What we do with your family’s pictures

The short version

• The photograph your child takes never leaves the phone.
• What is sent is the cut-out object on its own — the toy, without the room, the hands or anyone’s face.
• Nothing your family makes is published. There is no feed, no gallery and no profile.
• Nothing is used to train anybody’s model.
• A parent can delete everything from inside the app, and it goes.

What leaves the phone, exactly

When your child photographs something, the app finds the object in the picture and cuts it out on the device. Only that cut-out is uploaded. The original camera photo stays on the phone.

If your child uses a photo of the room as a backdrop, that photo is checked on the device first, and the copy on our server is deleted within 24 hours.

A finished film is kept for 30 days on the copy that delivers it to you, so it can be watched and downloaded. The characters themselves stay on your family’s account until you delete them.

Who processes it

We use other companies to run the service. They are named here because you should be able to check them:

• Server: netcup, Germany — accounts, characters and finished films.
• Delivery: Cloudflare — this website and the app’s network traffic.
• Picture and film analysis: Google Gemini, through OpenRouter — works out what the photographed object is.
• Film generation: ByteDance Seedance, through OpenRouter — animates the character.
• 3D characters: Meshy — turns the cut-out into a figure that can move.

Our own server is in Germany. We do not use advertising networks, analytics SDKs or third-party trackers in the app, and the app contains no advertising.

Accounts and children

The account belongs to the adult. Animister is made for children of about 5–8, using a grown-up’s phone, and the parts of the app that involve typing or sharing sit behind a parental gate.

We ask for as little as we can: an adult email address to hold the account, and the characters and films your family makes. We do not ask a child for their name, school, location or anything else about them.

Sharing

Everything is private until an adult decides otherwise. A parent can send a film to a friend your child paired face to face by scanning a QR code, or as a private link. Parent Zone lists what was shared and with whom, and taking a share back withdraws access and stops the link from opening.

Deleting things

You can delete a character, a film or the whole account from inside the app. Deleting the account removes the characters, the films and the account record. Backups roll over on their own schedule and are overwritten within 30 days.

Reaching us

While we are in beta the fastest route is TestFlight’s own feedback button in the app — take a screenshot and send it, and we see the screen you were on. A published support address will be added here before the wider pilot.

See also the beta agreement.