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Toy concept · comic machine + crayons + Claude

Comic on a Roll

Say what happens next, and the machine prints the next comic panel for you to color in. The roll keeps growing along the wall.

Ages 5–10~1,850 CZK of electronics (about €75)prints on paper, no screensentence to panel in 5–8 s
Try it

Tell it what happens next

Press the big button and the demo “says” the next line of a story (in the real machine the child just talks). Watch what the Gateway on the Mac does with it, then grab a crayon and click any shape on the roll to color it in.

Panels on the roll: 0 · title page after 10
The wall is still empty. Press the yellow button.

What the Gateway remembers

  • nobody yet
What the model returned for the last panel
{ }

The demo prints in under a second; the real machine needs 5–8 s from sentence to panel. The outlines here are a tiny stand-in for the parent-approved library of about 300.

The wow moment

My 9-year-old son holds the button and says: “Biscuit the dog rides a skateboard to the sea.” The machine answers “Okay, Biscuit is on his way!”, and about six seconds later a panel slides out: a dog on a skateboard, waves, and a bubble that says “To the sea, hooray!” He colors it in and tapes it to the wall. The next day he says “And then a crab chases him.” The machine knows what happened in the earlier panels and picks up the story with the same dog on the same skateboard, now chased by a crab.

What it sounds like
Son (9)“Biscuit the dog rides a skateboard to the sea.”
Machine“Okay, Biscuit is on his way!”prints: dog on a skateboard, waves, bubble “To the sea, hooray!”
Son (9), next day“And then a crab chases him.”
Machine“Uh-oh, here comes a crab!”prints: the same dog on the same skateboard, plus a crab
Son (9)“A wizard turns the crab into a cat!”
Machine“Poof! The crab is a cat now.”no wizard in the library, so the closest outline goes in: a magician
How it plays

Five minutes of printing, twenty of coloring

  1. The child holds the button and says what should happen: “Biscuit the dog rides a skateboard to the sea.”
  2. The machine answers out loud and about six seconds later prints the panel: outlines of the characters and a speech bubble.
  3. The child colors it in with crayons and tapes it to the wall next to the previous ones.
  4. The next day the story goes on. The Gateway on the Mac remembers the earlier panels, so the same dog comes back on the same skateboard.
  5. After ten panels the machine prints a title page with the name the child made up for the story.
Why a tenth time

The roll is the story’s memory

Every panel carries on from yesterday’s with the same characters, so a few weeks of evenings turn into a strip running along the wall. Printing takes five minutes, coloring takes twenty, and the child comes back the next day to find out what happens to Biscuit, because they are the one who decides.

What AI makes new

A comic that keeps going

Claude composes each scene from a library of outlines that a parent generated once on their own account and went through: it returns {characters:[{sprite_id, x, y, scale, flip}], background_id, bubble}, and code checks that every sprite_id exists before it renders the panel.

Stickerbox prints single stickers; here the story continues from panel to panel with the same characters, and the physical roll remembers the plot. Because the child never generates an image, only arranges outlines that were checked in advance, it also stays within what image-model providers allow for kids.

How it’s built

A little machine that prints comics

paper roll holder CSN-A2 58 mmthermal printer ESP32-S3 +INMP441 mic push-to-talkbutton MAX98357 +40 mm speaker PETG tear-offbar

Printed parts

  • The body, styled like a retro ticket printer, in MMU colors, with a groove for tearing off the paper.
  • A holder for the paper roll.
  • An output slot with a serrated tear-off bar printed in PETG.
  • A button with a microphone icon on it.

Hardware is a weekend. The outline library and the renderer take about a week.

PartWhat forPrice (CZK)
ESP32-S3-DEVKit (LaskaKit)brain, talks to the Gateway over Wi-Fi448
INMP441 I2S microphonehears the child while the button is held98
MAX98357 I2S amplifierthe machine’s voice98
40 mm speakerthe machine’s voice89
Arcade buttonpush-to-talk~40 estimate
CSN-A2 58 mm thermal printerprints the panels928
9 V/2 A power supplyfor the printer~150 estimate
Totalplus paper: BPA-free thermal rolls, about 100 CZK for 10 (estimate)~1,850 (about €75)
THE MACHINE button held:record the voice printer + speaker(panel, voice reply) THE GATEWAY ON THE MAC whisper.cppspeech → text, locally Claude: scene from the librarysprites, positions, bubble story memorycharacters, earlier panels code: every sprite_id exists?render SVG → dither to 384 px Piper, locallyvoice reply “random panel” button:code picks outlines, no model

Model

Picks outlines from the library, places them, writes the speech bubble and keeps the story going. When a character is missing from the library, it picks the closest one (“wizard” becomes the magician).

Code

Checks that every outline exists, renders the panel, dithers it for the printer and prints. Nothing outside the library can be printed. The “random panel” button works with no model at all.

Safety and offline

Only outlines a parent has seen

The child’s voice is transcribed by whisper.cpp on the Mac and never leaves the house; only the text goes to Claude. The reply is spoken by Piper, also locally. Everything printed comes from the outline library, so nothing unsuitable can come out. Without a network the “random panel” button still composes scenes from the library in code. BPA-free thermal paper, and the printer is covered because its head gets hot. One panel costs about 0.1 CZK.

Roadmap
A weekend

The hardware: body, button, microphone, speaker and printer.

A week

The outline library (about 300 animals, vehicles and places) and the renderer with dithering.

Nothing here has been built yet; the toy is still an idea.