Though passionate about their work, they never allowed themselves to become affected by their own celebrity status. Horace quickly adapted to the software blending the new tools with his art skills & training to become a sought after expert on the subject of computerized age progression.Īll three men pioneered the emergence of technology in the field of forensic facial imaging. After leaving the bureau, Heafner worked at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children where he helped pioneer their model Age Progression program. police artist conference I attended at the F.B.I. Horace Heafner – Federal Bureau of Investigation Although, one time a popular software for law enforcement, it eventually disappeared off the market. I was lucky to have met him on a couple of occasions and marveled at his talentĭuring Tom’s career he partnered with Visatex Corportation to create Compusketch, a facial composite software program. Tom Macris was trained and educated as a commercial artist before joining the San Jose Police Department. The technology at the time didn’t live up to his strict image standards. Afterwards, we struck up a friendship that lasted several years. He shared his dream with me of creating a facial composite software program to help officers manually construct composite images. Unfortunately, he was such a perfectionist he never completed the program.

They were great mentors and I want to take a brief moment to introduce them to you.įernando Ponce – Los Angeles Police Departmentįernando Ponce, a classically trained painter, held the job title – Police Composite Artist for many years before retiring in the mid 1990’s. I first met Ponce in 1979 when I attended a forensic art course he taught. These men helped shape my world view of the discipline and influenced me to push the envelope and embrace a technology solution. Still, I always believed a better solution was out there and I was determined to find it.ĭuring my journey to create a better facial composite software solution, I was thankful to have met and trained under three veteran forensic artists who themselves were involved in developing and implementing forensic facial imaging software programs. In my opinion, facial composite assembly systems, whether mechanical, or software-driven, fell short because forensic artists were rarely involved in product development. The failure of these facial composite assembly systems to gain a solid foothold in law enforcement left forensic artists feeling pretty confident about their own work. Over the years, it’s been a hard-sell for companies who dabbled in the technology and tried to market their creations to law enforcement. The concept of using facial composite assembly systems to create criminal composites is not new.

Compu sketch