TikTok

3D Experience Designer, Project Manager

I lead the development of AR creative tools that empower users to tell stories on TikTok. During production I oversee and contribute to asset creation, UX design, and engine integration while leading several collaborators. In 2021, I spearheaded the Immersive Music Creative Effects initiative which introduced music reactive effects in a dedicated "Music" tab in the TikTok Creative Effects tray.

Horrify - Creating a Viral Effect

3D Experience Designer

POV

Reverse

Lip Sync

Horrify is a creative tool I launched that exaggerates a user's smile while segmenting them out from the background and applying red pupils. It earned viral levels of usage in United States and other countries.

I designed the 3D face deformation and worked with engineers and designers to fine-tune the reactivity of the effect. I overcame our 3D face deformation technology limitations by implementing creative light-weight solutions.

For this effect, I wanted the smile to be extremely exaggerated to push the scary impact of the visuals. During production, we ran into limitations with the current 3D deformation algorithm.

Our effect has several states:

1. closed mouth - no smile

2. closed mouth - smile

3. open mouth - no smile

4. open mouth - smile

However, such an exaggerated blendshape applied to the face would create artifacts in the mouth area when users smiled but kept their mouths closed. This is due to the fact that, when users smiled but kept their mouth closed, their lip texture was the only available texture to stretch over the "opened mouth" area of the blendshape.

To combat this problem, I created a unique blendshape for each "closed mouth" and "open mouth" states.

The "closed mouth" blendshape would have a slightly less exaggerated smile that cleaned up the artifacts around the mouth. If users smiled without opening their mouths, the deformation would be controlled by the "closed mouth" blendshape.

If users opened their mouth, then the effect would seemlessly blend into the "open mouth" blendshape, resulting in a much more exaggerated final look and smooth transition.

Not only did this creative solution solve our issues with visual artifacting, it also did not require additional new algorithms and allowed us to finish this effect on time. Users really enjoyed the exaggerated look of this creative tool and earned us almost 2 million videos in the United States.

Horrify

3D Experience Designer

Maryyann Crichton

2D Experience Designer

Michelle Catalanotto

Interactive Engineer

Runjia Tian

Interactive Engineer

August Yadon

Immersive Music Creative Effects Initiative

Project Manager

Music Visualizer

Helmet Visualizer

Music Machine

In Summer 2021, I spearheaded the Immersive Music Creative Effects initiative which introduced music reactive effects in a dedicated "Music" tab in the TikTok Creative Effects tray. With this initiative, we launched 6 different music creative tools and gained coverage on multiple news outlets such as Tech Crunch, Popline, and Social Media Today.

Official TikTok Newsroom teaser

Throughout the preparation for release, I led the brainstorm, visual direction, and integration for several music effects. I deligated tasks to various designers, connected necessary cross-functional teams, and maintained an efficient timeline. I collaborated with UI designers and Interactive Engineers to create a cohesive visual language used across all immersive music effects, helping users better identify new effect features.

To promote the initiative internally, I gave company-wide presentations explaining the novel interactive music reactive features, and bringing together cross-functional teammates to start new idea brainstorms.

To promote the initiative externally, I gave interviews with other collaborators to speak about our design pipeline and collaboration process. You can see the video below.