The Son of Man AR Filter in 72 Hours
- Mar 6, 2022
- 3 min read
Towards the end of February, I finally completed and shared a project that had been on my mind for the longest time!
While the idea was still incubating, I was going about my usual routine—scrolling through Instagram and checking out what my friends were up to through their Stories. As I was looking at the Instagram filters others had created, these three things just clicked in an instant:
💡 Mirror Selfie
💡 AR Filter
💡 The Son of Man
Knowing that my creative motivation tends to dip quickly, I knew I had to act fast, and this project was completed within just 3 days!! For this one, I would break down the process into phases, with each day as a phase. Here goes:
Day 01:
The Quick-And-Dirty Phase
As its name suggests, it has to be quick and dirty.
After running through a few youtube tutorials, I began to kickstart the creation process by sticking to this guide:
Since I was turning the painting into an AR filter, it was clear that I would have to need these two things: a background and a green apple.
For a start, familiarising myself with Spark AR Studio was a priority. Hence, the background was basically just a block of colour, whereas the apple was just a png image from Google.
Having followed through the tutorial video, I was faced with an issue: my body could not be detected when in use. As The Son Of Man painting shows more than half of Rene Magritte's body and mirror selfie is usually meant to do a fit check, it was necessary for the user's body to be visible. There and then, I realised I made a mistake—this AR filter is not meant for front camera.
Day 02:
The Slow-It-Down Phase
When faced with a problem, the best thing to do is to (re)gain clarity.
It is especially hard to see when you’re in the quick-and-dirty phase since that is all about speed, so in this phase, I had to take a step back and remind myself that it wasn’t about rushing, it was about taking the time to sit with the issue.
Returning to the home page, my eyes lit up when I saw the filter template that tracks full-body movement. Following through the tutorial again, I was able to do it slightly faster than before.
What I needed to track was just the nose. As the template tracks many more points than necessary, it was extremely liberating to click the delete button!!😁
With more things out of the way, redoing the filter was a breeze. After making some quick edits on photoshop, the filter was coming together!
Day 03:
The Clean-The-Dirt Phase
Now that we have “slowed down” the “quick” in the “quick-and-dirty”, it is time to “clean up” the “dirt”.
In this phase, I was more focused on the minor details of the filter.
Continuing from where I’ve left off, there were a few things that I would like to work on:
Fixing the bricks of the background image
Fixing the “cleanliness” of the green apple
Adding a fun element
The fixings were rather straightforward, and the addition of a fun element was just a click of a button to make the apple scale.
Hear what my friends have to say about the project:
Click here to view this project &
Click here to try out the filter on Instagram!
