Our story

We have been drawing other people's families since 2020.

Ten thousand of them, before we ever printed a book.

Dreamtale started as a small studio making cartoon portraits. People sent us photographs of their children, their parents, their dogs, and we drew them. Ten thousand families later we had learned the one thing that matters in this work: nobody wants a nice picture. They want to recognize someone.

A likeness either lands or it does not. When it lands, a grandmother cries at a kitchen table. When it misses by a little, the picture goes in a drawer. There is no middle.

So when we started making books, we made the likeness the whole job and built everything else around protecting it.

Our founder as a small child in the early nineties — The first face we tested the books on was our founder’s, aged about two, scanned off a strip of film from the early nineties. Same finger on the nose, same sweater with the red bird, same mole. If it works on a scratched photograph from thirty years ago, it works on the one in your phone.

The same child, drawn as a Dreamtale character — The first face we tested the books on was our founder’s, aged about two, scanned off a strip of film from the early nineties. Same finger on the nose, same sweater with the red bird, same mole. If it works on a scratched photograph from thirty years ago, it works on the one in your phone.

Since 2020

and 10,000 families so far

Made to order

nothing sits in a warehouse waiting for a name

Printed in the USA

hardcover, bound, shipped from Texas

Try it on a photo of your own, it costs nothing and takes half a minute.