This is my basic sound effect pass. It's not well mixed at all, but I just put it together to show Emmeline all the sound effects I had in mind. I don't know how good any of this will sound with music included, but I figure that the music she's composing is the most important sonic element of the film and that if any sound effects or ambience get in its way, they can go.

I already got some feedback on this sound effect pass. And I've also already added a lot to the animation since this export. Anyway, here are the changes to be made from here:

Backgrounds Update
In between rough animation, I've been working on backgrounds as well. There are two camera moves in the whole 2 minutes, and I've animated both in separate TvPaint projects.
​I've also started adding nicer linework and basic color (no shading yet) to backgrounds (cafe and bathroom). Just to work on something easier than animating and get a feeling of reward.

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.

Color tests
I brought my drawing from last week into Photoshop and played around a bunch with Hue/Saturation layers and Gradient Maps. I tried to go for analogous color schemes centered on green. The first 5 veer towards warm green and the last 4 towards cool green.

Honestly I think this background simply doesn't have enough detail. No matter what I do to the colors I just don't like it. It doesn't look how it looks in my head. Also, it's like, even though all my references and the style I want to do DON'T color things in their real life colors, I like can't stop myself from doing that. I think I really need to step away from the computer and redraw this background using the stuff in my pencil case, where I don't have access to literally every color that the human eye can register.

Character design
I've been drawing Lorraine over and over again in my sketchbook this week. I can draw her pretty good from the front but any other angle kind of sucks. I think I might do like a Fairly OddParents thing where the character has a front and a side angle and they just flip from one to the other. But now that I'm thinking about it again I don't like the idea.

I finally figured out the formula to create a custom brush in TV Paint that looks like the MS Paint pencil. What was missing before was 30% step. I chose this line thickness for now, but I'm still unsure about it. I might decide to use a smaller line for items in the background, or keep the same line thickness throughout. I'm leaning more towards keeping the same line thickness throughout.
Using this new brush, I redrew each image from my storyboard and added more frames in between to specify the timing of the movements better.

This time I drew Lorraine as she appears in my character design instead of as a stick figure, and honestly, it's just not as funny. The emotions are a lot less raw than when there were no details in the face. I will have to get used to drawing Lorraine in a bunch of poses and emotions.

Feedback from class and from Jean

• first shot: add a second of both girls sitting together before cut
• first ladybug: add a pause between ladybug flying out and Lorraine's reaction, give her time to process
• when Lorraine is looking in the mirror and leaning in, add 12-24 frames before she opens her mouth. Maybe have her open her mouth, see a bug/bugs, close mouth, pause, open again (show her thinking)
• Lorraine's bedroom: make the bed smaller in frame
• scene of Lorraine sleeping: everyone in the class said to make the room MORE red. Like someone said to make the screen entirely red and then have Lorraine's eyes forcibly open like in cartoons when a character is in the dark and only their eyes appear.
• hold the shot of the front of Lorraine's house a bit longer, maybe shorten the frame right before?
• shorten the run across the street, only needs to be like 2 seconds
• when Lorraine smiles, hold that image 1-2 seconds longer
• hold black screen 1-2 seconds longer too, need to show passage of time more clearly...
• last scene: while Lorraine is dancing, cut back and forth between shots of garden pests being eaten. also, show the plants growing up from the dirt.
• exaggerate the plants in front of Lorraine's house (windowsill + yard), both in the before and after. nobody caught that the plants on her windowsill were dead before and blooming after. when they are dead, maybe have flies or stink lines or something in the "before" and then a heavenly glow in the "after". color will help with this.
• when the ladybug eats the aphid, the flower they are on can grow immediately to show the beneficence of the ladybug

I also want to try cutting out Lorraine's friend at the beginning! It might save me a few seconds and make exposition simpler to just introduce Lorraine alone.

Style tests

I made some slight edits in like, the horizon line and the placement of the trees and whatever. I don't love this drawing but again it's a helpful start.

The next steps for this specific background are:
1. thumbnailing different layouts
2. refined color tests
3. redrawing, trying out different line thicknesses