One of great things about the various app stores is that – within reason – developers can make whatever they want. Who would have thought that fart apps would be so popular?
Even so, the explanation behind Face Gen, a sort of sketch-’em up app, is surprising. Developer Ammi Software asks ‘Have you ever wanted to be a police sketch artist?’, which is quite a limited audience for an app; especially one that cost $4.99.
Maybe that’s why it’s only been downloaded 50-100 times.
Still, I could imagine that done right, this could be a fun application, especially as you have the option to email the finished PNG files, as well as uploading them to Flickr. We’re all registered with so many websites that require avatars, this could have been a nice chance to use something other than the usual mugshot.
Problem is Face Gen doesn’t really work. Sure there are plenty of options as you can choose different heads, hair, eyebrows, eyes, noses, moustaches, mouths, chins and beards (300 in total) to build up your face. The main issue is that most of the components don’t fit together, so you might have a beard right below a mouth and nowhere near the chin, where the location of the nose seems almost random.
Now there are options to move the various elements around but the controls are incredibly fiddly to use. The buttons are also so small, it’s hard to use the touchscreen, meaning you have to navigate using the trackwheel, which is never pleasant. It would also been nice if the app didn’t only work in a landscape mode.
Combined with a somewhat scrappy visual style – okay, it’s a sketch but why can’t it be a nice sketch? – not only is Face Gen hard to use, the results look rubbish, unless you spend hours only finding facial components that work well together and manoeuvring them into place.
It is a bit of a wasted opportunity because I could imagine something much simpler and more colourful working well – what about a one of those books where you mix and match facials elements by swapping over hinged cards. That would have been great. This however is definitely worth avoiding.
//A facial sketch app, Face Gen is certainly an interesting idea but sadly, one that is terribly implemented as well as being much too expensive
App: Face Gen (Android)
Developer: Ammi Software
Price: $4.99
Version reviewed: 1.0.0
Requires: Internet, network-based location, phone state, contact data
Size: 7.11MB
Score: 1/5
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About Jon Jordan
You are right about that its good app for making avatars, but following statement is wrong: “The main issue is that most of the components don’t fit together, so you might have a beard right below a mouth and nowhere near the chin, where the location of the nose seems almost random.”
You have control to move objects on the screen using directional arrows at the bottom of the screen, once you position it to the right place you then use zoom icon +/- to adjust the width/height of the facial object, then again use directional arrows to polish it up.
Images that is shown in this article is not finish sketch work!
I have created sketches for my favfive friends, when they call me their sketch face shows up, makes me laugh right away
It’s a fair point, although I do mention that you can move the various components into place. The main issue with this however is I don’t think the controls are sufficiently robust to allow you to do this without lots of fiddling around. Certainly the buttons are too small for touchscreen use.
Awesome! Really cool application… works fine for me…
btw, now it actualy cost only $2.99