An object show can begin with something as ordinary as a paper clip, a candle, a soda can, or a grumpy little ruler who believes geometry is a personality trait. That is the charm of the format: everyday objects become contestants in an animated competition full of challenges, alliances, betrayals, jokes, and occasionally dramatic speeches about a slice of toast.
Creating an object show is not just about drawing objects with faces and limbs. A memorable series needs a clear premise, a cast that clashes in entertaining ways, a repeatable contest structure, readable animation, clean sound, and enough planning to keep Episode 7 from becoming a mysterious pile of unfinished files named “final_final_REALfinal.mov.”
This guide walks through how to create an original object show from the first idea to a publishable pilot episode. Whether you animate with a phone, tablet, computer, or a heroic amount of determination, these 15 steps will help you build a show that viewers can actually follow, enjoy, and want to discuss.
What Is an Object Show?
An object show is an animated or illustrated competition series where inanimate objects act as characters. Contestants compete in challenges, form friendships and rivalries, avoid elimination, and work toward a prize, title, reward, or absurdly powerful sandwich.
The format works because it combines three things people naturally enjoy: colorful characters, simple game-like rules, and ongoing stories. An object can be visually simple, but its personality can be huge. A tiny pencil can be a perfectionist. A cracked mug can be a dramatic poet. A traffic cone can be convinced it is the chosen hero of civilization.
The key is originality. The idea of “objects competing in challenges” is broad, but your characters, scripts, designs, host, logo, music, jokes, and story choices should be your own. Build inspiration from the genre, not a photocopy of another creator’s show.
How to Create an Object Show in 15 Steps
Step 1: Start With One Clear Show Idea
Before choosing fifty contestants and designing a glitter cannon, write one sentence that explains your series. This is your premise.
For example: “Twelve discarded household objects compete inside a strange recycling facility to win a wish-granting repair kit.” That sentence already gives you a setting, a reason for competition, possible challenges, and a visual identity.
A strong object show premise answers three questions:
- Who is competing?
- What are they trying to win?
- Why is this competition different from every other one?
Keep the concept simple enough that a viewer understands it within the first minute. You can add mysteries later. Episode one does not need seventeen ancient prophecies and a map of the Object Kingdom’s tax districts.
Step 2: Decide on the Prize and Stakes
Your prize is more than a shiny object at the end of the season. It gives contestants a reason to participate. The prize can be serious, silly, emotional, or weirdly specific.
Examples include a dream house, a magical battery, a restored hometown, a private island, a trip back to the store shelf, or the right to control the weather for one afternoon. The stranger the prize, the more it can shape the humor and world of your show.
Then decide what losing means. Does the eliminated contestant leave the game? Go to a waiting room? Become part of a side story? Get launched into a dimension where all the furniture complains? Establish the rule early so viewers understand why each challenge matters.
Step 3: Build a Small but Strong Cast
New creators often make the same mistake: they create forty contestants because drawing circles with faces feels easy at first. Then Episode Two arrives, and everyone must animate forty reactions. Suddenly, the show has become a spreadsheet with eyebrows.
Start with eight to sixteen contestants. This gives you enough variety without turning every episode into a crowded roll call.
Each character should have a clear role in the group. You do not need to write a giant biography, but you should know the basics:
- Personality: How do they usually react under pressure?
- Goal: Why do they want the prize?
- Strength: What are they useful at?
- Flaw: What gets them into trouble?
- Dynamic: Who do they get along with, dislike, fear, or secretly admire?
For example, a flashlight might be bold but afraid of the dark. A stapler might be organized but controlling. A balloon might be cheerful until anyone mentions sharp objects. These contradictions create jokes and story opportunities.
Step 4: Make Every Character Easy to Recognize
Object show character design should be simple enough to animate repeatedly. A contestant needs a recognizable silhouette, color pattern, facial style, and expression range. If viewers can identify a character from across the screen, your design is doing useful work.
