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Show HN: Handwritten Christmas Card for Hacker News (handwritten-card.vercel.app)

66 points by muc-martin ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I’ve been working on a small project that transforms handwritten notes into animated, shareable cards. While the create functionality isn’t live yet, I wanted to share a sneak peek by creating a handwritten Christmas card specifically for the HN community.

I started thinking about this after seeing too many AI-generated cards, cookie-cutter email templates, and overly polished designs that lack any personal touch. A friend recently sent me a handwritten card in the mail, and I found it nice that he took his time to write a handwritten note. I wanted to capture that same feeling without the overhead of snail mail.

15 comments

[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 44.5 ms ] thread
carrotcarrot
It's cute, but my first thought was "is this AI generated handwriting?".

I would still rather recieve a physical hand written card in the mail.

Some these aren't broken and don't need to be fixed. Waiting for the mailman is a feature not a bug.

theqwxas
If you visit the site without the subdirectory [0], you can see a message upload interface. The handwriting is supplied by the user (may or may not be AI-generated); the drawing movements are generated with some (hopefully non-AI) algorithm.

[0] https://handwritten-card.vercel.app/

muc-martin
Nope, handwriting is not AI generated. But can totally understand your second point. Thought it would be an interesting alternative.
zoomablemind
Maybe it's just me, but the font appears too small for my eyes on this smartphone's 6" screen (Firefox).

I like the idea. Happy New Year!

nickdothutton
Someone should do a website that shares random doodles people have done. Maybe even in real time. See what bored meeting participants are scrawling across the world, maybe enable others to amend or add to the doodle.
albert_e
interesting idea

a doodle-roulette? a blank canvas that randomly pairs two bored people and gives them crayons to jam :)

or like a global townsquare but for graffiti -- all are welcome at once on an infinite ever changing canvas

mattw2121
We all know what that will devolve into...
aio2
Not devolve, evolve. This is the only way to see humanity's finest doodles.
yapyap
bit late innit
pmg101
In time for Orthodox Christmas Day on January 7
CharlesW
"Christmas comes this time each year" — Little Saint Nick, The Beach Boys
memalign
Thanks for sharing! On iPhone, the resolution of the writing looks too low. Maybe the scale of the canvas doesn’t match the device pixel ratio.
muc-martin
Thanks for the info! Actually I mainly tested this on my laptop.
urronglol
Great way to harvest people’s handwriting.