Today my niece came to visit and she bought hair makeup doll with her. I watch the doll and I asked myself whether there is a makeup salon app like that in augmented reality? Well, I found one, and it’s called Makeup Salon – AR. Makeup Salon is an ARKit augmented reality game for kids.
Makeup Salon is an ARKit augmented reality game for kids. You can beautify a 3D model placed right in front them in the real world. The game features only one model, but of course you can make many changes to her look, including changing the color around her eyes (it’s called an eyeliner if I am not mistaken), you can use a lipstick to change the color of her lips, change her hairstyle, change the color of her eyes and use face blush makeup to change the color tone of her cheeks.
You can see how this app plays in this video.
I first played with it myself, but what I understand about that. After checking all the feature, I called my nieces to play with it. She was actually beside me all the time, she wanted to try it out herself and even ask me what’s the name of the app so she can download it for herself when she’s home.
She really enjoyed playing it, but I felt that she wanted to have more interactions. When you scroll the different makeover features it just repeats itself. I personally think that it would be better to have an option to use colors to paint the doll, rather than just pressing buttons to apply different makeup options.
I think one of the fun aspects of a having a makeup salon doll is that you get really get crazy with it and even as an adult, I like to see what my niece is doing with it. Here, take a look at her real doll and see what I mean.
Now here is the augmented reality (AR) doll alongside my niece’s makeup doll head.
Well, you can see that the virtual doll is far less detailed than the real one, but at least you get to have it in a very large size without needing to carry her around.
Another nice feature includes a nice confetti particle effect when you change her appearance and a photo mode which let you capture a photo of your doll without the user interface.
Here is an example how the makeup salon doll looks in the photo mode.
I just asked my niece what she thinks about this Makeup salon app that she just played with and she said: “I love it, it’s really nice.“. She also asked me the exact name so she can download it to her laptop at home.
Well, I guess Makeup Salon AR passed my Niece test and I assume many girls will love playing with it as well. By the way, she was much more ecstatic when she played with the AR movie maker app Vixeo. I guess with more interesting interactions to express her creativity she would have enjoyed it more. She loves painting and she also loves painting her makeup doll. This app didn’t give her that option, it was just tapping on buttons and I think this after a short time got her a bit bored and she went to watch the movie E.T. on the TV.
I think that the model lacked facial expression. To be honest, it looked quite scary with her big opened eyes. It didn’t look natural. If you look at the real doll, you see that she has a nice smile and natural facial expression, not the virtual doll. Maybe adding an option to change the face expression or toning it to make it look less awkward. The doll does blink every few seconds by the way.
Makeup Salon is an ARKit iOS 11 app which is available on the App Store for free. Just keep in mind that you’ll need an ARKit compatible iPhone or iPad mobile device to run it.