Create a small reference sheet for each contestant. Include a neutral pose, happy face, angry face, scared face, side view, and any unique details. This keeps the design consistent when you animate future episodes.
Do not overload characters with tiny decorations that disappear during movement. A five-pixel crown may look impressive at 800% zoom, but at normal video size it can resemble a confused yellow smudge.
Step 5: Create a Host With a Job Beyond Announcing Things
The host introduces challenges, explains rules, reveals results, and keeps the story moving. But a great host also has a personality and a point of view.
Your host could be kind, sarcastic, overly dramatic, nervous, robotic, mysterious, or suspiciously invested in watching contestants carry watermelons across a lava field. Give the host a reason to exist in the world of the show.
Ask yourself: Does the host genuinely care about fairness? Are they hiding information? Do they enjoy chaos? Do they have a relationship with the prize? Even a small answer can make the host feel like a character instead of a loud floating rulebook.
Step 6: Choose a Competition Structure
Most object shows use a repeatable episode structure: a challenge, a winning team or player, a losing team or player, and some type of elimination or consequence. This rhythm helps viewers understand what is happening quickly.
You can use teams, individual rounds, point systems, secret missions, audience votes, judges, or randomized twists. The best choice depends on your cast size and the kind of story you want.
Team competitions are useful early in a season because they create natural friendships and conflicts. Individual rounds work well later when characters have established relationships and the stakes feel more personal.
Write down your rules before producing the pilot. If you change rules every episode without explanation, viewers may feel that the winner is chosen by a magical coin flip hidden under the director’s desk.
Step 7: Plan Challenges That Reveal Personality
A good challenge is not just a race with different background colors. It should force characters to make decisions. The challenge becomes interesting when personalities affect the outcome.
Imagine a challenge where contestants must build a bridge from junk. The confident ruler wants perfect measurements. The impulsive hammer keeps smashing useful parts. The nervous teacup refuses to cross anything without a safety railing. The clever magnet finds a shortcut nobody expected.
That is more entertaining than simply watching twelve objects run left for three minutes.
When brainstorming challenge ideas, use categories:
- Building and engineering challenges
- Races and obstacle courses
- Cooking, art, or performance contests
- Puzzle-solving missions
- Survival or escape scenarios
- Social challenges requiring teamwork or negotiation
Try to make the challenge visually understandable. Viewers should know the goal, the danger, and what success looks like without needing a forty-slide presentation.
Step 8: Outline the Season Before You Animate
You do not need every line of dialogue before starting, but you should know the general shape of the season. Create a basic episode map with challenge ideas, eliminations, major character moments, and any important reveals.
For a ten-episode season, your outline might include:
- Episode 1: Introduce the cast and first challenge.
- Episode 2: Establish teams and first rivalry.
- Episode 3: Give a quieter contestant a chance to shine.
- Episode 4: Reveal a strange rule or hidden location.
- Episode 5: Create a major team conflict.
- Episode 6: Change the game with a twist.
- Episode 7: Give a fan-favorite character a difficult choice.
- Episode 8: Break up teams or shift to individual competition.
- Episode 9: Build toward the finale.
- Episode 10: Resolve the prize and character arcs.
Planning ahead prevents accidental problems, such as eliminating the only character who knows how to explain the plot.
Step 9: Write a Script That Sounds Like People Talking
Object show dialogue should move quickly, especially in early episodes. Give each character a distinct speaking style. One contestant may use short blunt sentences. Another may overexplain everything. Another may speak politely while causing enormous trouble.
A useful script format includes scene descriptions, dialogue, sound effects, and visual notes. Keep action lines short and clear. Instead of writing, “The character performs an emotionally complex movement of tremendous internal conflict,” write, “Pencil hesitates, then drops the map.”
Read the dialogue aloud. If a joke takes too long to explain, trim it. If every character sounds like the same person wearing different hats, rewrite their voices until they feel distinct.
Step 10: Storyboard the Episode
A storyboard is a visual plan for your episode. It does not need polished art. Stick figures, rough object drawings, arrows, and notes are enough as long as you can understand the action.
