Antoine Boucher

Snapchat Lens Creator

Updated May 2026 with current Lens Insights figures. I started making Snapchat lenses for fun in 2017 and ended up with a small Fiverr side business, a utility other creators still use, and a phone call with Snapchat about Lens Studio. Version française.

By the numbers (Lens Insights)

To date, my lenses have accumulated 13.97M plays, 20.38M views, 711.8k shares, 10,092 favorites, 753 posts, and 428 unique posters (all-time, Lens Insights). Plays and views are not the same metric — a lens can be opened once but watched multiple times — so I look at both when a client asks “did it work?”

Between 2017 and 2020 I shipped 42 lenses for myself and for clients. Standouts by usage:

LensRough plays
Go Crazy Facetime~2.9M
Face Ghosting~1.2M
BIG SMILE~520k

Snapchat’s audience tools also frame the ecosystem: a reported ~596M–623M potential audience for lens users, with strong reach in India and the United States, and device mix roughly Android (~70%) vs iOS (~30%). That split matters when you test only on your own phone.

How I got started

Lens Studio was approachable before ARKit jargon was everywhere: face tracking, simple materials, publish to Snapchat. My first lenses were jokes for friends — face swaps, exaggerated expressions — then I noticed the metrics tab and started treating each release like a tiny product launch (thumbnail, preview video, one clear hook).

Fiverr workflow

Paid work followed the same pipeline:

  1. Brief — reference video or competitor lens, target vibe, deadline.
  2. Prototype — greybox in Lens Studio, send screen recording before polish.
  3. Review cycles — Snapchat review plus client taste (often stricter than Snapchat).
  4. Delivery — publish under their account or mine, depending on contract.

I kept a short reject checklist per lens: licensed audio, readable thumbnail at phone size, effect triggers on the intended face region, and a 10-second preview that shows the hook without explanation. That list saved more client arguments than any shader tweak.

Pricing stayed modest; the learning was scope control and revision limits. The worst projects were “make it viral” with no creative direction.

When review said no

Not every submission cleared Snapchat review or client approval. Common fails: copyrighted audio, unclear lens purpose, performance on low-end Android, or effects that trigger on the wrong face region. Each rejection became a checklist item for the next build — I kept a short notes file per lens.

GIF / video → PNG sequences

Lens Studio wants image sequences for many effects. I wrote a small utility to turn GIF or video into PNG sequences for pipeline work; other Lens Studio creators picked it up too.

GIF/Video to PNG for Lens Studio

That tool saved more time than any single visual trick — batch export beats screenshotting frames by hand.

Lens Studio product feedback

Snapchat called by phone to collect Lens Studio feedback from active creators. I shared friction I hit daily: project load times, preview fidelity vs phone, documentation gaps for shader-adjacent features. It felt good to be heard even when not every note shipped.

Meta Spark next

I want to go deeper on Meta Spark for cross-platform AR. Official hub: Spark AR / Meta Spark learn. If you have tutorials that map cleanly from a Lens Studio mental model, I am collecting recommendations.

Takeaway

AR lenses were my first experience shipping creative work to millions of anonymous users with real analytics — closer to product than to portfolio art. The skills transfer elsewhere: tight loops, device testing, graceful failure when platforms change rules.