Our story
By Roel, the maker of Step into your drawing.
For more than 25 years I've carried the same idea with me: what if you could turn a child's drawing into a world a child could actually walk around in?
It started in the early 2000s, when I had my first real VR experience at the SARA institute in Amsterdam, in The Cave: a room three by three by three metres, full of projectors, with special glasses and so-called globes in your hands. Right there, in the middle of that room, the idea was born: what if a child could stand inside their own drawing like this? I even looked into what it would cost to build a Cave myself — it quickly ran past a hundred thousand euros. Out of reach, but the idea never let go of me.
In my work as an IT manager in rehabilitation care, I saw around 2016 how virtual reality was cautiously making its entrance — for example with the Microsoft HoloLens, used to get people moving again in a playful way. Fascinating, but I found the worlds themselves stiff and childish. Meanwhile, the idea of the child's drawing kept simmering.
Then things suddenly moved fast. In 2024 Apple released the Vision Pro — breathtaking, but at almost four thousand euros still out of reach for most families. A few months later, in October 2024, Meta released the Meta Quest 3S for just over three hundred euros. That was the moment I bought my first VR headset.
And how the VR world had changed. In FitXR I saw virtual trainers who have you dodge fireballs in beautiful worlds, and in TRIPP you can do breathing exercises right in the middle of one. And then came the question: could I now build a virtual world for the Meta Quest myself?
Because with the rise of AI, building software had changed too: you tell an AI what you want to make, and you build it together. I started on my daughter's MacBook with a small game as a warm-up, then bought a heavy-duty MacBook for the real work: turning the idea I'd carried for more than 25 years into reality, together with Claude, an AI.
From hospital to home
Step into your drawing grew out of Kindertekening, a project that brings drawings to life for children in hospitals and schools. There, I guide every session myself. Families kept asking: can we do this at home too? Step into your drawing is the answer — the same magic, made for a parent and a child to use on their own, with a Meta Quest at home.
The real goal is children drawing more, on paper. The VR world is the cherry on top. Every drawing is processed on my own computer; photos are deleted after 30 days, and there are no ads and no microphone. Families who add worlds in the app help keep the work for hospitals and schools going.
No team, no studio, no investors. In the time before AI this would have taken 3D artists, computer-vision specialists and a whole team of programmers. Now one father with a 25-year-old idea, a MacBook and an AI is enough to build it.