Backgrounds Update
I made some good progress this week. I reworked my colour script to make each scene more cohesive and less reliant on local colour, and from that I was able to create colour keys for several scenes.
Ramona gave me some good feedback that the farm scene was way too bright. I decided to tone it down by painting it over several times in a light grey on Hard Light mode, which lessened the colors while keeping the lineart bright and fun. I like the way it looks!!
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I also started putting in some linework in TvPaint, which means I can start animating certain scenes where the action is behind/around background objects.

Soundtrack Collaboration
​I met with Emmeline today, a composer who's going to create original music for the cartoon. She reached out to me after seeing my animatic on the soundtrack collaboration sheet with a TON of really great ideas for the score, including to represent the ladybugs' flight with a bassoon and to incorporate that instrument into the upbeat melody at the end to show how Lorraine and her bugs are in harmony.
Our meeting was super productive; both of us had prepared cue sheets with our ideas and we discussed them. I really trust her sense of timing and emotional cues, and it's such a relief to know that my film will have good music!!!

Background Update
I finally painted a background that I like!!! The buildings are detailed with washes of color and some bricks and windows. For this shot, the sky is changing from sunset to nighttime to sunrise, with the sun and moon rotating like they're on a spinning wheel. The clouds, stars, and birds will be coming in and out from outside the frame.
The buildings don't change color at all and I think it still works. I know I said I would adding a bunch of lineart to my backgrounds but for this shot, it made the buildings feel smaller than I want them to. I think this will look REALLY good all pixelly!!!! I'm so excited to draw it with my special brush!!!

Sound Exchange
Jesu and I partnered up for this homework assignment, which was to exchange detailed feedback on what we would do with each other's soundtracks. He was super generous with his feedback and I feel so hopeful now that I have clear ideas for what to do next!

Here is the list of advice from Jesu (and I will be implementing all of it):

In the last week of the fall semester, I fully animated the shot of a ladybug flying onto a clover with an aphid crawling over it. I don't love how it looks, and it made me realize that if I try to color in this project in TvPaint using local color for everything, I'm not going to get a sophisticated color palette.

For now, I am using Photoshop to paint some color keys with techniques like underpainting and light washes of color, using square and triangle painting brushes. I plan to use as references for when I render my backgrounds with the pixel brush technique.

I worked on a color script and some background color keys. It helps to see the whole film's palette on one page, but it is still too dependent on local color. Getting away from rendering things the way they "should be" is really hard, but I want this cartoon to look interesting!!!

I particularly like the city shots and Lorraine's bedroom. I think this film really works best when the backgrounds don't draw too much attention (some of my classmates even said they think I should keep it black and white except for the bugs). So at least this color script was helpful to figure out what I DON'T want.