2021 through Creators’ eyes: personal milestones and hopes for 2022

Gijs Wahl

This year I’m most proud of filters such as Eclipse, The Sun Is An Old Friend, I Love Photoshops, etc that have found a large public and that seems to make people move. I daily scroll through reels of people all over the world using it to dance, party, sport, and many other activities. It is effects like this, more than say the more technically complex ones I’ve done, that changed my perception of how AR is a very different form of art, that is upsetting the traditional hierarchies between artist and viewer. I believe we are entering a form of art that is so much more dynamic in its relation between maker and user.

JP Pirie

Proudest: reaching a big number of views of my AR art ON SNAP (5bn). Receiving and CREATING lenses for the latest generation of ‘Spectacles’ from snap chat.

Florencia Raffa

I’m proud of my improvement of characters filters. I love the fairy collection and the Gollum. I think there I made what I’m imagined…I always imagined characters but since the last challenge I think I improved

Don Allen III

My Proudest Achievement in AR was the full-body tracking fashion/avatars through lens studio. They reached the most amount of people I have ever had in my whole AR career at well over 10 million people 🤩

Olga Isupova

My favorite achievement this year is starting the creation of complicated AR world effects with a concept and 3d assets that are built on my own.

Chris Pelk

Gosh, I always find that a difficult question. So much fun happens in a year. I have the luxury of making many effects for music artists and record labels. I think out of those effects I liked the ‘Diamonds or coal’ Spark AR effect the most. I made that one for my talented friends Ariel Bellvalair & Thomas T. Hunter. And besides working with them the most fun was because it contained so much craziness (flying guinea pig, rock & roll) and complexity. On the other hand, I also really liked creating a race effect for the Dutch Grand Prix. But that’s more because I think F1 racing is a cool sport haha

Roman Pillai

My journey in AR has been life-changing. Throughout 2021, I had amazing opportunities to work with big brands and studios around the world. My most memorable work that I’m super proud of is the filter I did for Lenslist 50 called Joyride! It was very challenging but I learned so many new techniques, tricks, and explored a bit of render passes too

Anastassiya Marchenko

I was named Snap AR Lens Ambassador, had the opportunity to work for major digital apparel and accessory brands, and had the opportunity to make lenses for real clothing brands.

Maxim Kuzlin

My AR achievement in 2021 was to get to know more creators and collaborate on tons of projects for Instagram, becoming Lens Studio Ambassador and right now testing new AR capabilities on TikTok!

Denis Rossiev

This year was truly hard-working for me! So many of them! Though I had the honor to work with brands such as Farfetch, Daniel Wellington, Forbes, Elie Saab, and more!

Alex Bradt

My favorite project was a collaboration with Trigger XR to make some incredibly innovative Snap lenses for Marvel. The technology included AR Machine Learning, 3D hand controls and audio interactions. My favorite mechanic was a custom screen segmentation feature used in the Antman lens. Using machine learning, this feature would detect certain objects (donut, pizza, etc) and expand their size on your camera screen.

Diamonds or Coal
by arielbellvalaire

’50’ by Roman Pillai
by lens.list

Gijs Wahl

AR has changed from a fun way to alter your appearance into a full-blown medium for design as well as art. AR is not an addition, I feel it is on an equal footing with any other reality. And the real magic happens in the contact between these realities rather than by replacing one with the other. AR is not world-building (such as VR), it is world-changing!

JP Pirie

AR is gearing up to
A: escape the social media app ecosystem, Camera Kit from snap is a massive game-changer it means lens studio experts can use their skills outside Snapchat ( in saying it’ll be more than social apps where the technology can be used) webAR will grow massively too
B: the industry is gearing up for Ar glasses which are improving by the day – glasses represent a lot of change for Ar designers, Ui and UX is very different

Florencia Raffa

AR for me is in the beginning and there are many things to discover, we are part of these changes, and I know it will be growing. We still need to create to discover new ways to make AR. This year I was surprised by the fast-growing, amazing, and inspiring, and we built something so big that I’m super proud to be part of this!

