News: Instagram Creators Launch Filters for Harry Potter, Pokémon & Simpsons Characters in Augmented Reality

The developer who gained notoriety for his What Disney Are You? augmented reality filter on Instagram is striking again while the iron is hot.

This time around, content creator Arno Partissimo has brewed up a version of the filter for Harry Potter fans via Spark AR, Facebook's platform for augmented reality camera effects.

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Dubbed Which Wizard House?, the new filter starts with an AR halo of golden snitches circling the user's head before a virtual sorting hat drops into view. Abracadabra, hocus pocus, and the wizard house is revealed!

Partissimo has some company in the Potterverse game, though. Instagram user syilers, who previously put together the eerily realistic Joker filter, created Harry Potter Test, which, like Partissimo's Disney filter, randomly assigns a Potterverse character to the user.

She may have surpassed Partissimo in popularity as far as Harry Potter filters go, with more shares on Twitter under a search for "Harry Potter Instagram." For some rear-camera fun, she has also created a camera effect that puts fan favorite elf Dobby into the user's camera view.

As far as character filters go, though, the sorting hat just seems to be more on brand. For another alternative on sorting hat filters, Instagram user _vasilisova has conjured one fittingly titled Sorting Hat. That version has a unique twist, as it displays character traits for the house before revealing the user's allegiance.

The AR fun has spilled over to other intellectual property as well. Instagram user hughessp1 has created filters that assign Simpsons and Pokémon characters to anyone willing to spin the AR wheel of chance. The Pokémon camera effect was sampled publicly by none other than pop singer and AR marketer Ariana Grande (see images below).

To try any of the camera effects mentioned here for yourself, the best approach is to search for the Instagram user's name and then click on the camera effect icon (smiley face with sparkles) among the feed options. Or, to discover the next big character-driven AR filter before it goes viral, you can scroll to the "browse effects" option in the app's AR carousel, and then scroll to the "fandom" section.

Is the growth of viral AR experiences on Instagram a sign that the Spark AR platform is surpassing Snapchat's Lens Studio for developer preference? It's too early to tell, but it's a competition worth keeping an eye on for sure.