Bored indoors? Young Studio illustrates new Scouts guide to 100+ home-based activities

Manchester-based Young Studio has illustrated a new online guide to indoor activities from Scouts, which features more than 100 free activities, games and craft ideas. Commissioned before the Coronavirus outbreak but now perfectly timed, #TheGreatIndoors is aimed at families that are stuck inside with limited resources. Many of the suggestions also have an educational element, helping kids build communication skills or learn something new while having some fun.

Young Studio developed illustrations for the new guide, which can be found here, as well as creating a mixture of animated and live-action “how-to” videos with Follow Films. The year-long project involved Young Studio sifting through hundreds of Word documents with ideas for activities created by Scouts and then distilling each one into a simple and easy-to-understand image or animation. “The trickiest part was the ideas,” Young Studio director Geth Vaughan tells It’s Nice That. “I’ve never come up with 400 ideas in such an intense block of time. Normally with an animation you have a month to work on it, but here we had to come up with quick and simple things that could be done within a day or two so we didn’t max out the budget.”

The illustrations centre around a wide cast of characters, some human, some animal, either explaining the activities or adding humour to the instructions. One of the main mascots, Flo, came from another project Young Studio previously worked on for Scouts and has been joined by a gang of playmates and helpers that were designed to be inclusive and approachable.

“At the start of the project, we visited some groups to gather inspiration for our cast of characters, and on one occasion a volunteer had her cocker spaniel dashing around the hall,” says Kevin Yeates, Scouts head of creative. “Seeing everyone interact with him gave Geth the idea of including a dog (Buddy) to complete our diverse cast of characters.” Buddy has been used to demonstrate some of the more out-there activities, and is seen pretending to be a wizard flying on a magic carpet and creating a dance routine in a full Mardi Gras costume. “Buddy has given us lots of scope to add some chaotic fun,” says Yeates.

Young Studio’s typically geometric and shape-based style comes from Vaughan’s background as a graphic designer and for this project especially the team wanted to keep everything as bold and graphic as possible. Vaughan explains: “This gives the style flexibility to be as expressive as it need to be, with full blown out character scenes and lavish backdrops – but distinctive enough so that we can pull everything back, showcase the characters in their minimalist form and still be recognisable as more instructional material.”

Yeates adds, “We’re thrilled that everyone in the UK will get the chance to discover these activities for themselves and hope that they go some way in helping families of all shapes and sizes out.”

With activities like making animal collages out of fallen leaves, crafting a monster bookmark and writing a postcard to your future self, we think there’s some absolute gold for self-isolating adults too.