Storyboard each important shot: establishing shots, close-ups for reactions, challenge action, dialogue scenes, transitions, and elimination moments. Write notes for camera movement, sound effects, and timing.
Storyboarding helps you catch problems before animation begins. You may discover that a scene has too much talking, a challenge is hard to understand, or a joke needs a pause before the punch line lands.
Step 11: Make an Animatic Before Full Animation
An animatic is a rough video made from storyboard panels, basic timing, temporary dialogue, and sound. It is one of the best ways to test pacing before spending hours animating every arm swing.
Place your storyboard drawings on a timeline. Add rough voice recordings, temporary music, and simple sound effects. Watch the episode from start to finish.
Pay attention to these questions:
- Can viewers understand the challenge quickly?
- Do scenes move too slowly?
- Are reactions given enough time?
- Does the episode have a satisfying ending?
- Are the important characters getting enough attention?
Fixing a weak scene at the animatic stage is much easier than discovering it after animating 400 frames of a spoon falling down a staircase.
Step 12: Record Clear Voices and Build the Sound
Audio can make a simple object show feel much more professional. You do not need an expensive studio, but you do need understandable voices. Record in a quiet space with soft materials nearby to reduce echo. A closet full of clothes may not look glamorous, but it can be surprisingly useful for voice recording. Fashion meets acoustics.
Record multiple takes for important lines. Encourage voice actors to try different emotions, speeds, and emphasis. Often the best take is not the first one; it is the one after everyone stops sounding like they are reading a school announcement.
Use sound effects carefully. Footsteps, impacts, whooshes, crowd reactions, mechanical noises, and ambient sound can make scenes feel alive. Music should support the mood without drowning out dialogue. Always use original, licensed, or properly permitted music and sound effects.
Step 13: Animate Smart, Not Miserably
Animation takes time, so design your workflow around what you can realistically finish. Limited animation is not a failure. Many effective web cartoons use reusable poses, simple mouth movements, held expressions, camera pans, and quick reaction cuts.
Create reusable assets for common expressions, mouths, arms, legs, backgrounds, and props. Save organized files so you can find them later. Name layers clearly. “BlueThing_NEW2_revised_maybe” is not a filing system; it is a cry for help.
Focus animation effort where viewers will notice it most: big reactions, challenge climaxes, emotional moments, and comedic timing. A character can remain mostly still during a conversation, then explode into energetic motion when the joke arrives.
Step 14: Edit, Review, and Fix the Boring Parts
Editing is where your object show becomes an episode instead of a collection of scenes that happen to know each other. Tighten pauses, remove repeated explanations, adjust music levels, and make sure the challenge rules are clear.
Watch the episode without stopping. Then watch it again with one goal at a time: dialogue clarity, pacing, visual consistency, sound balance, and story logic.
Ask a trusted viewer to watch the rough cut. Do not ask only, “Did you like it?” Ask specific questions:
- Who was your favorite character?
- Was any challenge confusing?
- Did any scene feel slow?
- Could you hear every important line?
- What made you want to see the next episode?
Feedback is not a command to change everything. It is a flashlight. It helps you notice places where your intention did not reach the audience.
Step 15: Publish, Promote, and Keep Improving
When your pilot is ready, create a strong title, thumbnail, description, and episode number. Your thumbnail should show clear characters, readable contrast, and one visual idea. Avoid stuffing every contestant, every prop, every logo, and three explosions into one tiny image.
Add captions or subtitles so more viewers can follow the dialogue. Use an end screen or closing message to point viewers toward the next episode, character profiles, short clips, or behind-the-scenes content.
After publishing, pay attention to audience reactions. Viewers may connect with characters you expected to be minor. They may be confused by a rule you thought was obvious. They may quote a joke you nearly deleted. Learn from the response, but do not let comments erase your own creative direction.
The goal of the first episode is not perfection. The goal is proof that your show exists, has a voice, and can grow.
