Laura Thornton

Artist and Writer

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Artwork

Process Videos

Home: Process Videos

Freelance Work

Anime and Manga Feature Articles For Valnet

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Prose

Short Story

Illegal Savings

BP and Doll have one goal—to steal the Tear of Kazulu, a priceless statuette being displayed at a local small-town museum. Getting in is easy, getting out unnoticed? Now, that's another issue entirely.

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Published Work

Excerpt from Destined to Lead: Redemption

Kajiya is an up-and-coming magik, destined to lead her tribe of cat-like feas on the distant planet of Mysterium. However, when anger gets the best of her, she finds herself banished from her tribe, and so sets out with her brother and her two best friends on a quest to regain her honour. Redemption, the final instalment of the trilogy, is filled with exciting battles, heartfelt moments, and help from unexpected places.

Additional excerpts may be emailed upon request.

The full work is available for purchase here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YE5LMO0

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Radio Play

Home: Scripts

Scripts

Original Work

Huntress

This short tells the charming tale of a young sabre-toothed cat looking for food--but ends up helping more than hunting. All the animals in this script can be found in the fossil record preserved by La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles.

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Mimicry

Excerpt from Phineas and Ferb Valentine's Day Special: Diamonds in the Rough

Any scriptwriter worth their salt knows not only how to work they characters they create, but also the characters they are assigned. Thus, this script was penned to practice working with other's characters while studying scriptwriting at the Vancouver Animation School.

Full script may be emailed upon request.

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Home: Sample Pitch Bibles

Sample Pitch Bible

Case Briefing
Murder mysteries are hard enough to solve on their own, when lying witnesses and inconclusive evidence leaves a margin for error just large enough for the killer to get away—but what if superpowers were added into the mix? For Mina Hardy, that’s her reality.
In this 11 episode by 45 minute series for ages 14 and up, Mina has been serving as a detective with the Vancouver Police Department for nearly five years. She’s seen more than her fair share of death and destruction, and despite only being in her 30s, this detective acts more like a grizzled old private eye than the young woman she is. She lives on an alternate version of Earth where every human has some secondary ability, ranging from ambidexterity to control of the air itself. She’s even got control over electricity, and has earned her nickname on the force—Thunderpunch. But, every stormcloud’s got to have its silver lining—and where Thunderpunch goes, you can be assured, her partner Todd, is not far behind.
Todd, by the laws of this world, is crippled. His ability would have been ambidexterity if a birth defect has rendered his left hand unusable—so he considers it a miracle that he managed to make it onto the force—and he couldn’t be more grateful! This young, bright-eyed recruit has only been with the North Homicide Investigation Unit for a little more than six months, but he already feels like he fits in perfectly. He’s got more than enough people skills and optimism to balance out Thunderpunch’s eye for detail and cynicism. Not to mention, he feels he fits well with the other guys on the team, chatty Melcor and quiet but imposing Ronaldo, and often goes out for drinks with them and the South Homicide Unit after cases. But before drinks can be served, justice must be.
Devyani, the coroner, can tell what powers people had before they died, and rule out ‘suicide via power’. After all, an air user can’t freeze themselves outside in summer, but an ice user could. So, the forecast shows a justice storm—with a 100% chance, of Thunder.

Powers in Thunderpunch
In this universe, all humans have an Elemental Gland in their brain that creates their powers. This gland changes size, shape, and sometimes even colour depending on what power a person has. This allows examiners to determine a person’s power-type either posthumously, or through medical scans.
There are two types of human, elementalists and industrialists. Elementalists come in a further eight subsets, with their powers being determined by a mix of their heritage and environment. The traditional elemental distributions are as follows:
Worldwide-Industrialists-The gland is small and very similar to other brain tissue
South America/Island Nations-Water-The gland appears swollen and jiggly
Africa-Fire-The gland is sharply defined & blood red
Middle East to Egypt and Rome-Earth-Large with a rocky texture
Europe-Air-Curled
Japan-Metal-Super dense
China-Electricity-Perfectly round, stores static even after death
Arctic Regions & Russia-Ice-Diamond-shaped, purple tinged
North America-plants-Large, green-tinged
Industrialists’ ‘power’ is that they are always ambidextrous and tend to be smarter, and have more common sense than any given elementalist of equal educational status.
Though most abilities manifest themselves before high school, the development of powers can happen at any point in a person's life. 30% of elementalists are these "late bloomers", resulting in a booming for-profit CAT scan market to help them determine what their powers are.
Limits
Like muscles, people who “work out” their powers are stronger than those who do not. As a general rule, if an elementalist can’t see it, they can’t affect it; the average person has twenty feet or less before they start to lose control of their element, while those who practice usually have a forty–fifty foot range.
Elementalists can sense portions of their element to the end of their range. Fire users can sense heat concentrations, electricity users can sense electrical charges in the air, water users, humidity, and so on and so forth.
Each person is also only immune to the element they are currently controlling or creating. Electricity elementalists can still be electrocuted, fire elementalists burned, etc.
Elementalists can’t control nature or the weather individually. To keep a fire at bay, a whole department of just fire elementalists would be needed to control the flames.
Furthermore, most elementalists need their element to be nearby in some form to control it. There are a few exceptions though: fire elementalists are able to create seemingly fuel-less fires, while electric users generate their own electricity and ice elementalists can freeze anything solid.
Finally, there are a few who can use their abilities to affect the traces of their element that they can sense, such as fire and ice users who can control ambient temperature, or electricity users who can concentrate static charges. In the same way, there are a few water users who have learned to create 100% pure H2O. However, no human being can use their powers to control their element within another living, sentient being’s flesh with one known exception who can dehydrate non-living creatures.

Thunderpunch Tabletop Role-Playing Game

Thunderpunch TTRPG

A Crime-Solving RPG with Countless Possibilities

Character Sheets Available for Viewing and Download Below

Based off of and mostly-compatible with the rules of Dungeon World, this homebrewed tabletop game is set in the world of Thunderpunch (see the Pitch Bible above) where players act as part of their local police force solving homicides and other crimes.

Games can last from 4-8 hours, be played in-person or virtually, and due to their case-based nature offer something many other tabletop RPGs cannot--casual play. Run as a series of connected one-shots, each session usually sees the players solving their assigned case, allowing for new players to join without needing a lexicon of lore or for other players who can't make a game to join back in the next session with ease. This also allows for overarching plots to develop the same way they would in a television series, such as taking down a corrupt politician by gathering evidence over multiple sessions.

Laura's personal games utilize the fictional 4th Precinct of Vancouver's Joint-West team, with a glitter-obsessed industrialist coroner, a by-the-books plant elementalist beat cop who is never quite sure of anyone's gender, and an ice-wielding forensic-pathologist-turned-police-investigator to solve the murder of her best friend. To date, they've taken down multiple mob operations, solved 6 murders, 1 cold case, and had the unfortunate duty of ruling 1 case a suicide; only accidentally making Laura improv an entire combat sequence once.

Further gameplay details (such as item lists, levelling system and end-of-session amendments) may be emailed upon request.

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