Character Design sketches
Lorraine, in my mind, should have some bug-esque features. I want my character to be kind of appealing, but I also want her to be funny to look at, and I want to be able to contort her into strange shapes without worrying about keeping her cute. It's a difficult balance for me. I settled on this pink character here. Short hair was definitely the way to go and for now, she is as close to a stick figure as can be.

I never do animated characters with eyelashes, just because I don't want to draw each stinking eyelash 2000 times, but for this project I'm going to try it because they just make her look so creepy and a little dumb. Her big round eyes with 3-4 eyelashes on each side also kinda look like bugs themselves.

I think the pointyness of her hair, her shoes and her dress make it seem like Lorraine is normally a person who values neatness, which makes it especially upsetting for her to suddenly be vomiting bugs all the time.

It's also important to me that her hands and feet be disproportionately long and floppy.

Storyboard sketch
I drew this storyboard on a browser MS Paint program coded by someone (that I'm so grateful for) who wanted the crappy 2007 version of the program to still be available in this day and age. I absolutely love the look of the square brush and the pencil. Its rudimentary look really adds to the comedy and allows your imagination to fill in a lot of detail.

The ending is pretty rushed and I'm worried that it is unclear still, but I'm hoping that the class will provide some feedback on that.

Synopsis
Lorraine is a regular woman who suddenly, inexplicably, has ladybugs fly out of her mouth each time she opens it. How will she adjust to her new life?

Treatment
This project will be animated in 2D in a limited style. I would like to emphasize the cartoonishness of the world by having characters, props, and backgrounds metamorphose rather than move naturalistically.
My design inspirations are Looney Tunes and UPA productions for background and character design. Each character will be a single color, rendered in several shades, and details added with black linework. The backgrounds will not have black linework, but rather details will be drawn in sparse, colorful linework. The backgrounds will each have an analogous color scheme that will highlight the mood of its scene. Additionally, since the ladybugs are a prominent story element, they will be the only red things.
I want this film to have a digital texture reminiscent of MS Paint. I plan to use hard square digital brushes with no pressure-based changes in opacity, thickness, or jitter. My brushstrokes will have no taper, but instead hard-stop. Shading and gradients will be rendered in pointillism, mimicking the spray-paint tool. If there are large areas in the background without details, I will add a light gradient across the area to ensure that my film has no completely flat areas that would make it look unfinished.

Sound Treatment
The story will be narrated as if someone is reading a storybook, meaning there will be one voice actor reading the narration and acting out the dialogue. I’d like there to be jazzy music that reflects the mood of the events onscreen and is on beat with the action. The ladybugs should have their own unique instrument that acts out all their movements onscreen, ideally a funky little piano or some kind of horn instrument. I don’t envision ambient sound for this film, but spot effects will be present, likely not panned.

Visual References
These first 3 images represent the texture I want to achieve with my shading and linework.

I'm using Pussy / Cipka as a video reference for the cartoonish aspect of her characters' movements.

The following images show the analogous color scheme I want to try and the lineart colors. These backgrounds have a bit of complementary color in them too which I don’t want to include. IMPORTANT: I think the ladybugs should be the only red things in my animation. Super important that they stand out!
The final image is an example of how I plan to use shading/gradients in my backgrounds wherever I feel there are areas too large without any detail.

I'm not much of a storyteller. I like to draw and work out problems in the visuals, but anything to do with story is really beyond me.

The idea for this story about a girl who vomits ladybugs when she opens her mouth actually came to me about a year or two ago. I had a homework assignment to pitch 2-3 short story ideas for an animation project, and I kind of already knew what I wanted to do for that project and I had to make up something else. It was super late and I was exhausted so I doodled these.

I just really made myself laugh with these, especially the tripping over a rock.

These images don't really make up a story though. The concept was super funny to me, but all the ideas I had were for visual gags and there wasn't really anything tying them together. How did this start? Why is this happening? How will it be resolved? Will it even be resolved? I had no idea, and to be honest, I didn't even like the idea of there being a reason, a lesson, or a theme attached to this idea. I just wanted to laugh at this girl throwing up hundreds of ladybugs.

My boyfriend talked it over with me and actually came up with the story. He wrote me a script, which I shortened to fit the 2 minute time constraint of the project. I told him I wanted it to be a fable in the Roald Dahl style. He went in a Dr. Seuss direction with the script, which I don't want to go with, but I love the story structure.