Turn Your Kid's Drawing Into a 3D Cartoon With Claude
doodle-to-3d is a free skill for Claude Code that turns one photo of a child's drawing into a 3D character that keeps every pencil line, then makes it fly or breathe fire, with sound. What it does, how to set it up, a first prompt, and the catch
Ask an AI to turn a child's drawing into 3D and you usually get a tidy model where every pencil line is gone. The repo's author tried exactly that first and says it read as "blocks of colour". doodle-to-3d is a free, open-source skill (MIT) that does the opposite: everything you see in the finished video is the child's own pixels, and anything missing is filled with the child's own strokes.
Here's what it does, how to set it up, a first prompt to try, and the catch.
What it does
- Extracts the character: straightens the photo and has Gemini redraw only the character on white, without beautifying the lines.
- Splits it into parts: head, body, arms, legs, wings, tail. Hidden areas are filled with the drawing's own marker strokes.
- Adds what is missing: a far wing or an arm the child did not draw is made by mirroring the drawn one.
- Makes it 3D: each part is puffed up like a plush toy, and Blender animates flapping wings, paddling legs and a waving claw.
- Paints the world: Gemini paints a sky and a fire-breath flipbook in the same child-drawn style.
- Adds sound: wind, wing flaps, an inhale and a fire roar, synced to the motion.
The result is a vertical 1080x1920 video at 24 frames a second. Three scenes ship: swoop (15 s, flies in and weaves through the sky), hover (10 s, rises in place) and fire (11 s, inhales and breathes fire). Claude asks you what unclear shapes are (an ear or a wing?) instead of guessing, so keep the artist nearby.
Free, for your email
Get the full setup steps + the copy-paste setup prompt
The rest of this guide (4 more sections) opens right here. The setup prompt, one paste into Claude that sets it all up, comes by email only. Use your real address.
Unlocks: How to set it up · A first prompt to try · The catch · Sources
50,000+ follow where these guides come from. No spam, reply “unsubscribe” any time.