Resources

I am to use my sketchbooks, pencils, erasers, pens and other drawing utensils to make the scenes and cut outs. I will also need the software of Photobooth on the Macs

I shall also use iStopMotion 3 to make my sequence and put the audio in.

Additionally, I shall be using Adobe Audition to manipulate the audio and export it should I need to edit it.

Structure

Summary

I know how my animation will play out in its many scenes, the animation itself will revolve around the main character and the world and influences changing around her, and I will describe the as such. The animation will be cut-out based, I plan to make it a time-lapse animation of some sort, I plan to take pictures for each and every frame. The frames per second won't be anything too high as it is based off an already existing style of time-lapse.

I decided on a cut-out main character and make it so that they are very easy to see and can witness how they were the main struggle. The backgrounds themselves shall be images from the series I am basing the characters off of.

Each and every shot is intended to have her facing the camera, which means there will be more of a focus on her changes in her life.

Scene 1

Opening with a cut-out of the character, being an infant, slowly growing up, and having the photos progressively show her getting older. Inside her room there are brief moments of seeing her parent's legs and them walking by. 

Scene 2

Progressing about a year or two, the girl finds herself slightly older, showing many scenes of her out and about with her mother and father. Including them at a restaurant, in a park, by a riverbank and them picking flowers there. Then in the evening, showing her resting in bed, smiling.

Scene 3

Fast forward a few months, show her at a nursery school, and how happy she is, only for it to become time to go home, and her mother doesn't turn up for a good while. Soon her father turns up, and something is up, she then begins to not smile as much, and her face is happy, but not as happy as it once was.

Scene 4

This scene is kind of quick, in that it goes over a few years, but it is evident as she will slightly grow, the backgrounds will stay the same, and repeat, showing that things have become dull, as her father always comes in, reads, sleeps, goes to work the next day. The key thing to include is how her face slowly dips down from happy, to sad, to emotionally depressed.

Scene 5

Soon a key scene happens, her cousin ends up moving to where she lives to live with herself and her father for a year. Show scenes of her being in a car, quiet, and meeting her cousin, and also being shy. Soon we end up showing her slightly enjoying being with him, walking across the riverbank.

Scene 6

Show some scenes of her watching TV, being quiet and patient, seeing her cousin go out and having a joyful time. She becomes slightly more sad.

Scene 7

Fast forward a few months to when she is watching her cousin talking to a friend of his, and she soon joins them. She finds solace in hanging out with them, and has a great time becoming friends with them. Including some shots of her taking photos with his friends and beaming more than she ever has before.

Scene 8

Going ahead a few more months to a night where they eat dinner, and her father brings home a friend from work. They all eat and talk together, and her father's friend even draws a picture of a flower for her. She shows the flower and is once, again, very joyous and happy in her life, overcoming her depression. Even showing them in a group photo, smiling like nothing else.

Scene 9

More months ahead, we see her standing and listening to her father and her cousin arguing, she then decides to look at a picture, of her and her mother. She would know what to do in a situation like this, but she's gone, she is no more, dust in the wind... She then slowly opens the door, and begins to run, then cut to her, still doing the same running animation, to end up at the riverbank. Exhausted, she decides to sit down under some shelter on a bench, tears welling up in her eyes, why isn't her mother still here? She won't know, but she can't help but cry a little, until a hand touches her shoulder. Her cousin sits next to her, all he does is smile, which causes her to smile, and the two sit in silence as she cries it out.

Scene 10

Even further ahead, we cut to them all sat together in the morning, and we see that they end up in the car, driving along, and they soon end up at, once again, a certain riverbank. The same place that she and her mother used to pick flowers, a memory long gone, in the past. And the three of them have a great time, doing just that, picking flowers, eating, and sitting together, with the merriment of each other flowing through them.

Scene 11

Fade out the previous scene with a title card which simply says "The end?", and let it hang for a few scenes too, to leave an impression.