Phil Jones | DoodleCam

Jacob and I developed this Android app, DoodleCam, which allowed you to take or choose a photo then it intelligently placed a doodle into it. Each doodle had its own set of placement rules, such as aligning to edges, only appearing in certain quadrants of the photo, or in areas of a given colour range. As the project progressed we got more artists on board to make doodles, and developed more interesting ways of integrating the doodles.

A toy robot strutting, with glowing eyes and mouth, covered in rust and scratches — StrutBot

A photo of Toronto's Dundas Square with an illustrated dinosaur breathing fire stepping over buildings

A photo of a street with cars and buildings, with an illustrated meteoroids added in as if about to impact

A photo of a park hill with an illustrated sasquatch walking in the foreground

A Mockup of Rexilla Breathing Fire on Dundas Square

A Mockup of Meteoroids Falling on a Street

A Mockup of Sasko Sauntering through a Shady Park

As with all of our apps, I developed the branding, UI, the necessary Google Play graphics, and in this case, the first set of doodles.

An icon of a camera being drawn by a pencil — A Later Version of the Icon

An app flow diagram for DoodleCam, moving from the splash screen to taking or choosing a photo to add a doodle to — User Flow

The plans were to have a series of doodle packs to choose from, some free, some for purchase (with a revenue sharing scheme for artists), as well as the ability to choose an existing photo.

If you have an ancient Android device you can still get the DoodleCam Beta on Google Play.

A DoodleCam photo with a robot in a cloud throwing cupcakes at a pedestrian

A DoodleCam photo of a sasquatch in a dark, mostly empty bar

A DoodleCam photo of a sasquatch walking in front of flowers on a table in front of Phil

A Real DoodleCam Photo

This one features an illustration by Laura. This doodle always appeared in the top half of a photo.

Sasko in the Wild

The Sasko illustration always appeared along the bottom of the frame, and worked best in dark areas of a photo.

Sasko Again

Here’s a tiny Sasko walking among the flowers.