Need Haircut AR Filter
Instagram story effect with 190K impressions.
TL:DR
Haircut is an essential part of life. No one wants to open their selfie camera and look dusty. Many people, including my mutuals, often bring their frustration of not having a haircut to social media, which subsequently ends up on my timeline.
Inspired by this phenomenon, I created Need Haircut AR so people can express this minor nuisance visually, on their face.
Performance
Due to some slight facial manipulation, it took Facebook over 7 months to approve my filter. Once approved, the filter took a few months before picking up any tration.
To date and without any promotion, the filter reached 189.8K impressions and 47.1K opens.
Making of
Having some experience with Unity, I was able to quickly pick up Spark AR Studio, Facebook’s augmented reality creator tool. To speed up the process, I simply superimposed the “need haircut” text onto the official facial template provided by Facebook. The Spark AR Studio then automatically applied over the face filter.
In order to make the text more visible, I introduced some minor facial tweaks such as skin smoothing and eye size. This decision led Facebook to delay my filter indefinitely as a part of their effort to tackle body image issue cause by exegerated filters, which affects all filters with facial manipulation no matter the degree.