This week I worked on bringing my vision for my Spark AR filter to life. Still new to the software, I had to ask my tutor for advice on certain aspects I struggled with. For example, I wanted my filter to have a crown tracking the user’s head, but found that it was levitating in front of my head instead of wrapping around it. I asked my tutor how to rectify this issue and he suggested that I cut the back portion of the crown off to give the illusion of it wrapping around the back of the user’s head. I then used the software “Blender” to do so, inputting the new model into Spark AR. As suspected, this fixed the issue and made the crown look as though it was perfectly wrapped around my head.
For the crown to look realistic (to an extent), and as eye-catching as I wanted it to be, I increased its metallicity to the maximum and used a smooth crown texture downloaded from Sketchfab. The model of the crown itself was also downloaded from Sketchfab.
The next step was to create the holographic face effect. I wanted to create a look that would make the user’s face look glowy in a colourful, ethereal way. To do so, I intended to combine pink, green, blue and white lighting effects on the face. I had downloaded textures of these colours but was unsure of how to then place them on the face in the manner I wanted. Once again, I sought help from my tutor and he suggested I use the various lighting effects in Spark AR and then colour them to achieve the look I wanted. As such, I placed 4 different lighting effects towards the face, colouring each of them in green, blue, pink and white, respectively. I then adjusted the strength of the lighting and the pigmentation of the colours to ensure the holographic effect I desired was achieved.
When browsing for ideas for my Spark AR filter, I initially wanted to combine this holographic face effect with a crown, a bleached brow look and some colourful undereye eyeshadow. I decided not to do the more beauty-focused aspects when actually creating the filter as I felt it would look too convoluted and messy. The final filter is much simpler than I originally intended, but because the crown is quite large and draws a lot of focus, I feel the holographic face and the way the colours change as your face turns, ties the look together quite nicely. It also has this wet, ethereal vibe to it – the best way I can describe this is, when using the filter, I feel like an underwater mermaid princess. Though it may seem silly, this sort of mystical beauty was my original intention for the filter, and if I were to have done more, I fear its impact and the energy it conveys would have been completely different.
Happy with the quality and look of the filter, I have just published it to be used on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger – “holographic crown”. I’m excited to share this with my friends and for them to use the filter themselves!
Being someone who has used various filters on Snapchat and Instagram from time to time, it’s felt very surreal to publish one of my own for people all over the world to use, if they choose to do so. I think I may enjoy making and publishing more filters in my free time!