Show HN: I made a web app to bring children's drawings to life

[vikmex]

https://doodledreams.cc

Hey HN!

I used to spend hours drawing all kind of things as a kid. Sadly though, those drawings are long gone.

Inspired by this, I created DoodleDreams. A webapp that brings drawings to life using AI and stores them as memories. You can always look back at the drawings, see who made them, and even know the age they were drawn at.

I thought it was a fun way to preserve those memories. What do you think?

Viktor

[vunderba]

Meta put out a pretty popular post back in 2021 around using AI to animate children's drawings.

I believe it focuses more around using masks to build out a "rigging" to animate them.

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/12/using-ai-to-animate-childr...

https://fairanimateddrawings.com

Conversely, sounds like this is just feeding directly into the Kling API though. I'd say pricing is going to be the roughest aspect since they're definitely not cheap.

To add to this - Kling's I2V model (even as of v1.6) is pretty inconsistent when it comes to 2D imagery - even in your cherry picked examples they're unfortunately morphing all over the place. Since you have no control over the model or even the end result outside of minimal positive/negative prompts, I think you'll find prospective customers getting potentially frustrated.

[nox101 → vunderba]

Following those links lead to this website based free solution

https://sketch.metademolab.com/

You can upload a picture and have it animate it. Not quite the same or as impressive but still might be fun and it's free

[zild3d → vunderba]

>even in your cherry picked examples they're unfortunately morphing all over the place

they're kids doodles. being a bit wonky is part of the charm, i think its a great use case for where ai animation is at the moment.

If this was wedding photos we'd have a problem :D

[eGQjxkKF6fif]

This is truly amazing. Is there a 'How it Works' a 'Potentials' section?

I work with things that push to inspire creativity and learning to foster the passion behind creativity and authentic works where otherwise we'd see how 'AI copies our work' and now we can see how AI can bring works to life and make them more fun.

Over-all would you like to see schools adopting your project? I didn't see a contact form but would love to be able to reach out and get more insight. I think this is absolutely wonderful.

While I know tokens and generative AI have costs, I can see the business model.

Since you've made it a web app have you explored the possibility of making it cross platform with something like Cordova? https://cordova.apache.org/

Perhaps setting up a bluesky social and documenting the thought process as you build on would be amazing, I'd love to see more; but would definitely like to be able to reach out in the future. Definitely bookmarked!

[zengineer → eGQjxkKF6fif]

I have built something similar (without AI)which lets a group of children build a world together with their colored templates: dibulo.com - We have lots of schools / kindergartens using it.

[vikmex → eGQjxkKF6fif]

Hi! Thanks for your kind words!

There's a short "How it works" section, but could possibly be more detailed. No "potentials" section currently.

Yes, exactly! Sure, schools are welcome to adopt the project. Sorry, added contact details to the page now! Feel free to send an email to: hello@doodledreams.cc

I have not looked into Cordova, will take a look at that now.

Thanks for your feedback!

[DrSiemer → vikmex]

Avoid Cordova, it's deprecated and the ecosystem is dead. You could check out Capacitor, which is supposed to be a modern alternative.

That Cordova site really needs some kind of disclaimer.

[qwertox]

I wish I had kids in order to see them laugh when they could see their drawings come to life.

One point of critique: Simple, Transparent Pricing -> Currency is tokens. Transparent would be: Currency is animations". Even if 1 token == 1 animation, it gives the feeling as if this would be changed in the future, like 2 tokens == 1 super-animation, which breaks the "simple and transparent".

[j_french]

Looks interesting, but it would be nice to be able to try it out (once even) without subscribing. The one token that seems to be available when you create an account disappears when you try to create an animation

[vikmex → j_french]

Hi, sorry for your troubles. It should be possible to try for free, looks like I have a bug after you submit the drawing, but it should still be visible under "History"

[lolptdr → vikmex]

Hmm, I don't see any free token. I agree that one free token is a good way to get interest going.

[dsmurrell → vikmex]

I'm getting the same. Free plan 0 tokens. New account.

[j_french → vikmex]

Ah yes, so it is

[scubakid → vikmex]

Always a good idea to test full onboarding + purchase flow before posting.

[dylan604 → scubakid]

Why? Test it in prod and let the users do QA is so much cheaper/faster. That’s just the trend

[franze]

Pretty good animation: here is my father Christmas https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/doodle-dreams.fi...

