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):

This week, aside from the design exchange, I timed out my own project into a first draft animatic. All I really did for this was bring my rough crappy MS Paint storyboard into TV Paint, then isolate each drawing and time them. It didn't take too long, and the final result is a film that's just about 1 minute 40 seconds.

For sound, I made a list of all the SFX I would need to search for on Metadigger:

I decided not to go with basically any ambiance sound, and to use minimal human sound. Metadigger doesn't even have any female vocals of gagging and coughing. The bug sounds are a mix of bee sounds, cartoon fly sounds, and wasp swarms. I used sound clips from the Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros Cartoon libraries whenever possible.