My Life, Animated
My Life, Animated: turn your life story into a one-minute drawn comic
My Life, Animated takes your birth year and a handful of life moments and draws them as a short black-and-white comic, one pen stroke at a time, right in your browser. No photos are needed. This guide explains how to use it, how to choose moments that make a good story, why life timelines feel so powerful, who you might make one for, and how saving, sharing and privacy work.
How My Life, Animated works
You begin with your birth year, and you can add your birth month and a name or nickname if you like. Next you pick between three and eight moments to keep, such as early childhood, school days, growing up, adult life or the present day. Each moment can have a year, but if you leave it blank the tool estimates one from the age at which that kind of moment usually happens and keeps everything in order along your timeline.
Then choose a pen: a bold brush pen, a soft pencil with doubled lines, a ballpoint with blue hatching, or a fountain pen with one red accent. Press Play and a film of about a minute draws itself, scene by scene, with a short caption for each moment. The last scene is always today, so the story ends where you are now. Controls let you pause, replay from the start or slow the drawing down.
- Enter your birth year, plus an optional month and name.
- Choose 3 to 8 moments, and add one of your own if you like.
- Adjust any years you remember; the order follows automatically.
- Pick one of the four pens.
- Press Play, then save a video or share a link.
Choosing moments that make a good story
A good life comic mixes big and small. Milestones such as a first job or a move give the film structure, while small moments like a first best friend or a summer you still remember give it warmth. Aim for variety across the five stages rather than eight scenes from the same few years. If you pick only a few moments the film moves slowly and gives each one room, and with more of them it becomes a faster tour of your life.
Use the moment of your own for the thing no preset can capture, such as a summer in a city you loved. It can hold up to 20 characters and, like the others, can have a year. A name of up to 12 characters appears in the title at the end. For the pen, the brush pen looks bold and graphic, the pencil is gentle and nostalgic, the ballpoint feels like a school notebook, and the fountain pen adds a single touch of red.
Why life timelines are so powerful
Psychologists who study autobiographical memory describe how people build a sense of identity by turning events into a story. One well-known finding is the reminiscence bump: adults often recall more personal memories from adolescence and early adulthood than from other periods. Seeing your own moments placed in order can make that story feel more connected, and sometimes more surprising, than a list of dates.
Drawing a life as a short film also has a long tradition behind it. Flip books, in which a stack of slightly different drawings creates motion as the pages are flicked, have been popular since the nineteenth century, and hand-drawn autobiography videos became a popular format on video platforms during the 2010s. My Life, Animated borrows that spirit and automates the patient part, so that you only need to decide what belongs in the story.
Who to make one for
A life comic works for yourself, but it is often even better as a small gift. You can enter another person’s birth year and moments and put their name in the name field, so the title at the end reads as their story.
- A birthday film for a parent, grandparent, partner or friend.
- An anniversary or retirement keepsake.
- A graduation or new-chapter summary for yourself.
- A family reunion item that everyone can watch together.
- A personal journal entry that you can look back on in a few years.
Saving the video, sharing and privacy
Save as video records the film in your browser as a vertical 9:16 clip that suits stories and short-video apps. Recording takes as long as the film, about a minute, so keep the screen on and use a recent version of Chrome, Safari or Edge. The video is created on your device and goes nowhere unless you download or share it yourself.
To make the short share link, your answers are saved on our server under a random ID, and anyone with the link can watch the same film. Photos are never involved, but names and moments are, so leave out anything you would rather keep private. Your last answers may also be kept in your own browser so you can edit them next time, and you can clear that through your browser settings.