Police Sketches Of 15 Literary Characters Based On Their Book Descriptions

It’s a complaint you hear time and time again from readers when beloved books are adapted into films: The actors don’t match the mental image conjured up by the book’s description. So illustrator Brian Joseph Davis decided to see exactly what kind of faces those descriptions would create by using a law enforcement composite sketch software called FACES ID.

The images are shared to the artist’s Tumblr blog, The Composites, along with the passages used to make them. In an interview with The Atlantic in 2012, Davis said that the project was inspired by fictional “Identikit” index cards created by author James Ellroy. In creating the images, Davis used “educated guesswork” to fill in the features that were not explicitly referenced in the texts. “It’s a combination of literary criticism—which I know well—and forensics—of which I’m an utter amateur,” he said. After using his own book collection for inspiration, Davis turned to e-books, and eventually online fan submissions.

Here: Katniss Everdeen, “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins

h/t: mentalfloss

John Daniel Edward “Jack” Torrance, “The Shining” by Stephen King

Annie Wilkes, “Misery” by Stephen King

Daisy Buchanan, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

James Cromwell, “L.A. Confidential” by James Ellroy

Christian Grey, “Fifty Shades Of Grey” by E. L. James

Lisbeth Salander, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson

Humbert Humbert, “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov

Marla Singer, “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelle

Norman Bates, “Psycho” by Robert Bloch

Nurse Ratched, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey

Sam Spade, “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett

Thomas “Tom” Ripley, “The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith