We love a good creative challenge on social media, and right now there's one going on that presses all the right buttons.
The #ToonMe challenge was kicked off a couple of weeks ago (opens in new tab) by artist and illustrator René Córdova, and it's caught on big-time. We were alerted to it by a tweet from our old friend Ben the Illustrator, and since then we've fallen down an online rabbit hole of people all over the world partly overpainting selfies with cartoon versions of themselves.
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oh my god guys there is SO much goodness on #toonme. Work below by @viria13 @DVillefort @JuditMallol @starlandoo pic.twitter.com/tNOwaURQPzJanuary 22, 2020
The rules seem to be nice and simple: just snap a selfie (try to make it an exciting and expressive one), take it into your favourite art app and paint over part of your portrait in your own particular cartoon style. (If you're stuck you can always follow our guide on how to draw manga (opens in new tab), and check out our best iPad drawing apps (opens in new tab) for art app ideas.) Then post it on Twitter and Instagram with the #ToonMe and maybe #toonmechallenge hashtags attached. Sit back and watch the online adulation flood in.
Many people are putting some kind of dividing line down the centre of their faces to enhance the look, and extending the toon-ified area to take in some of the background, but from our adventures scrolling through hundreds of #ToonMe posts today we can safely say that the best approach is to go with whatever looks right to you.
Found that neato #toonme tag 👀 pic.twitter.com/egjWz7Us9AJanuary 17, 2020
If you need inspiration then there's an awful lot of it about; it's hard to keep up with the flood of #ToonMe posts right now, especially if you're viewing them on Twitter where it tends to crop the images and you have to click through for a better look. For a more relaxed viewing experience we'd recommend searching for the #ToonMe hashtag on Instagram, preferably on desktop.
As with any online creative challenge, the end results can be a bit mixed. There's plenty of great work on show, but you'll also have to scroll through your fair share of examples where, well, they probably tried their best and that's what matters, right?
To save you a bit of time, we've picked out some of our favourites from our online explorations:
hewwo i joined in #toonme 💀💀pls just move along i dont have other selfies and i hate taking one pic.twitter.com/y3gNRDAMGVJanuary 20, 2020
#ToonMe 💜✨SpeedPaint: https://t.co/uMdvwvqYwo pic.twitter.com/DWG1CC82jmJanuary 20, 2020
this hashtag is fun lol #toonme pic.twitter.com/B30dkDpHiXJanuary 20, 2020
I’m totally a late lemming but this #toonme trend seemed pretty fun, so I jumped aboard. #toonmechallenge pic.twitter.com/fLwAs0RXVFJanuary 21, 2020
did the #toonme challenge uwu pic.twitter.com/uTOGAkwSfMJanuary 20, 2020
I’m late but hey #toonme #toonmechallenge 🥴 pic.twitter.com/9HDZ3drFOUJanuary 22, 2020
Hello, I'm Genocide Error 👋#toonme #toonmechallenge #challenge pic.twitter.com/XhpmCut5bDJanuary 22, 2020
That all adds up to the teeniest #ToonMe amuse-bouche. For the full experience, hit up the hashtag on Twitter (opens in new tab) or Instagram (opens in new tab).
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