[markiannucci → franze]

:) I'm so curious what the prompt was to get this generation.

[riiii → franze]

Make Christmas great again!

[vikmex]

Hi, Viktor here!

I made this as I believe it would have made me very excited to see my drawings come alive when I was a kid.

I hope someone can get the same joy out of it as I would have at that age!

[tacitusarc]

First, this is a cool idea.

Second, are you doing moderation? What is your strategy for porn/illegal content? It often seems like that managing those practicalities kills services like these.

[vikmex → tacitusarc]

Hey, thanks! The model has a filter blocking inappropriate content

[batchku]

Hi Victor!

I love this. I've been playing around with drawing-to-animation techniques for a long time (check out this playlist of videos from my lab at CMU from 9 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv0qX7N2sJw&list=PLLhv4FQp7z...).

I gave your system a try and it's wonderful. The quality of animations are very different than what you get from rigged rag-dolls.

There are pros and cons to these approaches; the nice thing about masking/cropping/rigging (as our old "Dranimate" system did and Meta's "Animated Drawings" does) is that you prepare once, and then you can animate as many times in as many different ways as you want; you can drive it with mocap data; or with real-time inputs as with the videos of Dranimate above). The bad thing is that the first time preparation takes time.

I can see a lot of magic emerging from the combination of the two. I have recently gotten deep into this again (becauase now we have two little ones that are drawing all the time, and we started a Preschool in coastal norcal so kids are all around and this sort of magic really works on them, IRL).

I would love to connect with you sometime if you are up for chatting. Maybe there is a there there.

[vunderba → batchku]

You didn't do anything wrong - Kling can occasionally return a static result particularly for 2D images. It might have been the "grid lines" but Kling's model is effectively a black box.

https://kling.kuaishou.com/en

Side note: Nice video - setting up the rigging mesh reminds me of the "puppet warp" deformation system in Adobe Photoshop.

@Vic:

Bit of advice, you need to build some kind of a static checker (either in terms of the total compressed size of the video - very small file sizes likely indicate a failed gen, or in terms of a hash as a measure of frame-to-frame changes) - to help set up an automated appeals for customers... having to manage this on a case-by-case basis will destroy any enthusiasm you might have for this project.

[armelssartist]

Is there any way to get support? Either the animations don’t work (eg things are added in front of the picture) or I get “unable to process video” but nothing can be done afterwards

[tadeegan]

Did the t-rex snort the lava off the volcano? badass!

[solardev]

The free plan still doesn't work. I never submitted anything. Was login gated, then forced to sign up with Google, then brought to the dashboard with 0/0 tokens, no way to submit anything, and nothing in the history.

Too bad. Wanted to show this off to a nephew.

[vikmex → solardev]

Hi,

Sorry, had to stop the free plan for now. The traffic got so high I was unable to sustain the cost myself of letting everyone do free testing.

[solardev → vikmex]

Understandable. Thanks for the response! In that case, a few more screenshots or videos of the process would be nice.

[yuvalr1]

This looks very cool! The drawing examples on the page are amazing. I wish all kids could draw like that :D

I wonder what the AI understands when given a more sketchy drawing.

It's really amazing that we can even have these kinds of things these days. I wish you great success with the app!

[vikmex → yuvalr1]

Thanks for the comments! I appreciate it!

[maalber]

Hey Viktor, looks cool! It looks like it uses some image-to-video generation model. I would be interested to know which one you used, how you selected it, and whether you did some training/fine-tuning yourself in the process.

[vikmex → maalber]

Hey! Yes, it's using image-to-video. I went with a model by KlingAI as it seemed to produce the best results from my tests.

[gexaha → vikmex]

I found their API quite expensive, I wonder how you go about it.

[dylan604 → gexaha]

3 for $25 is how

[some_furry]

Has anyone tried uploading pure noise (e.g. random number generator output) to see what the model does? Curious about this.

[rroose]

Cool stuff, but I rather don't want to use Google to log in. Is there, or will there be, any way around this?

[vikmex → rroose]

Hi, I understand, I will look into adding more options for logging in

[rroose → vikmex]

Cool, thanks!

[saasxyz → rroose]

why not google login? what would you choose?

