How much does it cost to make an object show?

You can make one for free. FlipaClip, Wick Editor, and a phone mic cost nothing, and that's a legitimate way to ship a first episode. The paid routes are optional: ToonSquid is about $10 once, Adobe Animate is about $263 a year, and a real microphone is a nice-to-have. Inanimator is free during beta. Pricing isn't announced, but beta members lock the Founding Creator price for life.

Can you make an object show on a phone or a Chromebook?

Yes. FlipaClip is built for phones, and Wick Editor and Inanimator run in a browser, which means a Chromebook works fine. Inanimator runs on phones, tablets, and computers. The heavier rigging tools — ToonSquid and Adobe Animate — need an iPad or a real desktop or laptop.

Do you need to know how to draw?

Not to start. The parts system and shared asset packs mean you can assemble a watchable show from swap-in eyes, mouths, and bodies before you've drawn anything custom. Over time, drawing your own parts is what makes a show look like yours. Plenty of beloved shows have rough, simple art on purpose — personality beats polish.

How long does an episode take to make?

It varies enormously. A solo creator's first short episode, maybe two to five minutes, can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Longer or more polished episodes can take months each. It depends on length, detail, cast size, and your tools. Don't measure yourself against full studios. Finish something small first.

Is AI okay in the OSC?

Overwhelmingly, no. The community rejects AI-generated art; wikis require it to be labeled, and a major animator Discord banned AI content outright in October 2024. If you use AI art, be transparent and expect pushback. (Inanimator is 100 percent AI-free by pledge — no AI-generated art, ever. Tweening is math, not AI.)

How to Make an Object Show (the complete guide)

A note before we start: the studio behind this guide, Inanimator, is in closed beta — join the beta at /beta. Everything below works whether you use it or not. The goal is to teach the craft, not to sell you something.

This is the guide we wished existed the first time we tried to make an object show. It walks the whole process, step by step, with the tools people actually use today. Follow every step in free software if you want. Sign up for nothing.

What is an object show?

An object show is an animated series where ordinary objects — pencils, balls, slices of pizza, scissors — talk, form teams, and compete in challenges, usually with one contestant eliminated each episode, in the style popularized by shows like BFDI and Inanimate Insanity. Episodes run from a couple of minutes to over half an hour, and they build ongoing stories and loyal fandoms over many episodes.

How do you come up with an object show idea and cast?

Most object shows start from a competition: a prize people are fighting to win. That gives you a reason for episodes and a structure to write toward. The competition isn’t the only option — the genre has room for adventure, mystery, and slice-of-life — but it’s the skeleton that has carried hundreds of shows, and it’s a good one to lean on while you learn.

Then pick your cast. The fun of the genre is the gap between what an object is and how it acts. Scissors might be snippy and judgmental. Lamp might be the anxious overthinker who over-prepares for every challenge. Traffic Cone could be the loud one who appoints himself director of everyone. Let the object suggest the personality, then push it somewhere unexpected.

A few practical notes:

Aim for a cast of 8 to 15 for a first show. That’s enough for teams and eliminations, few enough that each character can keep a distinct voice.
Give every character one clear trait. The viewer needs to tell them apart in the first thirty seconds.
Do not copy existing shows’ characters. The community has seen enough direct clones. Make yours yours, even if the art is rough.

The traditional way to do this step is a notebook and a pen. It still works. (In Inanimator you can start from a default library of original parts so you have a cast to pose and rearrange before you’ve drawn a thing.)

How do you design object show characters and assets?

This is the heart of object-show craft, and it runs on a “parts” system.

An object character is built from separate pieces: a body (the object’s shape and color), eyes, a mouth, and usually arms and legs (limbs). This matters because it’s what makes the genre animatable by solo creators and tiny teams. You don’t redraw the whole character every frame. You redraw the body once, then swap and reposition parts to show motion and emotion.

Bodies are unique per character — a distinct shape and color you’ll reuse.
Eyes and mouths come in packs: sets of expressions (neutral, happy, angry, surprised, sad) you drop in to react. A good mouth pack can carry an entire episode.
Limbs are simple lines or bendy drawings you pose frame to frame.

Asset-pack culture is central here. The OSC has a long tradition of sharing asset packs — bodies, eyes, mouths, full pose sheets — on DeviantArt, fan wikis, Google Drives, and YouTube. Creators download a mouth pack, recolor a body, and start animating. It’s how a solo kid can make a show that looks like a show. Respect the license on what you borrow. Many packs are free to use with credit. Some are not. When you can’t tell, draw your own.

The traditional multi-tool way: draw your bodies and parts in a drawing app (ibis Paint X, Procreate, even MS Paint), save them as transparent PNGs, then carry those files into your animation app to assemble and move them. File sprawl is real — you end up with a folder of hundreds of parts. (In Inanimator you draw bodies, eyes, mouths, arms, and legs as parts with brushes, fill, shapes, and layers, and they drop into one searchable library you reuse across every episode, synced across your devices.)

How do you write an object show episode?

Keep the format simple. An object-show script is a list of lines, one speech at a time:

SCISSORS: That's my chair. I was saving it.
LAMP: You put a napkin on it. That's not saving.
TRAFFIC CONE: Both of you, sit somewhere else. I'm running this challenge.

That’s the whole format: CHARACTER NAME: their line. Add stage directions in brackets if you want them ([SCISSORS slams the table]). Write the episode as dialogue first, before you touch animation, because rewriting dialogue is cheap and redrawing animation is not.

