Imagine you are watching a movie and all of a sudden, you are in an outer space adventure! Or you are a pilot flying a super fast jet through the clouds! 

Movies about air and space help us imagine, explore and wonder. What is your favorite air and space movie?

Jump to an Activity:      Create an airplane cartoon character      Create a storyboard      Kid Book Recommendations      Spotlight Story

Activity: Create an airplane cartoon character

To tell stories, movie makers create characters that we can connect with and that seem familiar. Sometimes they make characters out of things that don't usually talk or feel feelings—like airplanes!

For this activity, you get to choose an airplane, learn more about it and then create a cartoon character using your imagination.

Side view of agricultural plane painted like an orange and white anthropomorphic animated plane, with eyeballs in the cockpit. It sits below a large grey aircraft

For Inspiration

Meet Dusty Crophopper who lives at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia! He is actually an Air Tractor AT-301, a crop duster airplane painted to look like Dusty, the main character in the 2013 movie, Planes.

A crop duster plane is used for spraying chemicals on crops to protect them or help them grow. It was built and designed to carry heavy loads and to fly low to the ground. 

If you look closely and compare different airplanes, you'll notice that some planes have longer wings, or thicker bodies. That's because they're designed for different jobs. 

In the movie, Planes, different planes were given different personalities based on their jobs! 

What to Do

Step 1: Choose which airplane you want to make into a cartoon character. Learn about that airplane below. 

Grumman F-14 Tomcat at the Udvar-Hazy Center

Grumman F-14D(R) Tomcat

  • Supersonic fighter jet which means it is really fast.
  • Has special radar and targeting system which is like having really good eyesight and good aim to hit a target.
  • Were used by the United States Navy until 2006.

More About the Plane      Template

A tiny red and white aircraft. It gives the effect of a toy car, made lifesize.

Stits SA-2A Sky Baby

  • This airplane was the world's smallest one-person aircraft from 1952 until 1984.
  • It was built by Ray Stits on a dare.
  • It is cute and small, but was not easy to fly. Only an experienced pilot could handle the controls because they were so sensitive.

More About the Plane      Template

View of the “America by Air” gallery hanging aircraft, showing the Eastern Airlines Douglas DC-3 at the Smithsonian Air and at Space Museum in Washington, DC.

Douglas DC-3

  • This airplane can seat 21 people and was comfortable for passengers compared to airplanes used before it.
  • Pilots liked flying it because it was stable and was easy to handle.
  • Airline companies liked this airplane because it was not expensive to use and it was reliable.

More About the Plane      Template

Step 3: Think about how you want to decorate your plane to show its personality. 

Share your character with a friend or family member!

Drawing of a colorful cartoon airplane with a cheerful expression. Handwritten at the bottom on the page is the name Sunny Skybaby.

Activity: Create a storyboard

Use artifacts from our museum to create a storyboard.

A storyboard is what people use to plan out a story before they start making it. It's a series of pictures that show what will happen in each part of the story.

Step 1: Choose one to two main characters from our collections or use the airplane character you created.

Frontal view of a body of a robot with arms, chest with a NASA logo, and an orange face cover.

Robonaut

Magellan T. Bear in How Things Fly

Magellan T. Bear

A taxidermy lion standing on a wooden stand as seen from the side.

Gilmore the Flying Lion

Step 2: Choose a object that will be part of your story.

Cicular, double-tiered, with many projecting spires coming out around the circumference and tubes of different sizes, along with rods, some curved, projecting from top.

Mother Ship From the 1977 Movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

Mars Exploration Rover, <em>Curiosity</em>, Full-Scale Model

Mars Rover Curiosity

A large circular lens dominates the image. Behind it you can see the body of the camera, from which a viewfinder appears, and handles on either side.

Camera Used to Take Photos From Airplanes

Step 3: Choose a scene setting.

Two biplanes in flight against a cloudy blue sky, with yellow accents and visible insignia.

Flying in the Sky with Other Airplanes

The exploration of Mars; pre-space age interpretation-seven men with blue space suits and tanks resembling diving tanks climb on Martian rocks; two rockets, four small men and a dome in the valley below.

The Surface of Mars

3-D rendering of seats in the Apollo 11 command module

Inside the Apollo 11 Command Module

Step 4: Decide what story you'd want your movie to tell! Use three or more panels to tell your story. 

A diagram showing the evolution of story from introduction, to problem, to solution. The diagram takes the shape of an astronaut travelling past each plot point on a mountain.

At the far left side of this diagram an astronaut begins climbing a mountain. 

This stage is labeled "Introduction: Who are your characters? Where does you story take place?" At the peak of the mountain is another astroanut. This step is labelled "Problem: What went wrong in your story?" 

At the far right bottom of the mountain is a third astronaut. This step is labelled "Solution: How is your problem solved?"

  • To help plan, let's use the "Story Mountain" pictured here.
  • The first panel should be used to tell the start of the story.  This is where you introduce your character and the setting—where the character is. Use the character you create in the activity above.
  • The second panel introduces the problem or challenge your character faces.
  • The third panel shows how the problem was resolved.

Step 5: Share your story with a family member or friend!

 

Kid Book Recommendations

A book cover showing an illustrated yellow airplane.

The Littlest Airplane

For ages 4-7

By Brooke Hartman, illustrated by John Joseph

A heartwarming story about a small, determined airplane who dreams of flying high and overcoming challenges to prove that even the tiniest can achieve great things.
 

A book cover with four fierce middle-aged Black women in business apparel standing in front of a starry sky and large moon. The fabric of their suits shows calculations.

Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race

For ages 6 and up

by Margot Lee Shetterly, illustrated by Laura Freeman

This is an inspiring story that celebrates the incredible contributions of four African-American women mathematicians who helped launch NASA's space missions.

Book cover of "Zathura" by Chris Van Allsburg showing a boy looking out a window at space, with the title in large yellow letters.

Zathura

For ages 6 and up

Written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg

A exciting adventure about two brothers who are transported into a thrilling outer space journey when they discover a mysterious board game.

An illustrated book cover showing a young Black girl standing in front of a white moon-like circle with math on it. The text on the book cover reads "Counting on Katherine. How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13."

Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13

For ages 5 and up

Written by Helaine Becker, illustrated by Dow Phumiruk

A true story about Katherine Johnson, an amazing mathematician who helped send astronauts into space.

A woman in a collared shirt and necklace leans over her desk working.

Spotlight Story

Katherine Johnson, NASA Mathematician

  1. She was a brilliant mathematician: Katherine Johnson was really good at math! She worked as a mathematician at NASA and helped make sure that rockets and spaceships could safely travel into space.
  2. She helped send astronauts to space: Katherine worked on the math that helped send astronauts like John Glenn into orbit around the Earth. Her calculations made sure the spacecraft would stay on the right path.
  3. She broke barriers for women and African Americans: At the time when Katherine worked at NASA, there were very few women and even fewer African Americans in science and math jobs. She proved that anyone, no matter their gender or skin color, could be a great scientist!

  4. She loved to learn: Katherine was very curious about math from a young age. She was so good at math that she started college when she was just 15 years old!

    5. Her work was recognized: Because of her hard work, Katherine Johnson received many awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is one of the highest honors in the United States.

    Katherine Johnson's story teaches us how important it is to never give up, even when things are hard. Even though her important story wasn't told in history books or museums until recently, her work changed the world.

    The movie, Hidden Figures, that was released in 2016 and based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly, brought Katherine's story to the spotlight, along with her fellow mathematicians, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson. 

Soar Together at Air and Space is made possible by the generous support of Northrop Grumman.

A young child with joy on his face holds up an airplane at Soar Together.

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