Heroes Forces - early concepts, ideas and more!

Hello!

My most recent season of Heroes Forces is now well underway, so I thought I’d take a short break and do something a bit different today.

Today, I’ll be looking back at the early concepts, designs, inspirations and more from for Heroes Forces: Season 1. Perhaps this could also help some aspiring writers in some way!

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🗂Inspiration to make a series🗂

First, let’s take a look at what inspired this series to begin with.

Of course, the inspiration for the series came from the excellent works of BBT and other series creators here on amino! It was a chance for me to spread my creative wings, and provide a different take on many of the ideas conveyed in BBT’s universe.

The one thing I totally embraced was the idea of the characters being in an Aminoverse. This allowed me to get really creative with the tools and abilities of certain characters, namely the Moderation team and their tools.

Things like the Ban Hammer have been seen before, but the Feature Wand, Broadcasting Megaphone, Strike Spear and Freeze Wand were all original takes on weapons that could be used in an Amino universe.

My advice for anyone making a series? Take inspiration from everywhere! But still try to add your own creative kick to the story you’re creating. Plot twists are a great way to subvert audience expectations, so if possible, try and take a turn that your audience won’t expect! Drop subtle hints that start to make the twist evident, but don’t be too obvious or you could risk people guessing the truth long before you plan its reveal.

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:green_book: Story Inspirations :closed_book:

Contrary to popular belief, Infinity War did not inspire this story, although I can definitely see the similarities looking back.

As with a lot of stories, there is always something that the villain is looking to obtain. In my case, I wanted to make a full, long series, and in turn I decided to use 6 gemstones. Originally, 8 gemstones would have been used, but this idea was scrapped when I realised that they wouldn’t fit on to Dimerio when he stole them from Dagon.

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🎞Early scrapped story concepts🎞

For me, the story was always going to be the same - Dimerio would ultimately betray Lord Dagon and steal the power gems for himself.

However, things weren’t always that straightforward.

The team of Dewott, TNT and Rover weren’t originally going to find their gemstone in the desert. In fact, I originally had them going to the moon (or at least somewhere in space) to retrieve the gem!

They would be attacked by this alien creature which would have been protecting the gem inside this facility on the moon, but ultimately the idea was scrapped due to poor set design and the fact that it would have been over in 1 episode.

However, the idea lived on with the appearance of the Xenomorph in a different episode, inspired by BBT.

Wu and Mix’s train journey was inspired by Murder on the Orient Express. However, originally the train journey would have taken them to a safe location before Dimerio showed up and revealed that he was hiding on the train all along.

It made more sense to me to instead have Dimerio attack whilst on the train, raising the stakes even more as he had captured many people.

Another idea that changed was the hypnotised Curators. Originally, they were just killed. However, I quickly changed my mind about that idea because it was extremely dark. Furthermore, I thought the idea of Dimerio building a small army behind the scenes, unknown to his co-villains, was extremely interesting and would pique the interest of readers questioning what Dimerio was up to.

Finally, Amino was originally going to be partially destroyed when Dimerio wielded the power gems. Originally, Dimerio would go to his throne room and begin using the gem powers to destroy Lego Amino. He would be interrupted by Ninja and Wu, initiating the final battle. This was scrapped because it would’ve involved the random killing of people who stayed back at Amino. I don’t believe in random killings. If a character is gonna die, then they’re gonna DIE. Properly. Not off screen and by chance.

And while we’re in the throne room, get this! Wu was never originally going to be impacted by a spell from Dimerio. I decided to do this in order to remove Wu from the story for season 2. Allow me to explain.

You see, Wu was kind of the protagonist for season 1. Although there wasn’t necessarily a focus character, Wu and Ninja were at the forefront of the action near the end. No one likes a character that is too OP (unless that character is Dimerio, I guess?), and so I decided to literally remove Wu from the action for Season 2 by letting him get hit with Dimerio’s spell.

This takes Wu away from the limelight and allows other characters to shine in Season 2, mainly JkrsWyld whose Leader abilities weren’t demonstrated in season 1. By removing Wu, this allowed Jkrs to hold the fort as the sole Leader in Season 2, allowing for potential character development.

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🧞‍♂Characters🧞‍♂

The most major character change was that of Wayne!

A treacherous deceiver, Wayne played the Heroes Forces like a fiddle, encouraging them to collect the Power Gems before surrendering them to Dagon’s Forces. It was only very much later where Wayne was revealed to be a villain secretly working for Lord Dagon all along.

However, Wayne was originally NOT a villain at all! In fact, it was the community itself that inspired me to twist this character into a villain.

Originally, Wayne was going to fight alongside Wu instead of Ninja in the final stand against Dimerio, which would have had a different ending for the series.

Dimerio was inspired largely by this image:

Which is strange, because the final design bears few similarities. I wanted to create a character who was a samurai warrior, an opponent so skilled in fighting that they proved too much for the heroes time and time again.

At the time, I had also started re-watching older seasons of Ninjago. And that’s when I re-watched Season 4, Tournament of Elements. Watching Clouse in action prompted me to reconfigure Dimerio’s character and abilities, making him a warrior who used magic. This is why Dimerio’s clothing is the armour and dress of a warrior, get his hat is that of a jester.

Plus, I wanted to make Dimerio a bit more special that a sword fighting warrior. This was going to be the big baddie, the true evil in the season. Considering Slouch already took the “muscle” role of the team, and Warboss had a technological side, I wanted Dimerio to have his own gimmick as well.

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So, that’s all folks!

Those were most of the inspirations, ideas and scrapped concepts that I can . There were probably more, but that’s all I can .

I hope you enjoyed the read!