An Alberta dad is among a handful of developers in all of Canada collaborating with Snapchat.
“Snapchat opened up this program called the Official Lens Creator Program and they chose 150 people from around the world to be a part of this program,” Aaron Clifford said. “For this first project — which they called Project Spector — they chose only six of those 150 to be a part of it and to create new lenses for Halloween.”
Clifford, a senior producer at KOVR — the augmented reality/virtual reality division of Edmonton production house KO Group — created a lens called Soul Selector.
“I sort of realized that it reflects my personal experience with Halloween in that I never really have a good idea of whether I want to go with the bright, happy fun costume or the really scary, dark costume,” he said. “Every year, you end up having to make that choice.
“I thought, ‘Well, I have the opportunity here where you don’t have to make that choice’ — you can just tilt your head to one side or the other and become one or the other.”
Since being introduced last weekend at a conference at Snapchat’s headquarters in Santa Monica, Soul Selector has been viewed about 2.3 million times as of Wednesday.
“To have that sort of feedback from people on Snapchat is really satisfying and it’s really a neat way to get your creative vision out there,” Clifford said.
Clifford has created dozens of other lenses for the company but Soul Selector is his first paid project.
“It was about two and a half, almost three weeks, and we worked directly with Snapchat, with their marketing team and their creatives,” he said.
“We had weekly check-ins where we documented the process of creating the lens for them and got their artistic feedback on it.”
He also received a lot of feedback from his kids. Clifford has twin eight-year-old daughters and a 10-year-old son. They tested out the lenses and even designed some of their own.
“They just love working with them,” he said. “Because the Snapchat Lens Studio is such a creative platform, I’ve had them just drawing up their own faces — like masks — so that we can implement them, so they can build their own lenses. It’s just really fun.”
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While a father of three from Edmonton may not be what most people picture when they think of a Snapchat developer, Clifford thinks that’s kind of the point.
“This is an accessible platform that anyone can play with. When you have the right kind of idea and execute it well, a lot of people can find value in your creation,” he said.
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