🦄 One hand-drawn unicorn. 60 minutes. It walked off the page.

Happy Saturday folks!

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This was a busy week. My 6-year-old drew a unicorn after school on Tuesday. With all the buzz around Seedance 2.0 I wanted to see if I could make something special with it, which you'll see below. Then we spent the rest of the week testing every AI drawing game we could find.

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In this week’s email:

• How I used Seedance 2.0 to bring Maria’s pencil-drawn unicorn to life
• 5 AI drawing games we tested and ranked by age
• A safety warning about one popular kids’ art tool that parents should know about

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🦄 Her pencil unicorn came to life

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Maria's favourite past time at the moment is drawing unicorns...lots of them! Striped horn, flowing tail, long hair, and maybe I'm just being bias as a proud dad but they are becoming quite elaborate.

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I was that impressed with her latest unicorn masterpiece that I decided it would be a good candidate to give Seedance 2.0 (the latest video model everyone has been raving about) a try and to see if I could bring it to life. After an hour of tinkering, her unicorn lifted off the page, met a little girl in a storybook meadow, and walked off into a sunset.

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The workflow: I used Nano Banana (free via the Gemini app) to create character reference sheets and scene frames, then Seedance 2.0 to generate each video shot anchored to those references.

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The character sheet trick is what keeps the unicorn and the girl looking the same across every shot. Without it, each clip looks like a different universe.

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Here is the finished version:

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The full guide has every prompt I used, the two mistakes I made (one cost me 28 credits and 10 minutes), and exactly how to do it with your child's drawing this weekend.

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​Read the full guide →

🎨 5 AI drawing games we tested (one taught her what a raccoon is)

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After the unicorn project, Maria was on a drawing buzz. So we tested 5 AI drawing games over a few sessions. Here’s what happened.

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The clear winner: Quick, Draw! You get 20 seconds to draw something and the AI tries to guess what it is. Maria got all six right in some rounds and begged for more after three rounds. I had to tell her it was an activity for tomorrow.

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The surprise bonus was vocabulary. Words came up that she didn’t know - Raccoon, Tornado, Cactus. Each time we’d pause and I’d Google it. She called a cactus “that prickety plant.” So it’s not just a drawing game. It’s quietly building vocabulary for kids under 7.

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The other four we tested:

• ​AutoDraw (all ages): Great concept, but the toolbar confused her. The AI suggestion feature is clever but could make kids lazy.
• Doodle Duel (6+): She scored 72/100. Needs an account but has real depth.
• Artbitrator (5+): Categories and difficulty levels. More intuitive canvas than AutoDraw.
• ​KidGeni (5-12): Fun doodle-to-art feature, but see the warning below.

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​Read the full comparison →

⚠️ A note on KidGeni

We tested KidGeni this week. The content filters are the best I've seen. It blocked 100% of inappropriate prompts in independent testing, better than ChatGPT.

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But it also has an August 2024 COPPA violation on record. No privacy policy at launch. Children's data shared with AI training services without parental consent. They've agreed to fix it, but said they disagree with the findings.

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Worth knowing before you sign your child up. Full review on the site.

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​Read the full review →​

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That's it for this week!

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If your child draws something and you want to try the Seedance workflow, reply and tell me what they drew. I'll help you pick the right style prompts.

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Have a great weekend.

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Niall (AI Dad Lab)

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P.S. Nano Banana is free via the Gemini app (20 images/day). You don't need to pay for anything to try the character sheet trick.