So, I completely changed my thesis a bit ago and realized I should update here. I am now making a 5-10 minute 2D animated short of my dog (Gracie), based on the events of her escape and 24 hours out of the house back in October. She’s a rescue from what seems to have been a pretty bad previous life, and something triggered her into a panicked episode where she somehow yanked herself out of her collar and ran. I plan to use a lot of the actual events, but most will obviously be made up since I didn’t actually know where she was.
Here’s a quick storyline type thing, very much subject to change and probably will be shortened:
It will start with us at the bonfire and likely a crackle of the fire that would give her a flashback to her big scary previous human. She struggles and pulls on the leash until she slips out of her collar. As we get up to chase her, she sees the people running to help her as the big scary man running to hurt her. She runs for a while, through people’s yards, and a couple see her zoom past. She eventually stops and calms down, and fear turns to sadness as she’s lost and cold. She looks for a bit to find her humans, encounters some nocturnal wildlife (raccoons/ foxes, I saw both while looking for her), and eventually finds a hiding place to sleep for a bit. She’s woken up to another dog barking at her, and is on the move again. She runs into the woods, finds a stream of water to drink from. She meets a turtle here, is very curious about it (I saw a turtle by the creek she was spotted by). She hears her name being called, gets excited and tries to follow it. She comes to a fence, and a lawnmower starts, covering the sound of her human’s calls and startling her into running the other direction. She meets a busy road, and musters up the courage to cross it. A person leaves their house and sees her, and tries to catch her, but only manages to grab her shirt, which she slides out of (forgot to mention she was lost wearing a little shirt that says “couch potato” irl). Gracie keeps running and hides, and suddenly she hears her humans again. She spots her human and is ecstatic! The end
What I’ve done so far:
Some story planning (as seen above), a couple rough beat boards, numerous character designs in various styles, been staring at my dog a lot to pay more attention to her expressions and her movements to figure out how to translate them into her animated character, trying to capture more pictures and videos that will help!