What it is
An iOS app that takes a family photo and makes it move: subtle, warm, Harry Potter-style living portraits. Photo in, AI animation pipeline out, your family gently alive on your screen.
Why I built it
A friend’s idea, and a good one: he wanted his family picture to move when he glanced at it. The AI pieces finally made it possible, so I built the whole thing in a few days: capture, generation pipeline, even the in-app purchases.
What happened
The prototype works, and the results are lovely for family photos. What stopped it was everything after the build: App Store submission, review, the productization long-tail. The building was days; the shipping ceremony was the real cost, and I never paid it.
The idea didn’t die, though. The animation technique became the living portrait on this site’s homepage.
What I learned
AI collapsed build time so hard that distribution ceremony is now the dominant cost of small apps. That’s a real asymmetry, and an argument for the web over app stores when the product is small and personal.