An Instagram account has created over 20 camera filters through which users can play around with their visages
Alex Anpilogov and Stacey Dsylva
One afternoon, while swiping through the stories of people we follow on Instagram (IG), we noticed a few friends posting selfies with a filter that gives them a "scribble face". The fan-made effect is an outline of a white face that overlays your own — a tribute to British electronic duo Disclosure, also among our favourite artistes. And a tag reveals the account behind this sudden gush of people trying out new filters.
Wrudrow is a London-based duo comprising Alex Anpilogov, a creative technologist, and Stacey Dsylva, a marketing director originally from Mumbai. While Dsylva was already working on IG projects, Anpilogov had been experimenting with camera effects on Facebook (FB) last summer. So, when IG's offering went into beta testing, he was able to join the first wave of creators. With over 25,000 followers, they have now made over 20 face filters that users can unlock just by following them. And it's amazing to see just how quickly this is loaded onto your camera — it takes mere seconds.
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Talking about the procress, they tell us, "While these filters may seem like just another entertainment feature, they represent a form of an emerging technology called augmented reality (AR). In a nutshell, AR combines the real-world environment with computer-generated imagery. For this to work well, computers need to be able to understand our world without much guidance from us humans. To enable the creation of filters, FB (the owner of IG) built a dedicated platform called Spark AR. It is a suite of creation and publishing tools that allows anyone to begin creating their own
camera effects."
The filter is a tribute to British electronic duo Disclosure
According to Anpilogov and Dsylva, with decreasing attention spans, these filters are effective in capturing people's attention. "Behind a simple face filter, there is a lot of technology that enables your mobile device to understand the geometry of your face, its movement, and expressions. It is because of this technology that you can try out different shades of lipstick or pick a new hairstyle — all on your phone and with decent precision. By using your phone's back-camera, you could check if that couch that you wanted to purchase fits in your living room or see a three-dimensional overlay on top of your washing machine telling you how to clean the filter," they explain.
Noted VJ Zerxes Wadia tries the Zerx-it filter
With over 100 ideas in the bank, the duo maintains that this is just the beginning. Contemplating the future, they assert, "Today we are augmenting our faces with puppy masks using our mobile phones. But a decade later, we'll have everything from news to entertainment embedded into the world around us through smartglasses."
LOG ON TO www.instagram.com/wrudrow (To try out the different filters)
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