Turn Your Kid's Drawing Into Real Life: 4 Keepsakes From One Doodle

The fastest way to see the character as a real thing is the Kid's Drawing Comes Alive template on Outwow (outwow.app): one phone photo of the drawing in, one photo of the same creature as a real thing out. Three sibling templates turn the same photo into a plush toy, a storybook page and a paper figure you print and fold. All four are in kids' drawings, and each run costs 1 photo.

1. A real photo of the creature

Kid's Drawing Comes Alive is built to keep every body shape, color and odd proportion from the drawing and make only the materials real: fur, fabric or scales, and natural light. An extra-long leg stays extra long; it just gets a real texture. We ran three drawings through it: a crayon monster, a marker dog and a colored-pencil rocket. It was the one that surprised us. All five runs of the monster and the dog came back as needle-felted, clay-like or stuffed figures photographed outdoors, not as living animals: the shapes were right, the material was handmade toy. So expect a realistic photo of a handmade-looking version of the character, standing in the real world. It differs from the plush template, which gives a sewn toy on a blanket, but if you hoped for a living creature, plan on a few runs. We show only the monster here. The dog and the rocket each had a flaw we wouldn't put on a keepsake: one dog run turned the wag lines into a see-through ghost of the tail, and the next gave it pale button eyes where the drawing has dark ones; the rocket's stars floated in mid-air with nothing holding them, and its middle fin ran straight down through the flames.

Input

Result

2. A plush toy

Drawing to Plush Toy shows the character as a soft stitched toy, as if a toymaker sewed it from the drawing: felt and fleece in the drawn colors, visible seams and embroidered details, photographed on a cozy blanket. Outwow makes the image, not the toy. The picture is useful in two ways: as a keepsake on its own, and as a reference to send a plush maker next to the original drawing, so they see how the flat shape could work in fabric.

Input

Result

Where to order a real plush from a drawing

Two studios that sew toys from children's drawings, checked on the day we wrote this. We have no affiliate deal with either. Both take an uploaded photo of the drawing; you can add the plush preview as a second reference.

3. A storybook page

Drawing to Storybook Page puts the character in a soft painted picture-book illustration with a small adventure around it. The page has no text on purpose, so you can tell the story out loud or write it in later. Each run makes one page with a new scene, so running the same drawing a few times gives you a set of pages for a printed book.

4. A printable paper figure

Drawing to Paper Figure turns the character into a printable papercraft sheet: flat parts with cut lines, fold lines and glue tabs, printed in the drawing's own colors, plus a small picture of the folded figure so you know what you are building. Print it at 100% scale on thick matte paper or light card, about 160 to 220 g/m², then cut, fold and glue it together with your kid. We ran it once on the rocket and three times on the crayon monster, and none of the four sheets would build the figure printed on it. The monster's head was always a net of five squares, one short of a cube, and the first run also had six horn pieces for two horns. On the rocket sheet the nose cone was a flat triangle that can't roll into a cone, there were five fin pieces with no slots for a rocket shown with three, and the planet's ring had no way to attach. So we don't show a sheet here. If you try it, check every part against the small picture before you cut, and run it again if a side is missing.

How to photograph a drawing

The templates work from your photo of the drawing, not the drawing itself, so whatever the photo shows is what they keep. That is why the upload slot asks for daylight, the whole sheet in frame and no shadows. Our three sample drawings were shot this way, on a table from above:

1. 1

   Step 1: Use daylight

   Put the sheet near a window, not under a ceiling lamp. Turn the phone flash off: it leaves a bright spot on crayon and marker.

2. 2

   Step 2: Shoot flat from above

   Hold the phone parallel to the table so the sheet is a rectangle, not a trapezoid. A tilted shot stretches the character.

3. 3

   Step 3: Get the whole sheet in

   Leave a little table around the edges. Cropping into the drawing can cut off a tail or an ear the kid cares about.

4. 4

   Step 4: Keep your shadow off it

   Stand with the window beside you, not behind you, so your head and phone don't cast a shadow on the page.

What the AI keeps and what it simplifies

Across the 5 results in this guide, the shapes and colors held better than the materials. The monster kept its three eyes, two orange horns, toothy grin and green body in the photo, plush and storybook versions. The dog kept its floppy brown ears and red collar with a yellow tag. So the answer to "will it still look like their drawing?" was yes in every run we kept. Four things did change, and they are worth knowing before you show the result to the artist:

• Motion lines can turn into objects. In our first plush run, the curved lines drawn next to the dog's wagging tail came back as brown felt arcs floating in the air, and a real-life run drew a see-through ghost of the tail. We have since told the drawing templates to treat such lines as marks on paper, and the next plush run, shown above, left them out.
• Round shapes turn boxy on paper, and the parts need checking. A fold-up figure is made of flat panels, with horns, fins and feet as separate cut-out parts, and that is where our sheets went wrong: in 3 of 3 monster runs the head net had five squares instead of six, and the rocket sheet had a flat nose cone and fins with nowhere to attach.
• The rest of the sheet comes along. The monster's purple zigzag grass became a field of purple flowers on the storybook page, and the sun from the corner of the drawing moved into the sky.
• "Real" came out handmade. Kid's Drawing Comes Alive made needle-felted, clay-like or stuffed figures of the monster and the dog in all 5 runs. Use the plush template when you want a sewn toy, and this one when you want the character standing in the real world.

Halloween idea: the monster plush

A monster drawing is the easiest Halloween project in the house. Ask for one in October, run it through Drawing to Plush Toy, and you have a monster that looks sewn and a picture to send to grandparents. For costumes, gothic portraits and pets, see our AI Halloween photo ideas, which uses the same crayon monster in three of its looks.