Draw a fish

Creative

interactive drawing toy

SHOW HN2025

935points
234comments
#18of 3,837 in 2025
Top 1%of 2025 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

33 positive, 76 neutral or asking, 6 mixed, 37 critical, out of 152 comments about the project. Thread score +0.03.

Execution: 0 for, 22 againstIdea: 14 for, 0 againstPerformance: 0 for, 10 againstDesign: 2 for, 3 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Fun, whimsical and wholesome

    From 4 comments
    • This is the most wholesome thing I saw on the internet for a long time. Thanks for the effort!
      productme on HN
    • What a fun, whimsical idea. I love this. Also: When you release something like this to the public, I'm amazed at how quickly humans race to the bottom. That bit can be awful to…
      danesparza on HN
    • This is too much fun! If anyone missed it, you can also rank the fish here: https://drawafish.com/rank.html
      justusthane on HN
    • omg best shit that happened in 2025 yet, well done
      fHr on HN
  • Reminds people of museum fish-drawing exhibits

    From 3 comments
    • I did this on a trip to Japan but can't remember for the life of me where. Some museum. My wife and I drew fishes and then they were uploaded and we went to a room and watched…
      volkk on HN
    • Locally we have the National Museum of Play. One of the exhibits right near the entrance is a virtual aquarium where you can color in a picture of a fish. Then you take it to a…
      michaelmior on HN
    • There’s a museum in Tokyo that has this but for physically drawn fish and is then projected on a large wall. Cool to see a digital version
      rl_for_energy on HN

Objections

  • Bugs: fish not appearing, model not loaded errors

    From 4 comments
    • I keep getting this error on both Safari and Firefox: Uncaught (in promise) Error: Fish model not loaded verifyFishDoodle https://drawafish.com/src/js/app.js:514 <anonymous>…
      sometimes_all on HN
    • Fun, but really frustrating to spend a ton of time making a detailed fish, get a fish probability of 67.2%, submit it successfully with no note about it needing moderation, and…
      MikeHartman on HN
    • Does not work for me on desktop Firefox. When I press the "make it swim!" button, there's an error in console: "Uncaught (in promise) Error: Fish model not loaded"
      veidelis on HN
    • I waited for my fish. But it never came. Made me sad.
      cancerboi on HN
  • Voting can be repeated and gamed

    From 3 comments
    • The major problem is that I could up-vote and down-vote as many times as I want. It is rate-limited, however[1]. I know, because I wrote a script. :D Seems like someone else did,…
      johnisgood on HN
    • you can also upvote your favorite however many times you want!
      herval on HN
    • you can upvote your own fish as much as you want
      parpfish on HN

Requests

  • Fix voting so it cannot be repeated

    From 1 comment
    • The major problem is that I could up-vote and down-vote as many times as I want. It is rate-limited, however[1]. I know, because I wrote a script. :D Seems like someone else did,…
      johnisgood on HN
  • Mobile support

    From 2 comments
    • No mobile support?
      Feathercrown on HN
    • There is mobile support... but it currently loads a 40mb model which doesn't work so great in a lot of places where you will use a phone. I meant to allow you to submit anyway,…
      hallak on HN
  • Highlight the user's own fish

    From 2 comments
    • I drew a fish but I couldn't find it anywhere when it switched to the tank. Perhaps you could highlight the user's own fish, at least initially? EDIT: Tried again and now I see…
      pimlottc on HN
    • Very fun. My only suggestion would be a small highlight when you submit your fish so you can easily see which fish is yours - at least for a few seconds.
      dgrin91 on HN

Questions

  • How the vibe-coded app was built

    From 1 comment
    • Would love to hear more info on how you actually vibe coded this as the fishbowl seems incredibly cool
      hajrice on HN
  • Whether drawings are traced from images

    From 2 comments
    • I could dedicate a month, or a year, and never come up with something like those. Are they really using the site tool, or is there a trick to draw them elsewhere and import them?…
      davidcollantes on HN
    • ``` const input = document.createElement("input"); document.body.append(input); input.type = "file"; input.accept = "image/*"; input.onchange = e => { if (input.files &&…
      creata on HN

Alternatives named

  • Museum fish-drawing exhibits such as teamLab Borderless

    From 2 comments
  • Paper Planes

    From 1 comment
    • This is fantastic, the leaderboard is really nice! It reminds me of Paper Planes. https://paperplanes.world/
      distalx on HN
  • Jian Yang's hotdog app from Silicon Valley

    From 1 comment
    • Shocking no one has mentioned Jian Yang's hotdog app :) [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWwCK95X6go&ab_channel=Felix Love the simplicity of this.
      parsabg on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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