“Everyone wants to have a cute makeup look for Halloween, that's where my filters come handy!” - Mika Pica, Digital Artist & TikTok Filter Creator
Remember the Habbo Face filter that went viral earlier this year?
Here’s a refresher.
Mika Pica, aka @tetedetamere, the creator that unlocked this core memory for 11 million users, is the same creative wizard behind TikTok’s latest surge of Halloween filters for makeup enthusiasts.
We had an Optix chat with Mika to talk about his Halloween filter series and learn a bit more about him and his creator journey.
Here’s how it went 👇🏽
Each holiday, I try to make a series of filters. I've seen that the trend "TikTok filters chose my makeup" was sparked by my filters, so I thought I'd give users new random makeup filters every season and every holiday.
The Halloween season is an amazing time for filter creators. We can create lots of spooky filters. Everyone wants to have a cute makeup look for Halloween, that's where my filters come handy!
When you use my random Halloween makeup filters, they’ll give you a cute Halloween makeup look to recreate! For these filters, I get my inspiration from horror movies and series. Seeing makeup artists recreate my makeup looks is a huge source of motivation for me!
People often ask me if I'm a makeup artist. I know I make a lot of makeup filters but no... I'm not a makeup artist.
But sometimes I like to say that I might be a digital makeup artist. I’ve always been interested in makeup. I follow what’s trending and other makeup artists around the world. But I never did makeup on myself or someone else. My way to give something to the makeup community was by creating makeup filters!
When I tell people that I'm a filter creator, everyone goes "wow that's amazing, must be difficult to do right?". My answer to that is anyone can create a filter. There are easy filters and there are harder filters to create. It really depends on the idea and the concept.
As a curious person, sometimes I create filters about stuff that I don't really know about. For example, I created a Minecraft filter... I'm ashamed to say that I actually never played Minecraft.
OMG! I can't answer that. But what I can say is that I love all my "random" filters because there were trends created with them!
My most popular filter is the "Habbo Face" filter. Which I didn't expect to go viral at all. Habbo was a huge part of my youth, I used to play Habbo for hours! So, I was really happy when I saw the filter blow up.
The one that took the longest for me to create was my Peppa filter. I had to illustrate everything. The clothes, the accessories, the mouths, the eyes... It took a long time, but it was relaxing to do.
Hard to say... new filters come out every day. When I create a filter, I don't really think about the trends that could happen. I just let the users do whatever they want with my filters. I just create the filter, and what comes next is up to the imagination of the users! And God knows, people are creative!
Filters are an extension of ourselves. We can see and experiment with a new reality. Every single person has their own experience using filters and that's one of the reasons I think making filters is amazing.
This experience as a filter creator is awesome. Effect House creators are really supportive and will not hesitate to help someone on a technical or conceptual level.
One time I was in a club partying with some friends and a random girl came to me and asked me if I was @tetedetamere the filter creator. I was surprised that people recognized me. We talked for 20 minutes, and she kept telling me that she loves my work. I owe her a lot... She was the one behind my Peppa filter. While we were talking, she suggested that I create a Peppa filter which I did. Thanks, random girl <3!
I like to surprise people. Every time I get to meet new people, I ask them if they use TikTok filters and try to find a filter of mine they used. And then I reveal that I'm the creator of it and they all go crazy about it. It's really fun to break the ice when meeting new people.
If you wanna keep tabs on what Mika’s working on next, you can check out his website at mikapica.ch, and follow him on TikTok or Instagram.
And if you’re interested in making your own rare Halloween looks inspired by your favorite aesthetics, you can use the Optix AI app to express yourself in any style you like, using only one photo.