My LA Impression Snapchat lens exposes the image of Los Angeles from my point of view. The well-known Colorado Street Bridge pops up when you point the Snapchat lens toward you or a friend and open the mouth. Your mouth is the tunnel for the vehicles on the bridge toward or outward the movie-inspired wonderland, Los Angeles.
I cycled along the Arroyo Seco river every one or two weeks and passed under Colorado Street Bridge every time. It became the famous movie fan spot since the beloved musician movie La La Land. I was challenging myself for leaving an impression of Los Angeles and tuned out it is the bridge.
The bridge is the subject, and then the vehicles are naturally the characters in the story. Suddenly the scary memory of Luna Park in Sydney filled my mind. The entrance of Luna Park is the mouth of a giant joker, and it forms a strong anchor in my brain for the Australian journey years ago. When it applies to the lens creation, it implies the idea to drive through the tunnel, your mouth, toward or outward the wonderland of Los Angeles.
I used Blender to build the whole 3D scene and put them together into Lens Studio, Snap’s filter creation tool. To mimic the light bulbs’ glow effect, I added the billboard planes for each light bulb and textured them with a pre-made glowing map.
I also put a wedge-shape cylinder for each cars’ headlight and assigned them with the fade color map to render the headlight shining. See it in action in the below footage with open-mouth behavior and the cinematic post effect filter.
