AR-e you game?

Mihir Madhav Lapalikar and Insha Padania

If you are even remotely active on Instagram, chances are that you've tried at least one of the countless Augmented Reality (AR) filters that identify which Friends character you are, find the right moustache for your face, or add a graduation cap on your head, among a million other things. Although filters have been around for a while, last year, the platform opened up its Spark AR studio to anyone who wishes to create their own. With people spending more time online during the lockdown in India, these filters have been getting their own localised versions. For instance, within days of Gu Christopher's gibberish filter going viral, there were Tamil and Bengali versions. If you open the story feature on the app and slide over to the browse effects option, you'll find that Indian AR creators are moving beyond the usual photo effects to come up with filters that engage with the desi community.

Lockdown skill
AR filters are computer-generated effects that are superimposed on real-life images. Bored of scrolling through his social media feed, 20-year-old Mihir Madhav Lapalikar, a BMM student and a graphic designer, decided to try his hand at a new skill. "I was introduced to AR filters back when Snapchat used to be cool. Inspired by beatboxer Vice World Loopstation Champion Inkie's filter, I decided to create my own for the beatboxing community in Mumbai," says Lapalikar, whose filter randomly chooses a beatboxers's name for the user, who has to then copy their style.

Smriti Jha, Ashlen Singh and Anjali Asok

Twenty-six-year-old digital marketing professional Insha Padania says she made a filter on types of Mumbaikars as she felt the need to be creatively productive during this time. "Initially, I thought that AR filters could be made only by brands or required engineering. Then, I came across a filter about my school. A quick search led me to tutorials to use Spark AR and I ended up making my first filter," she adds. Her filter generates 50 random results, ranging from 'the one who visits Lalbaugcha Raja each year' to 'the one who knows the best vada pav stalls in the city'.

Local twist
Instead of looking outside, Indian creators are taking inspiration from their own cultural trends. Take for instance, 20-year-old journalism student Smriti Jha, who gave Christopher's filter a Bollywood spin. "I really liked the reactions to the gibberish filter and thought of making an Indian version, and who doesn't love Bollywood? Within hours, celebrities like Armaan Malik, Gauhar Khan, Kaneez Surka, and many others were using it. It's got 60 million users," says Jha. Inspired by the Prime Minister's recent address to the nation, Padania made another filter that prompts the user to learn "shuddh Hindi".

Others like Ashlen Singh, an aspiring filmmaker from Kolkata, and Anjali Asok, a 23-year-old architect from Kochi, looked at the feature as a way to tap into community tropes. Speaking about his filter, titled Which Calcutta stereotype are you, Singh says, "The idea was to appeal to the nostalgia and emotion towards common Bengali terms that people associate with. It was a way to reach out to all those away from home." Asok's creation, Mallu Auntie's opinion about you, has her very own comic character rattle off judgment about the user. "Mallu aunties and their many opinions are a common trope in Kerala. It got six million impressions with celebrities like Nyla Usha, Ranjini Haridas and Mrudula Murali sharing it."

Tech talk
All you need is a PC to download Spark AR, along with some basic designing skills, the creators tell us. "If designing seems daunting, websites like Canva give you editable design templates," Padania adds. Asok urges first-timers to refer to tutorials before trying the software. "My filter contained 20 slides. The total size of the filter must be below 4MB. Once you're done making it, export the file to the AR studio hub, from where it goes to Instagram for the review," she says. Instagram takes between a few hours and 10 days to respond. "If your filter gets rejected, Instagram is kind enough to point out the exact detail that needs to be rectified. You can hook up your phone to the PC to keep viewing how your filter looks. Download and sync the Spark AR Play app," says Padania. The creators' common advice for first-timers: keep it simple, relatable and try to offer a few laughs in these testing times.

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