A reliable episode skeleton, if you want one: challenge intro, the competition itself, a winner, an elimination, and a hook for next time. You don’t have to follow it. But it’s a shape that has worked for a long time, and starting from it beats staring at a blank page.

The traditional way is any text editor — Google Docs, a notes app, Notepad. (An in-app script writer that highlights each line as you record is on the Inanimator roadmap, not in the product yet. For now, your doc of choice is the move.)

How do you record voices for an object show?

A phone mic is fine. Object-show voice acting is characterful and often proudly lo-fi; a quiet room and a phone will get you most of the way there.

Record one line at a time. Do a few takes of each line, then pick the best.
Get close to the mic, but not so close that “p” and “b” sounds pop. A sock stretched over the mic is the classic homemade pop filter.
Export audio as WAV or MP3.
If you voice every character yourself, change pitch and tone per part. A surprising number of solo shows do exactly this.
Casting others is normal too. The OSC has a casting-call culture — you can post in Discords or in YouTube community tabs asking for voice actors. Fan projects are often unpaid; original projects sometimes offer revenue share. Be honest about which one yours is.

The traditional way is your phone’s voice memos, or a free recorder like Audacity, then lining the audio up with your animation by hand in your editor. (Per-line recording with takes, tied to your script, is on the Inanimator roadmap, not current.)

Frame-by-frame or rig and tween: how do you animate an object show?

This is the biggest craft decision, and most working creators use both approaches in the same episode.

Frame-by-frame means you draw or reposition the character on every frame. This is the energy the genre is known for — the squashy, snappy, exaggerated reactions. A character flattens, snaps back, pops. It’s expressive. It’s also labor: at 24 frames a second, one second is 24 drawings. Most object shows run lower, at 12 or even 8 frames per second, to keep the workload sane and to lean into the choppy charm.

Rig and tween means you build a rig — a character assembled from parts with pivots — set a few key poses, and let the software mathematically fill in the frames between. This shines on smooth, sustained motion: a walk cycle, a slow turn, an arm reaching across the table. It’s efficient once the rig exists.

The honest take: frame-by-frame gives you the genre’s loose, punchy energy; rig-and-tween saves hours on the repetitive connective motion. Use frame-by-frame for the beats that need to pop and rig-and-tween for the travel in between. Blend them. That’s what most polished shows do.

Onion skinning matters in both modes. It shows faint ghosts of the previous frame and the next frame so your motion stays consistent — so a hand doesn’t jump, an eye doesn’t drift. Every serious animation tool has it, and you should leave it on.

The tools people actually use, stated plainly:

FlipaClip — free/freemium, mobile, frame-by-frame only, no rigging or tweening. A genuinely great entry ramp. The community has documented playback lag and skipped frames past roughly 60 frames, and crashes on heavy projects.
ToonSquid — about $10 one-time, iPad-only, much loved in the OSC (“basically Animate without the subscription”). No Android, PC, or browser, and files live on one device unless you move them yourself.
Adobe Animate — about $263 a year, with a famously steep learning curve. Adobe announced discontinuation in February 2026, then reversed to indefinite maintenance mode the next day: supported, but no new features.
Wick Editor — free, open-source, browser-based. Development has gone dormant; forum threads through 2025 keep asking whether it’s dead.

(In Inanimator you get both frame-by-frame, with onion skinning and a filmstrip, and rig posing with math-based tweening, in one browser tab on phone, tablet, or computer. Free during beta.)

How do you export and post an object show to YouTube?

Export to MP4 at 1080p, at the framerate you animated. Common choices are 24 or 30 fps for smoothness, or 12 fps if you want the deliberately choppy look a lot of shows use.
The thumbnail matters more than people new to YouTube expect. Make one with your cast and a big reaction face. A boring thumbnail can sink a good episode.
The title should be clear and findable. “Episode 1” alone won’t get discovered. Name the show and the episode number, and maybe the hook.
YouTube is where the genre lives. Make a channel, set a banner, write a description that says what the show is.
Consistency beats volume. A reliable upload rhythm builds a returning audience faster than occasional big drops.

The traditional way is to animate in one program, export, then handle the thumbnail separately in Canva, Photoshop, or your drawing app. (Inanimator exports MP4 at 1080p at your chosen framerate, and a thumbnail maker is on the roadmap, not current.)

How do you find your audience in the object show community?

The object show community — the OSC — is where this all circulates: Discords, X/Twitter, YouTube, DeviantArt, TikTok, and fan wikis. How you show up matters as much as what you make.

Watch and engage. Comment on other people’s shows. Recommend shows you genuinely like. Jump into “object show recommendations” threads. The OSC runs on mutuals noticing each other.
Share what you make. Post asset packs with clear licensing. The whole genre scales because people give away mouth packs and body packs. Add to the pile.
Be honest about AI. This one is important. The OSC overwhelmingly rejects AI-generated art. Fan wikis mandate labeling it, and a major animator Discord banned AI content outright in October 2024. If you use AI art, be transparent and expect a cold reception — many viewers will simply not watch. (Inanimator is 100 percent AI-free by pledge — no AI-generated art, ever. Tweening is 1990s-style mathematical interpolation, not AI; the pledge is signed in marker on the homepage.)
Credit what you use. Borrowed assets, voice actors, music. Name them in the description.
Treat it as a marathon. Most object shows grow slowly, one episode at a time, over months and years. The creators who stick around are the ones who keep posting.

If you want to make your object show in one browser tab — draw the parts, animate frame-by-frame or with rigs, and export an MP4 — Inanimator is in closed beta. Join the beta at /beta.