#ToonMe is taking over social media, and we're loving it

By Jim McCauley
last updated

Here's our pick of the best cartoon-enhanced selfies from social media's hottest art challenge.

#ToonMe
(Image credit: Instagram)

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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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.

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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:

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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).

Join us in London for our unmissable event for 2D and 3D artists, featuring workshops from 20+ professional artists from film, video games, VFX and illustration. Book now: http://www.vertexconf.com

Join us in London for our unmissable event for 2D and 3D artists, featuring workshops from 20+ professional artists from film, video games, VFX and illustration. Book now: http://www.vertexconf.com (opens in new tab) (Image credit: Future)
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Jim McCauley
Jim McCauley

Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.

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