August 18, 2009

Mandom’s research on “Impression ofappearance”- Creating and applying a standard face Mandom Corporation (headquarters: Osaka City, President & CEO: Motonobu Nishimura; hereinafter referred toas “Mandom”), through its evaluation of the impression of facial appearance, has established a new technique using
the “standard face”. “New findings related to the impression of the facial appearance of men with many spots andwrinkles” have also been uncovered.
The results of this research were presented at the “64th Research Forum of the SCCJ” hosted in Osaka on
June 17th 2009.
1.

Proposal of a more accurate “Standard Face” system

To accurately evaluate the impression of facial
appearance, a general face without instantaneous traits
is warranted. An “Average face” can be used as a generalface because dark areas such as spots and wrinkles, andirregularities of the skin can be averaged out. However,the skin of an “average face” appears smooth, shiny andvery different from the actual surface of the skin
(Figure 1). An average face may, therefore, appear
younger than the subject’s actual face, and is thus aninappropriate method to accurately evaluate apparent
age and impression of appearance, such as favorability.
As a resolution, Mandom has proposed the “StandardFace” (Figure 2). A standard face is completed bystatistically processing multiple real images of the subject,extracting an average distribution of spots and wrinkles(Figure 3: Example of the “spots” mask, Figure 4:
Example of the “wrinkles” mask), adding this average tothe average face, and varying the roughness of the texture
by the subject’s age.

Figure 1. Average face ofa man in his 60s

Figure 2. Standard face ofa man in his 60s

To measure the accuracy of the standard face, wecreated five standard faces of subjects 20+ to 60+ years old,and evaluated apparent age of the faces as described below.
Figure 3. Example of spots mask

Contact

mandom corp.
Public Relations Div.
mail: press@mandom.co.jp

URL: https://www.mandom.co.jp/en/

Please contact us in Japanese or English.

-1-Figure 4. Example of wrinkles mask

Method to evaluate apparent age
Evaluation panelists: 15 to 25 years old (y.o.) (young), 35 to 45 y.o. (middle), 55 to 65 y.o. (senior)
100 men and women in each level (total, 600 people)
Method of evaluation: Voluntary evaluation by people ranging in age from 10 to 99 y.o. using images
posted online
The results are presented in Table 1. As
20s
30s
40s
50s
60s
apparent ages almost match average age of Average real age of people
the subjects used to create the standard faces, used to create the standard
25.0
34.0
44.0
55.0
64.0
face (y.o.)the standard face fittingly represents the Result of apparent age of
25.5
32.1
43.4
55.3
67.8
aging characteristics of people in the the standard face (y.o.)corresponding age groups.
Table 1. Evaluation of the age of a standard face from each age group2.

High levels of spots/wrinkles appear in women, and spots particularly appear in young to old women

Using the standard face system, we created four facial images where spots mask of the 40s age group werechanged to the spots mask of the other four generations (between 20s to 60s). Similarly, we created four facialimages where the wrinkles mask of the 40s age group were changed to the wrinkles mask of the other fourgenerations. For each image, we evaluated the apparent age compared to the standard face of the 40s age group(45 y.o.).
Both male and female panelists were thought to be of higher ages as wrinkle masks increased the number ofwrinkles for individuals in the 50s and 60s age group; female panelists were thought to be older than male panelists(Figure 5).

Wrinkle: Comparison
between men/womenApparent age (years old)

Apparent age (years old)

Similarly, when the spot mask was changed, women were thought to be older than men. However,unlike wrinkles, differences between women existed based on age groups (Figure 6). In other words, increased
number of spots lead to the perception of higher age, particularly for young women, when compared toother sex and age groups.

Malepanelist
Female
20s
60s
30s
50s
Age group of wrinkle mask changes relative to the standard face
for theage group
Figure 5. Evaluationof 40swrinkle
mask-changed image(Comparison between panelist sex)

Spots: Comparison between
female panelists

YoungMiddle
Senior20s

30s50s

60s

Age group of spots mask changes relative to the standard face forthe 40s age group
Figure 6. Evaluation of spots mask-changed image(Comparison by age group between female panelists)-2-3.

Low favorability from younger generations when many spots are present

Favorability  Low

For the image of the 40s age group wherestandard face was changed to a 60s age group
Female panelists
spots mask and wrinkles mask, we asked anevaluation panelist of the same age group toevaluate favorability (Female panelist: Scoredbetween 1 to 5 points, with the favorability of40s age group standard face = 3 points). In the60s spots mask
young demography, favorability was low for the60s wrinkle mask
image that was changed to a 60s age group spots
mask; however, for the middle and senior
YoungMiddle
Seniordemography, favorability toward the image
Age group of panelists
changed to a 60s age group wrinkles mask wereFigure 7. Evaluation of favorability of an image where the 40s age groupeven lower (Figure 7). Similar results werestandard face was changed to 60s spots/wrinkle masks
observed among male panelists. To summarize,
unlike other age groups, young people find people with many spots less favorable.

The standard face system is a system that works regardless of sex or age in image creation. Mandom hopes to
elucidate the relationship between state and appearance of human skin by continued research using standard faces.

End of Document-3-