much thinner. If you'll forgive the digression, David's apparent age in the photo really bothers me. Based on the clothing and Lynn's much younger appearance I'd date this photo to the early to mid 1990s. Let's say 1994 for the sake of argument, which would make David 45 years of age at the time this photo was 'taken'. Why, then, does David look like he belongs in the 55-65 age bracket? Does this make sense?
  4. Does this Lynn and David look anything at all like the Lynn and David that appear in this image? Lynn in particular seems very much different: the face is much longer and thinner and the nose is completely different.
  5. Lynn's teeth are horribly distorted, to the extent that she appears to be growing an extra set of upper incisors, which are now partially covering the existing incisors.
  6. There's evidence to suggest that the creator of this image used the blur tool to disguise certain features around Lynn's throat.
  7. The strange and vibrantly coloured blotches around Lynn's mouth and nose suggest use of a cloning tool. One could argue that these are JPEG compression artefacts and colour distortion, although it's interesting to note that David's face is largely free of these 'artefacts' at this resolution.
  8. David's bare left wrist can be seen draped over Lynn's shoulder to the right of picture. It appears to be covered in tattoos. In the only other image we have of him with bare arms he clearly has no tattoos whatsoever. Are we to believe that David Angell, the mild-mannered devout Catholic, walked into a tattoo studio one day and asked for a full Japanese sleeve?
  9. David's head just doesn't sit right. He appears to have no neck and is wearing the kind of oversized collar seen in many other vicsim images. That David's head has been inserted into this image is supported by the fact that the body it rests on appears to be tattooed.

David and Lynn Angell

This second image shows Lynn alone. Although this is a small image it's possible to identify a number of problems, one of which mirrors some of the sinister aspects of another image analysed in one of my previous posts.

Lynn Angell

  1. Even at 100% it's obvious that Lynn's head does not belong on this body. Zooming in confirms this: a diagonal join running from the left hand side of the neck across and up to Lynn's chin is clearly visible. Note that this area appears to have undergone considerable work with a blur and cloning tool.
  2. Again, even at 100% there seems to be something odd about Lynn's nose, which looks very red. Zoom in and it appears that her nose is covered with blood. I'd be tempted to dismiss this as the product of JPEG compression and 'mosaicing' combining to turn a sunburned nose into a bloody one, were it not for the fact that another image quite clearly shows David cradling his own bloody, severed hand. Accordingly, it seems to me that this is not coincidental; whoever created these images wants us to subconsciously associate David and Lynn Angell with violence.
  3. With reference to the above (although the image quality is such that it's difficult to be sure) it seems to me that Lynn is without a full complement of toes. Is the freakishly long index finger of her right hand pointing us to this discrepancy?
  4. Lynn appear to be wearing pince nez sunglasses: they are without arms. Again, we've seen this kind of thing before in the "Lynn at Hillsides" image analysed previously. It seems that the creators were satisfied with images that are good enough to withstand a cursory examination and no more.
  5. Lynn's right hand and wrist seem very peculiar, like a thin flipper much too small for the arm of her jacket when compared with her left arm. Light is coming from left of picture (from Lynn's right, as confirmed by her shadow and the shadow of the person in the background) so it's difficult to understand why her right hand is in shade given that her right foot, and the right arm of her jacket, is clearly illuminated.

Lynn Angell, bleeding

This next image is also very small but again discrepancies can be discerned. This is unsurprising when we consider that this image is only slightly from the version provided by Colleen Dunn Bates' in her 2010 repost of her tribute to Lynn Angell.

Lynn Angell

  1. Note the size and positioning of Lynn's eyes, together with the different amounts, and colour, of 'red eye'. Some specular highlighting can just about be discerned in Lynn's right eye but not in the left, where all detail has been obliterated by the bright red 'red eye'. It's interesting to note how often this kind of tampering with eyes crops up in these images. Sometimes this tampering comes in the form of adding a pair of sunglasses. Why would anyone do this? Well, by analysing specular highlights we can determine the direction of the light source, which can then be compared with the direction of the light source in the image itself. When two individuals are depicted, the specular highlights of both can be compared to see whether they tell the same story. Get the picture?
  2. There's evidence of layering in the patterns that appear in Lynn's hair. The pattern in question clearly matches the pattern of the curtains (drapes) in the background. This suggests that the creator adjusted the added layer's transparency level (the added layer being Lynn's Mr Potato Head wig), most probably in an attempt to 'blend' the new layer and make it appear more natural.
  3. The generally very poor quality of this image is very odd, given that Colleen Dunn Bates provided a very much better quality image (unfortunately for her!) in her 2010 tribute repost. If Colleen did indeed take these pictures then it seems reasonable to assume that she used the same camera. Why, then, is this image so bad?

Lynn Angell

In this final image we're shown a much younger and skeletally thin Lynn gazing into the middle distance. Is this the same Lynn Edwards Angell who, according to Colleen Dunn Bates, was "cursed with slow metabolism but blessed with a love of good food and wine"?

Lynn AngelL

  1. The composite nature of this image is clearly demonstrated by Lynn's hair, which is visibly misaligned in parts as a result of a crude copy and paste. The hair on the back of Lynn's head has a completely different texture and seems very much lighter in colour, as if backlit by a light source that doesn't exist in the image itself.
  2. This younger, slimmer Lynn appears to have the hands of a much older woman.
  3. There's an odd looking semi-triangular patch on the monument behind Lynn (just above the other woman's head) that is much lighter in colour than the rest of the monument. Again, it's impossible to identify a light source in the image that could be responsible for this. Moreover, the 'line' followed by this light patch runs parallel with Lynn's nose and actually continues across the left lens of her sunglasses and her left eyebrow, before finally meeting up with the left arm of her sunglasses.

Lynn Angell

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You need to get a job, or at least switch to a healthier hobby. Christ, man...