Features on Doodle Dragon Studio

Sketch to illustration

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What it does

You start with a drawing. Either draw it in the app on a full canvas with brushes, colours, an eraser, undo and redo — or take a photo of one that already exists on paper. The sketch is saved to your project before anything else happens, so the original is never lost or overwritten.

From there you can use the sketch exactly as it is. That costs nothing and needs no internet. Or, with Studio Plus, you can turn it into a finished illustration.

Photo to illustration

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Two things you can do with a photo

Use it as a photo. Adjust light, contrast, colour and warmth, and apply one of the curated looks. That is a free, on-device feature. Plenty of beautiful books are made entirely this way — a travelogue of real photographs is often better than an illustrated one.

Turn it into an illustration. With Studio Plus, the app can describe the photo, show you that description as an editable prompt, and generate a storybook illustration based on it.

AI page planning

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The idea

You have an idea for a book but not yet a page-by-page structure. Choose a theme, describe the premise, and AI page planning prepares editable text, an artwork idea, and a starting layout for every page.

How you set it up

Choose a theme and starting layout. Themes shape the standard page prompts; the layout becomes the book default and can still be overridden per page.
Choose Plan with AI. Add a working title and describe what the book should be about.
Set the controls. Choose a reader band, a six-, ten-, or fourteen-page length, and one or more feels: Cozy, Funny, or Adventurous.
Optionally suggest from Library. Local matching can suggest existing assets without sending them anywhere. You can separately choose specific previews for AI descriptions if you want better matching.
Review the plan. Edit every page’s text, artwork idea, and layout. Choose a Library asset or explicitly select the pages for which AI artwork should be created. The total artwork credit cost is shown before you continue.

Then you rewrite it

The draft arrives as one editable text block per page. It is a starting point, not a locked result. Change a word, rewrite a page, replace an image, change a layout, delete a page, or reorder the book. The app autosaves as you go.

On-device photo editing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Free is not a teaser here

A lot of apps make basic editing a locked door. We don’t. Warming up the colour, adjusting contrast, and choosing a look are ordinary phone operations. They run on your device, they cost nothing, they need no account, and they never touch the network.

What’s in the editor

Adjustments — light, contrast, colour, and warmth, on a single slider at a time so the preview stays big.

The page editor and layouts

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Everything on a page is editable

A page holds text, one piece of media, and a layout. All three are yours to change at any time, whether the page came from an AI draft or you typed it yourself.

Text — a plain editable field. Type, paste, rewrite.
Media — a sketch, a photo, a generated illustration, or a video clip. Swap it from the project library at any point.
Layout — how the two sit together on the page.

Layouts

Each project has a default layout, and any single page can override it and go back to the default later. The overrides are per-page, so one book can mix all three current layouts.

Project templates

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Templates are starting shapes, not separate apps. Every one of them opens the same editor and produces the same kind of project, so you can always change your mind part-way through.

Picture Story

A short illustrated story. Choose a reading age, six, ten, or fourteen editable story pages, and Cozy, Funny, or Adventurous feels. Export adds a simple cover before the story pages.

Little Biography

A child’s story through milestones, favourite things, and a closing letter.

Narration, music, and sound

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Three layers, not a timeline

Multitrack editors are miserable on a phone. Doodle Dragon Studio uses three simple layers instead.

Narration belongs to one page. Record it with your phone’s microphone, or import an MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, or OGG file. Free, on-device, unlimited.

Video sound belongs to a video on a page. Include it or mute it, and set the volume for that page.

Story music belongs to the whole project. Import an audio file, preview it, replace it, or remove it. It loops across the finished export.

AI video clips

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Three ways to make a clip

Prompt only — describe the scene, send no picture.

Animate an image — one starting frame plus a description of what should happen.

Connect two frames — a start and an end frame, and the clip moves between them.

Frames can come from the current page, an image on your phone, or a still you pick out of a video with the built-in scrubber. Picking a video does not upload the video: the app extracts the single frame you chose and sends only that.

Export, sharing, and printing

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PDF

A page-by-page portrait PDF with the generated cover and your chosen layouts, suitable for reading on a device or ordinary home printing. PDF export is free. Selectable paper sizes, commercial-print resolution, and bleed are not available in the current app.

Video

The app renders your pages into an MP4. Still pages show for two seconds and page videos play for up to eight seconds. On Android, the export can mix narration, page video sound, and looping story music. On iOS the visual MP4 currently exports without those mixed audio layers. Video export is free.

Backup and sync

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Local first, with backup when you choose it

Every project is edited from the copy on your device. The project holds its manifest, original and generated media, thumbnails, and audio. Finished PDF and MP4 exports are stored locally alongside the project but are shared or saved separately. Drawing, editing, and export continue without a network connection.

A signed-in Studio Plus account can optionally back up projects privately to Firebase. Backup is off until you enable it. It is separate from AI creation: backing up a project does not submit its content to Gemini, OpenAI, or another generative-AI provider.

What you get for free

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The short version

Everything except the AI. If a feature runs on your phone, it’s free and it works offline. If a feature needs a third-party AI service, it needs Studio Plus.

We think that’s the honest line to draw, and we don’t move it around.

The full list of free features

Drawing

Full canvas with brush colour, brush size, and eraser
Undo, redo, and clear
Import a sketch from a photo of a paper drawing

Pictures

Import photos and video clips from your phone
Take a new photo with the camera
Adjust light, contrast, colour, and warmth
Curated looks: Original, Warm, Storybook, Clean B&W
Attach a video clip to a page and choose whether its sound is included

Books

Unlimited projects with unlimited pages
All templates and all page layouts
Write and edit every word yourself
Reorder pages and delete a page after confirmation
Autosave, plus recoverable Trash for whole projects

Sound

Record narration with your microphone
Import audio files (MP3, M4A, WAV, AAC, OGG)
Add story music and set the volume
Lower music under narration

Getting it out

Export a PDF at standard quality
Export a video; Android can mix narration, page-video sound, and music
Export and import .ddstory project archives
Share through your phone’s normal share sheet

Do I need an account?

To draw, edit, and export — no. You can use the app offline without signing in at all. Signing in is only needed for Studio Plus, because that’s where a subscription and a credit balance have to live.

Accessibility

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What is in the current app

System text scaling. The Flutter interface uses the device’s text-scaling setting. Some dense screens still need broader large-text testing.

Screen reader foundations. Important Studio controls and media previews have semantic labels for TalkBack and VoiceOver. Complete screen-by-screen reader coverage is still being tested.

Text and icons together. Selection and status are generally represented with labels or icons as well as colour.

There is no dedicated contrast control or Studio read-aloud control in the current release. The Account row labelled Accessibility still leads to a legacy settings screen and should not be treated as a complete accessibility panel.