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Show HN: I made a web app to bring children's drawings to life (doodledreams.cc)

242 points by vikmex ↗ HN
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

81 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] thread
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!

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

vikmex
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!

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
DrSiemer
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.

zengineer
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.
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
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"
scubakid
Always a good idea to test full onboarding + purchase flow before posting.
dylan604
Why? Test it in prod and let the users do QA is so much cheaper/faster. That’s just the trend
dsmurrell
I'm getting the same. Free plan 0 tokens. New account.
lolptdr
Hmm, I don't see any free token. I agree that one free token is a good way to get interest going.
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
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"
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
Thanks for the comments! I appreciate it!
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.
indoor47
Didn’t work for me.. animation just had some camera scroll, but figures remained static
vikmex
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
Yeah I had the same issue for the 2 pictures I tried.
jagged-chisel
I can’t try it because I’m out of animation tokens? I thought I was trying for free. :-(
vikmex
Hi, you should have been able to try once when registering. Check under the History tab if you already submitted a drawing.
pj_mukh
Super cool. If you don't mind me asking, what model are you using?
johndevor
Tried (and paid) but the drawing video is just a static image.
bdangubic
you have to use your imagination to see the video :)
vunderba
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
Sorry for the inconvenience, I've reached out to you via email.
lolptdr
I'm getting the same problem, just a static image panning around.
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
Hey, thanks! The model has a filter blocking inappropriate content
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.

zild3d
>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

nox101
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

jules
This is very cool. My nephew will love this.
whitepaint
This is really cool. Nice job. How did you do it?
vikmex
Hi thanks! I built the webapp in React and I run a backend python flask server on GCP.
xiaodai
Scammy. I can’t even preview one
vikmex
Hi, look under the History page if you already submitted a drawing with the free token.
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.
higty
Drawing is facinating. I think it is beautiful idea to spent life.
block_dagger
Sent this to a friend in her 70s who does children's illustrations. Hoping she enjoys seeing her creations come to life.
ardit33
This is really cool. I have a couple of children’s stories / illustrations I always wanted to animate.

Will check it out

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