snap lens studio
In this project I created a fun little lens to explore the use of 'Lens Studio' by Snap under the guidance of my Art Director!
Let me show you the process of how it was made, the technical and creative issues I encountered and how I dealt with them.
Category
Design, animation, coding
Role
Designer & Animator
the client
This brief is laid out as an open call to designers but is focused on the branding of Snap! Snapchat is a classic app for any mobile phone user to allow friends and family to connect to each other day-to-day even when you can't be there in person.
Social media apps such as these are even more important now when we cannot be in person with our loved ones all the time, so we can still make fun memories together and share a laugh or two!
the challenge
To explore the use of Lens Studio to create an engaging AR experience worthy of being shared by tweens, teens, and young adults who love to use social media to connect to their friends. The tone of the project should be funny and relatable to encourage virality on the internet!
research
So… What do all these generations have in common?
What made for popular AR filters before? Let's see...
Absurdity in the Mundane
There is always a need to have a laugh when going through a crisis, be it neverending schoolwork, a mundane office life, or other problems.
Pokemon GO had a filter function that allowed players to place a character within a scene of their choosing, allowing for the user's creativity to flourish and make hilariously surreal images to share on the internet!
Situational Humor
A popular toy figurine set that has been exploding as of late is called 'Smiski', and the notion of it is that these creatures can help keep you company through your mundane lives and feel the same as you do when going through a slump, so you're not all alone.
The hilarity again comes from the person's way of placing the character, so I find this a key feature I want to integrate into my own lens.
Trends
One of the most popular apps to check on trends is TikTok, with 50 million daily users in the US alone. Through this I was able to see what was trending to theme my project around, and to confirm that the previously mentioned toy was very popular - from here I started coming up with a lot of ideas!
So, the goal is to focus on brightening up one's day by making it that much more sillier in an easy way.
This links back to Snap’s main idea:
“ Empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, & have fun together! ”
From my research, I delved into 3 different filter types, styles & themes!
initial pitch
Concept 1
Moody Mushrooms
A small family of charming mushroom pals in various positions, all pondering curious things…
They’re able to offer some virtual companionship to those who need them, and turn simple situations into entertaining and playful moments to share!
Concept 2
#SameDude
A minimal, mopey little companion, made to accompany your everyday life with a touch of empathy.
The deadpan expression it has allows you to relate to them in any situation. Are you feeling socially awkward, depressed, or maybe stressed about school? Don’t worry, he feels the same too.
PS - You can also drag him around and bully him by putting the poor guy in terrible situations. It’s funny, I promise.
Concept 3
Spaced out!
A lens featuring oddly curious and funky pet aliens – your new companions aiming to add a dose of humour and creativity to your everyday life.
This crayon-inspired lens overlays your reality with a playful twist, placing quirky extraterrestrial creatures on their new home: your face!
chosen direction
After pitching and discussing with the Art Director in a one-on-one meeting, the first pitch 'Moody Mushrooms' was picked to move forwards with due to the charming art style and possibility to create humorous situations compared to the other two, which feel more static from the frame alone.
From here comes the long process of experimenting with Lens Studio, seeing what works and what doesn't. I personally have never explored this facet of Motion Design before, so it was both a struggle and extremely fun to figure out what was possible! I started out with little sketches to imagine the characters sizing once more, and simple still images as placeholders before moving on to animated GIFs before settling on the final format to port into Lens Studio.
For the character designs I wanted to make it warm, cosy and inviting, so I decided on a pumpkin-toned orange for the first, bigger character and a complementary teal tone for the smaller one to make them look more like a pair! The shape language is very rounded and soft too, leaning into the cute look to possibly make even more hilarious situational humour by contrasting that cuteness against weird situations.
At this stage, one issue I found was a function where the image would automatically face the viewer - this made the lens extra glitchy, so I nixed it and felt like the flatness also made it funnier.
development time! ✨
first pass
For my first pass, I brought what was in my pitched styleframe into the actual Lens Studio program itself to create a functioning mockup of what could be the filter. All these shots are captured within the Snapchat app, using captioning and filter stacking features within the app itself. I decided to taste out the viability of making humorous pictures myself and shared them with my friends, and the general consensus was that yes, these silly little guys were indeed, funny to look at. Yay, moderate success! But still, got a lot to work on.
feedback + notes
DESIGN
- Colours sometimes feel muddy against the background - change the colours to be more saturated and have more contrast to work against a variety of backdrops
ANIMATION
- Add more personality (with a loose story) by animating the mushrooms in a playful manner
TECHNICAL
- Fix the bugs in the current AR filter, such as incorrect scaling, collision issues, glitches etc.
- Add interactivity in tandem to the planned animation e.g. tapping -> an action, sound effect, etc.
I also got some advice from my Art Director at this stage to explore the mushrooms' personalities more, as the dead-eyed blank slates can only keep one's attention for so long.
He suggested infusing facets of my own personality and the dynamics I have with my partner, friends and family within these two silly creatures, so I happily went back to the drawing board to come up with some funkier animation ideas! When drawing up these new ideas, I also kept an inspiration board handy of some references of internet humor to keep in line with the generation's sense of fun, which I hope shows in these sketches.
second pass
From my tinkering around with Lens Studio, I was able to add a function where you could spawn in all the characters at once, then slowly tap between different duos to make for more tailored scenes. I also made the move to make the characters in After Effects instead of hand-drawing each frame, as my initial cel-animated GIF from Procreate took much too long time for the amount of animation I wanted to do.
The lower frame rate and painterly style through texture overlays helped sell the look, even if it was animated through tweening. With this submission, I also added some more instances in which I thought the characters could be used, integrating Snap's pre-installed music node & filter layering system to add more colour via a custom LUT and grain filter into the frame.
feedback + notes
DESIGN
- Start designing the icon for the filter picking menu - ensure that it showcases both characters in a playful yet clear manner, perhaps look into using the 0.5x camera/fisheye distortion to make it more humorous
ANIMATION
- Add more blinking, more exaggerated motions and more personality to both mushrooms, with one of the sprites being especially active in comparison to the other more ambient/still sprites
- Work on creating a pitch video, with more emphasis on making it straightforward, eye-catching and snappy
TECHNICAL
- Make sure there's no clipping into the surface of the ground plane when the sprite is animated