Common Object Show Mistakes to Avoid
Most object show problems are not caused by a lack of talent. They come from trying to do too much too early. Avoid these common traps:
- Creating too many contestants for your animation schedule
- Making every character have the same joke or speaking style
- Explaining rules repeatedly instead of showing them through action
- Using copyrighted music, artwork, characters, or logos without permission
- Starting full animation before testing the episode with an animatic
- Making challenges random rather than connected to character choices
- Ignoring audio quality because “the visuals are the important part”
- Publishing an episode before checking pacing, subtitles, and sound levels
Remember that viewers will forgive simple art more quickly than confusing storytelling. A rough-looking episode with fun characters and clear stakes can be charming. A beautiful episode where nobody understands why a fork is screaming at a mailbox is harder to rescue.
Creator Experiences: What Making an Object Show Teaches You
Creators who make their first object show often discover that the biggest challenge is not drawing. It is finishing. At the beginning, nearly every idea feels exciting: character lists grow, lore expands, challenges multiply, and the host receives three different forms before lunch. Then production begins, and the creator learns an important lesson: every extra idea becomes extra work.
Many first-time creators start with ambitious plans for ten-minute episodes, twenty contestants, detailed backgrounds, full lip-syncing, and cinematic action scenes. There is nothing wrong with aiming high, but the most successful beginner projects usually begin smaller. A three- to five-minute pilot with eight contestants can teach more about storytelling, editing, and workflow than an unfinished twenty-minute premiere ever will.
Another common discovery is that character personalities become clearer during production. A contestant who seemed boring in the outline may suddenly become funny once they react to other characters. A planned villain may work better as an insecure troublemaker. A quiet character may become a fan favorite because they say little but notice everything. This is why creators should leave room for growth. A character sheet is a starting point, not a prison sentence.
Audio is another major learning experience. Many creators spend days on animation but record dialogue quickly using a phone in a noisy room. Then, during editing, they realize viewers can hear every passing car, ceiling fan, chair squeak, and mysterious household appliance. Better audio does not always require expensive equipment. It usually requires a quiet room, consistent microphone distance, retakes, and patience. Clean dialogue makes even simple animation feel more intentional.
Creators also learn the value of reusable assets. At first, making a new mouth shape, arm position, or background for every scene may feel artistic. By the fourth episode, it feels like trying to build a new bicycle every time you need to cross the street. Saving reusable expressions, props, locations, and character poses speeds up production while keeping the visual style consistent.
Collaboration can be exciting but requires organization. If several people help with voices, writing, art, or editing, decide who handles final decisions. Save files in shared folders with clear names. Keep a list of deadlines. Confirm permissions for music, artwork, and voice performances. A team can make an object show stronger, but only when everyone knows what they are responsible for.
Audience feedback brings its own surprises. Some viewers will love a character you barely expected anyone to notice. Others may dislike a twist that seemed brilliant in your notes. The useful approach is to look for patterns. If many viewers are confused by the same rule, clarify it in the next episode. If multiple people mention poor audio, improve your recording setup. If viewers enjoy a certain friendship or rivalry, consider developing it further.
Most importantly, creators learn that improvement happens episode by episode. Your first pilot may have uneven pacing, simple animation, or a joke that lands with the grace of a dropped toaster. That is normal. Each finished episode teaches you how to write faster, design better, record cleaner, edit tighter, and trust your own ideas. An object show does not need to begin as a masterpiece. It needs to begin as something real enough to improve.
Conclusion
Learning how to create an object show is really about learning how to turn a simple idea into a repeatable story machine. Start with a clear premise, build a manageable cast, give every challenge a purpose, plan with storyboards and animatics, prioritize understandable audio, and animate within a schedule you can survive.
Your first episode may not look exactly like the version in your head. That is not failure. That is production. Make the pilot, learn from it, and let the next episode become a little sharper, funnier, clearer, and more confident. Before long, your audience may be passionately arguing about whether a stapler deserved elimination. At that point, congratulations: you have made an object show.