Don Allen III

AR has changed from being primarily focused on people’s faces and experiences on them to being more about world-facing experiences.

Olga Isupova

AR becomes more interesting and comprehensive mostly thanks to the development of each individual creator.

Chris Pelk

2021 has been the year when the novelty of lenses, effects, and filters has worn off a bit. I notice that I have to explain less and less to clients what AR can mean for their company. On the other hand, a lot of cool new features have been released. For example, features that go hand in hand with new hardware options such as Lidar scanning. Or full-body scanning, which I still find a bit shaky to work with, but has been a big step.

Roman Pillai

These days I’m seeing a lot of online education courses, free workshops, and most importantly contests being hosted. It’s a bit overwhelming for me to hear all this buzz around me but I’m very slow to adapt to change. If 2020 for AR in my experience was a small town, 2021 for AR will become a big metropolitan city with Spark AR Go coming soon for mobile applications. Now has never been a more important time to truly stick out from the rest in terms of ideas, quality, and client relationship since this market is going to get saturated in 2022 as per my expectations.

Anastassiya Marchenko

This year, AR has changed from a chrysalis to a butterfly, not yet fully mature, but already strong enough to boggle people’s minds, delight, and amaze them with its capabilities. The creators this year are no longer limited to filters and lenses just for the face, now they create full-length images. You can interact with augmented reality objects just by touching them with your hand, and it’s amazing.

Denis Rossiev

We’ve seen all the technological leaps made by Meta, Snap, TikTok, and dozens of other platforms and startups. But what’s more important, and what’s hard to notice, is a slow yet steady, inconspicuous mass adoption.
People use AR more and more: from social AR filters to digital try-ons, from engineering and medical apps to augmenting art in museums.
Who said AR hype ended in 2020? It’s not even begun.

Alex Bradt

I feel that the public image of AR has shifted in 2021 into something more tangible. In the past, the future of AR felt murky and fractured, but today, every major tech company has an AR department with a goal.
Companies are beginning to lay out their visions of what AR will become. Meta wants to build a curated metaverse that includes AR, while companies like Niantic have a dream of a completely AR metaverse in the real world. While these are still concepts for the time being, they allow for creators to have a singular mission to build towards.

Elements of Nature
by danielwellington

ECLIPSE
by gijswahl

Gijs Wahl

I’m very interested to see more and more experimental explorations of possible digital infrastructures, architecture, and means to navigate, and what new shapes these may take in the metaverse.
Besides this, I would also like to see a growing interest and more opportunities to develop AR as a full-blown art form in itself so that there will be new ways to exhibit, sell and share this new type of art. I would love to see more free and open spaces that inspire experimentation, freethinking, and philosophizing, and give the means to reflect on contemporary digital culture and politics through art.

JP Pirie

AR for social change and education, I want to democratize learning through AR

Florencia Raffa

I love to make characters more real, with more details in the textures, so maybe I want to explore more of the shaders….and also improve the drawings to make my characters a little more real, also I love to learn js to make games a little more complex, and teach to the beginners or people that want to make their own filters

Don Allen III

One theme from AR that I would like to explore in 2022 is bulk uploading where instead of uploading one filter at a time some way to upload hundreds at one time. Especially avatars

Olga Isupova

I want to explore a new post-humanistic theme about how a new person will look like, how people can identify themselves through AR. Also, it would be amazing to build my own AR-world with surrealistic creatures and a beautiful environment.

Chris Pelk

For 2022 I’m very curious what the release of Apple Glasses will do for the AR industry. It could be the boost we are waiting for. A boost that will make AR more mainstream.
What are you hoping to see in terms of Spark AR/Lens Studio features in 2022? I hope Spark AR will take an example from some of the features Snapchat introduced at Lens Fest 2021. Like ‘World Mesh’, ’real-time data integrations’ & ‘Connected Lenses’.

