Cartoon Countryside Road Trip Clip — Instagram Filter Review

Published on Apr 12, 2019 | Filter name: "Country Trip"

Filter creator: Stefan Nitz (@makerlounge)

"Country Trip" is not a new filter, as of the time of writing this review, but I had to revisit it. I think it definitely deserves a place in our list of amazing Instagram filters. This is why I always try to find cool IG filters regardless of the date they were released. A good filter is a good filter, same goes to any creative artistic work, and I do look it as such.

So what is this "Country Trip" filter? Well, it's basically a short animation video where the face of the user is placed inside a funny looking old car which the user has control of. The car is the only dynamic object in the scene. The scene itself is of a countryside road with pink skies and lush sideroad. The filter is supposed to deliver a comical scene where a big head (your head) is placed inside a funny looking car that looks like a Fiat 500 R from the 70s, kind of.

The positioning of the car is controlled using the rotation of the phone or tablet. rotating it right will move the car to the right (left when looking at the screen) and vice versa. When you rotate it up, the car will move down and when you move it down, the car will appear levitating up, kind of reverse controls.

Now, this is my favorite part. Opening your mouth will turn the front lights and closing it will turn them off. When you combine a silly looking face and add some cool music (I used The Beach Boys), you can create some really funny clips with it. This is definitely one of those filters that are best used as a video.

Stefan Nitz, the creator of this AR filter also added some characters to the scene, like a big scarecrow, angry cows and pigeons.  These, of course, allow the user to create a cool video while reacting to things around him, things in the virtual scene of course. It would be blend if it was just grass and blue sky, nothing for the facial expressions to contextualize with.

Those are the little things in the experience that turns it into one that you enjoy using. I actually was "driving" and waiting for the scarecrow to appear to make a scary face and turn on the lights like Stefan has done in his promotional video for this Instagram filter (embedded here in this review).

I even recorded a video and send one for a friend and he congratulated me for the amazing new car LOL.

Now, the embedded video shows another car model than the one that I am using now. Maybe the car image was replaced because I didn't find any way to change the car model to another one. It would be cool though to have the option to change to different car models and maybe even add a cool night scene as well.

Well, let get even crazier, add some cool people shouting and running out of the road when you open your mouth, which will make a strong engine roaring sound and make it look like it is speeding up. When its speed up, the scene should obviously animated accordingly to produce a fake fast driving animation. I would also add some drifting sound effect and smoke visual effects if the user rotates the phone fast from side to side, that causes the car to drift.

So in mind, I picture this. I drive at night, when I open my mouth, the music changes to something more electrical from something calm, lights are turning on an off, the horn makes some noise. Then people and dogs and cats that are around the road bark, meow and shout at the driver.

I am not finished yet. Maybe let's add some rap music and when you blink, the car starts bouncing up and down. All right, I'll stop, but I just wanted you to see what's in my head, and maybe this will be version 2 of Country Trip, a much crazier version of it.

As you can see, CountryTrip Instagram filter definitely made me want to have a more extensive version of this filter experience. That being said, it doesn't take away from how good this filter is as it is. It's among those filters that you quickly rush to make a cool vid to share it with your friends and followers. It's a very entertaining filter, but again, I would like to see a second version of it, maybe with some of the ideas that I mentioned here. I want to have a complete craze in the video that I share, make some cats meow out loud, deers smashing against the windshield with crazy voices, electric pole falling and electrifying the crazy cows—alright, you get the point—I want a complete mass!

OK, now I am back from my fantastical thoughts to the review. This what happens when you create a filter like that, my mind is just racing with crazy ideas nonstop and I can think of ideas all day long. I have to stop myself of course at some point, which is now.

Well, as you can clearly tell, I really enjoyed using this filter and it's among those filters that I want to see a second more extensive version of it. I recommend following Stefan Nitz and trying out this amazing filter. You can find more of Stefan Nitz' filters that I reviewed right after this post. I hope you enjoyed reading this review and found it inspiring—see you on the next review.

Don't forget to follow the filter creators to gain access to all of their filters.