"Superhero Pets" - a Creativity Exercise

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Welcome to Super Hero Pets! This is a fun exercise designed to help imagine an original TV or web series.  Your goal is to learn the basic building blocks of story, story-telling and character, by imagining a short film based on your first pet, or cuddly toy.  Start by imagining the characters, who they are, and what they do. Then design your four main characters.  

What You Will Learn

Underdog!

By the end of this exercise you will be able to create and imagine new situations and characters.

Assets

You will need:

1.     Pencils (b&w, and colour) 

2. Paper

3. Imagination!

Exercise – Imagine a Scenario for a Story

1. Remember your first pet or cuddly toy. Write down his/her name on a piece of paper.

2. Now imagine that he/she has super powers (these are secret powers. His/her owner – ie you - does not know about them)

3. Superhero Pet has has three good friends. Who are they?

4. They live….. where?

5. What do they do together?

6. Then….one day….something unusual happened. What was it?

7. And then…because of that, something else happened

8. and then….because of that, something else happened

9. until finally….

10. Class discussion: What stories work well? 

Design Your Characters

Contrasting shapes

Now design your four characters.  Make sure they don't all look the same.

Think in terms of simple shapes like triangles, circles and squares.  Contrasting shapes make it easier to identify who is who. 

Colour

Contrasting colours

Consider colour - maybe they are different, contrasting colours.  If your characters are different colours, it will be easier to distinguish them.

Nancy Beiman - Prepare to Board

This "Superhero Pets" creativity exercise is taken from Nancy Beiman's storyboarding book "Prepare to Board" - an excellent resource for the art of storyboarding.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for one of our courses, follow this link.