Roman Pillai

Honestly, I’m not the type who follows trends nor creates them. I’ve had some success with creating popular meme filters and I look forward to doing more of them. They are fun to do, but more importantly, I’d like to explore new and fun ideas instead of sticking with what I do best; creating high-quality filters. I want to get my hands dirty a bit, even if it means not making something of my usual standard. I hope all artists out there don’t get burnt out by sticking to one thing that they do best, try and go out of your comfort zone!

Anastassiya Marchenko

I’m attracted to machine learning, I see the development of AR in social media specifically through ML.
Another interesting thing is augmented reality glasses, which could fundamentally change the AR industry in 2022, and I would love to be a part of that.

Maxim Kuzlin

In my opinion, we are going to see more AR fashion-related stuff, like the ability to buy digital clothes. Also, I’m hoping to get more AR glasses so we can experience new AR trends!

Denis Rossiev

The global trend of 2022 is definitely the “Metaverse”. A worldwide idea of every-layer linking. From devices and services to the people, their ideas, emotions, and feelings. How AR rolls here?
Augmented reality is the only thing that actually binds together physical and digital worlds, and this connection will become stronger and stronger.
Phygital and pure digital AR clothing, interactive art, real-time avatars will be the biggest trends of 2022.

Alex Bradt

There are 2 areas I would like to explore in 2022

Machine Learning: I would love to see more use cases for Machine Learning in AR. GoSpooky created a really cool technology that detects and tracks 3D objects. The addition of ML trained custom occlusion on 3D objects makes the AR feel connected to the world in an incredibly unique way. I think we have only scratched the surface for how ML can be integrated into AR.

Custom Landmark Tracking: At MousePack we want to create a singular connected AR world where users can view the same experience in the same physical space. Snap is rolling out custom landmarks, in which creators can scan a physical location with Lidar, and then create a custom experience for that physical location. Personally, I’ve done this in the past by building experiences that track on to the Flatiron building and the Statue of Liberty, but I would love to start creating these experiences en masse for storefronts and historical locations.

Versace Gold Armor
by donalleniii

Flora Fairy
by florenciaraffa1980

Gijs Wahl

I’d love to explore all experimental tools that can help in developing architecture & infrastructure for the metaverse, such as object spawning and Lidar or other depth measuring techniques (some are already in Lensstudio); 3d body tracking; machine learning to be able to segment and use many different shapes and objects; further 3d integration with the professional external apps.
To help the young AR establish itself as an art form, I’d be interested to see larger portability of effects outside of their platforms, through NFT or other technology, so they may exist independently and can be owned, exhibited, shared, or sold.

JP Pirie

Lens studio never fails to bring really cool functionality and with regularity, at the moment it’s hard to keep up! So many possibilities, they’ve just introduced physics, I’ve wanted this for ages. Ls is so feature-packed I’ll just wait to see what they’ll surprise me with – I can’t fault the engineering team they are smashing it!
With Spark I’d like to see them up their game, for me, they always seem quite far behind in terms of the offering, the features and functionality don’t roll out as fast as Snap. I’d like to see more starter templates in Spark in the future.

Florencia Raffa

In spark I love to see improvements in the performance, also I love to have more features like a bare head, or in hand tracking more details in the fingers to put a ring or a bracelet, also the 3D body tracking to make characters…
In Snapchat, I don’t have a lot of experience, but maybe the animation is easier, I have an issue with the animations there (with the behaviors and tweenings).

Don Allen III

I really want to see them both support full-body tracking as awesome as Lens Studio. I would love it if we were able to export the tracking data out to use it on other platforms

Olga Isupova

I want to see the improvement of the file size on both platforms and more stable work of the plane tracker in Spark AR.

