An illustrated story is a digital card that opens with a short picture-book story about your moment. You describe who it is for and why. We write the story as 4 to 6 scenes, draw each scene, compose music for it, and give you a link. When they open the link, the scenes play one after another with your words over them, and then your message appears.
The steps
- Describe the moment. Sign in, go to Send and choose Illustrated story. Write who it is for and why, in your own words.
- Read your storyboard. We write it for free (up to 20 storyboards a day): a title, who the story follows, each scene with its words, and the message it ends on. You see what each picture will show before you pay.
- Change any words. Edit the title, the words on each scene, the message, who the story follows, and the name it is from.
- Pay from your wallet. A story costs $5.74, taken from your wallet. If your wallet doesn't have enough, add money first.
- We draw it. Drawing takes a few minutes. You can leave the page: the story waits for you under Digital cards.
- Share the link. Send it any way you like. Anyone with the link can open it, on a phone or a computer, with no app and no account. You can also add photos, a video or a voice message to the card afterwards.
What makes a good description
The more of your own detail you give, the more the story is yours. Say:
- who it is for, and their age if it matters ("my brother, 24", not only "my younger brother", or he may be drawn as a child);
- the places: where you are, where they are;
- one thing only you two share: a habit, a meal, a place, a joke;
- why now: a birthday, a first winter away, a thank you.
For example: "For my brother Arjun, 24, who moved to Berlin in September for his first job. Every Sunday we cycled to Fort Kochi beach and shared puttu at the stall by the ferry. His first winter there is starting. I want him to know we miss him and I'm proud of him."
If you don't say whether you are a man or a woman, the person the story follows is drawn so it doesn't show. You can describe them yourself on the storyboard.
What we can't draw
- Faces up close, or anyone's real likeness. People are drawn in a cut-paper storybook style, from behind, from the side or from a distance. A photo of a real person can't be turned into a character.
- Writing inside the pictures. Names, signs and messages go in the words over each scene, never in the picture itself.
- Anything hateful, sexual, mocking or unkind, or a card that pretends to be from someone else. We say so when we can't make a story from a description.
Sad occasions are fine. A sympathy, apology or farewell story is handled gently.
For family far away, a story pairs well with a card they can hold: see sending cards to family in India.
Music
Every story has its own instrumental music, composed for its scenes. If the music can't be made, a track from our music library plays instead, and the card names it.
If something goes wrong
If we can't draw your story, the whole price goes back to your wallet. Once a story is drawn, its pictures can't be drawn again, so read the storyboard before you pay. See our refund policy.
Who sees your description
We send your description and your name to Anthropic, whose Claude model writes the storyboard and checks each picture. We send the scene and music descriptions, and the scenes already drawn, to fal.ai, which runs the models that draw the pictures and compose the music. See our privacy policy.