How to make your own cartoon show

Updated September 13, 2026 · 6 min read

Make an original adult cartoon series — your own characters, your own city, episode after episode with the same look. You design a small cast once (two or three friends, each readable in silhouette), lock a warm flat 2D style, then direct episodes one Scene at a time. No drawing, no animation software: the Studio draws, you decide what happens. First Cast takes about ten minutes; a first episode, one evening.

Time to first Scene: ~10 minutes
Difficulty: Beginner
You need: One line of premise
Studio surface: Cast · Style · Director

Season poster — Theo, Maya and Lena on the fire escape above the foggy city at sunset. — Situationship — an example cast designed once, kept all season.

Pick a premise your group chat would recognize
The best adult-cartoon premises are one true thing observed closely: dating in your city, the friend group that debriefs everything, the job nobody can explain at parties. “Three friends dating their way through San Francisco” works because anyone who has done it knows the material writes itself.
Test yours by saying it out loud: if the logline gets a laugh of recognition before you explain it, it will survive a season. One home base helps too — the apartment, the bar corner, the group chat made visible — somewhere the Cast can always drift back to.
One home base the Cast always drifts back to.
TRY THIS
Describe your show
Design two or three friends with one silhouette trait each
You don’t need a big cast; you need a readable one. Give each lead exactly one trait you could recognize in pure silhouette: Theo’s beanie, Maya’s piled-up bun, Lena’s blazer-and-wineglass posture. One planner, one romantic, one critic is a complete comedy engine — Situationship runs on those three, and every date they bring home is just a guest star.
If a new character can’t be told apart from your leads at shadow-distance, they don’t have a trait yet — give them one, or fold them into someone who does.
One silhouette trait per lead.
Lock the flat-cel style before writing a single episode
Pick the show’s look once — warm flat 2D, dusk-over-the-city palette — and let it be a decision you never make again. In the Studio that’s the Style control: set it at the World level and every episode inherits it, which is exactly what makes a run of Clips feel like a show instead of a folder of experiments.
Resist restyling per episode. A viewer should know it’s your show from one frame; that only happens if the frame never changes its rules.
Style is a World-level decision — set once, inherited everywhere.
Write episode one’s setup, twist, payoff
A cartoon episode is three moves. Setup: the ordinary thing — Maya rewriting her dating-app bio for the ninth time. Twist: the thing that makes it yours — Theo and Lena turn it into a tribunal, and the version they write as a joke is the good one. Payoff: the image you end on — Maya posting their bio, hating that it works.
If you can name your three moves in one breath, you have an episode; if you can’t, you have a premise still looking for its story. Write the payoff first — it tells you what the setup has to smuggle in.
The Bio: setup, twist, payoff.
Direct the punchline beat
Cartoon timing lives in the reaction, not the action. When the date pushes a cart containing a 40-pack of toilet paper past the appetizer aisle, the joke isn’t the cart — it’s Maya doing the math on what he just told her about himself.
Direct it in the line: “hold on her face reading the label one beat longer than comfortable.” One specific beat per note. If a take lands flat, change the hold before you change the joke — most cartoon misses are timing, not writing.
The joke is the reaction to the cart.
Plan episode two before episode one’s glow fades
The pilot will make you want to admire it. Instead, open the planner and sketch episode two while the engine’s warm: same Cast, same apartment, one new disaster. Situationship’s second outing — the warehouse second date — exists because the first left a question open: the bio worked, so now what?
That’s the series habit: each episode answers one thing and plants one thing. Two episodes in, you have a show; one episode in, you have a very good clip.
Plan the next beat while the pilot’s still warm.
TRY THIS
Describe your show

Made this way

Ghosted at Ocean Beach — the same cast, one sadder joke.
The whole Cast in their World — the set never changes.
Every episode starts as a board like this.
Same three-move structure, different genre entirely.

Generated in Character App · example stills, not a live product demo

Common mistakes

A date who is only a punchline. The dates rotate; the friends stay. Give even a one-Scene date one real trait, or the show starts laughing at strangers instead of at its leads.
Shock for shock’s sake. Adult comedy is the register, not the material — the spreadsheet, the tribunal and the fog are funnier than anything you’d have to apologize for.
Restyling between episodes. Changing the look resets the recognition you built — lock the style once and let the characters carry the variety. The consistent-cast guide covers drift.
A friend group that agrees with itself. If nobody is wrong, nothing is funny — the planner, the romantic and the critic should each be certain the other two are doing it wrong.

Questions

How is this different from just making one cartoon image?

A Cast and a World persist. One image is a drawing; a show is the same characters making new trouble every episode — the Cast, style and set all carry over automatically.

Can the same cast work in a movie-length special later?

Yes — the Cast doesn’t care about runtime. String more Scenes together and the same designs carry a longer story; the episode structure just stretches.

Do I need to know animation software?

None of it. You write what happens in a direction line; the Studio draws and moves it. If you can describe the gag, you can direct it.

How do I keep the characters’ proportions consistent?

Lock one silhouette trait per character and reuse the same Cast — never re-describe them from scratch. The consistent-cast guide walks the full method.

What age range is this style for?

Character App is 18+ and this example is adult comedy — dating, friendship, city life. The flat 2D look is a style choice, not an age rating; the writing sets the register.