Roman Pillai

I’d like to see some more robust rendering tools added into Spark AR. Little things like dynamic shadows, screen-space reflections, ambient occlusion, simple physics, etc. Perhaps maybe even increase the texture size limit to 2048×2048 and increase the overall filter size. Lens Studio on the other hand has a very robust and impressive toolset & features, I just wish some of them could be replicated in Spark.

Anastassiya Marchenko

What do you hope to see in terms of Spark AR/Lens Studio features in 2022? I anticipate that I will continue to evolve towards fashion, and as a creator I want clothes and accessories to fit neatly on the shape and oval of the face, hopefully in 2022 machine learning will reach that level on both platforms.

Maxim Kuzlin

I hope that Spark AR / Lens Studio teams will come up with more capabilities and new ways to support AR creators, because right now we don’t receive enough attention, like the rest of Creators who actually use our art in content creation.

Denis Rossiev

Spark AR and Lens Studio both have their pros and cons, not only as a software but also as a platform and its audience.

Alex Bradt

Here is Alex’s feature wishlist for 2022:

OLD-FOES
by jp pirie

Butterfly cloth
by Anastassiya Marchenko

Gijs Wahl

I hope in 2022 cooperation, mutual inspiration, and excitement for the future will prevail. I hope all the mind-blowing new possibilities and opportunities will make everyone realize we are all in this together. I hope the metaverse will not inspire a run for land to be occupied before someone else does as if the land already exists. Instead, I hope in 2022 we will realize we are not just witnessing the birth of this new territory, but we are together actively creating its conception, its future shapes, and capabilities. This new space will only come to life through our own creativity, cooperation, and inspiration. I wish for the new digital-physical hybrid to be cross-culture and cross-company borders, and our community to be one of the neo-cosmopolitans.

JP Pirie

I like to wish them the best of luck, keep working hard and I’d like to tell them they are on the correct path – AR is the next major development in tech it represents a revolution just like the smartphone has (and is).

Florencia Raffa

love to share and be nice with creators, I love to see more like that, we are a team here, are a virtual family and I love to help and be helped! So for next year, I would love to see more unions!

Don Allen III

I wish that the community will start to partner up with more NFT and crypto projects and help push that as a priority for augmented reality creation. I believe that is the core way that we are going to be able to fund this space and it’s only gonna happen if there are more collaborations in there

Olga Isupova

I wish everybody to continue the enhancement of their skills, find their way in the industry, and be friendly as always.

Chris Pelk

What would you like to wish the Community for in the upcoming year?
I wish the community a lot of creativity and inventiveness. This ensures fun. Fun ensures good products and good products sell. 😉

Roman Pillai

I welcome all the new artists who are going to be joining throughout 2022 thanks to Meta shining a spotlight on AR in general. It’s a very normal thing for the industry to mature and I wish the existing community and my AR friends the very best of luck in your journey to stand out in the next wave of artist influx.

Anastassiya Marchenko

I’d like to say that we’ve only just opened the door to AR. And I see a lot of promising people who are interested in AR, but don’t know how to take their place in this niche, because it’s just huge. My advice, just be yourself, don’t look at other people’s victories, but go after your dream, because ar is a whole world, whereas in life you can do what you love.

Maxim Kuzlin

I would love to wish the community lots of inspiration and also lots of vacation because we worked a lot this year for sure. 😊

Denis Rossiev

I want to speak with you about something very personal. About that feeling when you wake up in the morning, open your feed, start scrolling and see these 20 new groundbreaking projects. And immediately get depressed because you did nothing, lol.
Yes, I feel this too. And you know what? Slow down. Take a breath. There are thousands of talented creators. There will be more. And it’s just impossible to keep up with everyone. Observe, get inspired, develop ideas. Keep your own way, do your own art.
And remember: we’re just getting started!!

Alex Bradt

My wish is that the AR community continues to innovate. Big tech companies like Snap and Meta are creating new technologies every month. It’s our job as creators to take those features and blaze a trail for the next evolution of AR.

Only Time
by maximkuzlin

Can you hear me?
by visualize.mee