[rroose → saasxyz]

I'm trying to degoogle and would like to get rid of my Google account altogether, but that's harder than I thought, especially when services use it exclusively to create an account. ;)

I always prefer the option of creating an account with an email address.

[ck45]

This reminds me remotely of a German startup that offered handmade plush toys from drawings. The page (https://www.ellapaul.de/) unfortunately returns a 404

[jagged-chisel]

I can’t try it because I’m out of animation tokens? I thought I was trying for free. :-(

[vikmex → jagged-chisel]

Hi, you should have been able to try once when registering. Check under the History tab if you already submitted a drawing.

[indoor47]

Didn’t work for me.. animation just had some camera scroll, but figures remained static

[vikmex → indoor47]

Unfortunately it might struggle in some cases depending on what your drawing portrays, how you took the photo of the image as well as the description you provided.

[umeshunni → vikmex]

Yeah I had the same issue for the 2 pictures I tried.

[dm03514]

This looks really interesting, I instantly found a drawing of my kids to upload because I thought he would love it, but I was unable to even try it once without paying.

[vikmex → dm03514]

Hi, sorry for your troubles. It should be possible to try for free, looks like I have a bug after you submit the drawing, but it should still be visible under "History"

[johndevor]

Tried (and paid) but the drawing video is just a static image.

[vunderba → johndevor]

It's Kling behind the scenes, and unfortunately sometimes will produce static results or just basic camera movement like a Ken Burn's documentary.

[vikmex → johndevor]

Sorry for the inconvenience, I've reached out to you via email.

[lolptdr → vikmex]

I'm getting the same problem, just a static image panning around.

[bdangubic → johndevor]

you have to use your imagination to see the video :)

[ksdk]

The loading time for the example animations is very slow, I was about to write a comment about how the supposed animations did not work.

[block_dagger]

Sent this to a friend in her 70s who does children's illustrations. Hoping she enjoys seeing her creations come to life.

[bambax]

That's cool. Can you talk a little about the tech: front end, back end, and API (Kling, apparently)?

[vikmex → bambax]

Hi, Frontend is built using React and for the backend I created a python flask server that runs on Google Cloud, and I use Firebase for database, authentication etc. The backend handles the API calls to OpenAI for image analysis, and KlingAI is used for image-to-video. Not using the KlingAPI directly though as this is too expensive for me to use in a hobby project, instead using PiAPI.

[bambax → vikmex]

Thanks!

[ErigmolCt]

That sounds incredible! I have a strong desire to upload my childhood creations there.

[pj_mukh]

Super cool. If you don't mind me asking, what model are you using?

[vikmex → pj_mukh]

It's using Kling

[naveensky]

This is just so cool, all the best for your launch!!

[xiaodai]

Scammy. I can’t even preview one

[vikmex → xiaodai]

Hi, look under the History page if you already submitted a drawing with the free token.

[ardit33]

This is really cool. I have a couple of children’s stories / illustrations I always wanted to animate.

Will check it out

[saasxyz]

the design looks cool, are you using any UI components under the hood?

[whitepaint]

This is really cool. Nice job. How did you do it?

[vikmex → whitepaint]

Hi thanks! I built the webapp in React and I run a backend python flask server on GCP.

[whitepaint → vikmex]

What about software?

[jules]

This is very cool. My nephew will love this.

[s-sameer]

This is really interesting bro

[vikmex → s-sameer]

Thanks!

[globnomulous]

This isn't the future or the internet I want.

[ErigmolCt → globnomulous]

What's the point?

[higty]

Drawing is facinating. I think it is beautiful idea to spent life.

[higty]

This is such a beautiful idea! I can totally relate to spending countless hours drawing as a kid, and it’s sad how many of those creations are lost to time.

[butz]

How about just teaching kids to do animation on their own? Suggesting drawing pictures on pages of a book and flipping them probably won't fly at this day and age, but maybe there is some tool like good old Macromedia Flash, where kids could unleash their creativity?

[FollowingTheDao]

I do not like this at all. Why? What is the need for this? How is using even the most minimal amount of energy and computing time worth making a child feel like his drawing alone is not enough? Something that turns what was uniquely his/hers to when is not theirs?

Can we not just share time with our children without the constant push of a third person (tech) getting in the middle of our relationship?