We are in really good shape now.
I've just finished all character animation on "Scene A". There are a couple of details here and there I want to go back and fix, but as a whole, Scene A, the scene with the most action, the most characters, the most , is now intact. "Scene B" is complete too. This means the first 8 minutes of the episode is now fully animated. I'm now moving on to "Scene C" for the upcoming week, which is far less complex. Scenes D and G, similarly, are pretty much done, save for a few details. Scene F is the only one that I really need to attack in a big way, but all of the action sequences are done, and all that's left of that scene is character acting. We're doing good. It's starting to look like a downhill battle now.
The musicians I've been working with have been doing fantastic work. One is perfecting the opening scene, which we've been on for several weeks now, and the other two are scoring different parts of Scene F, which, so far, has an extremely badass sound to it.
I have now found and have been working with the animator I had to replace last week. I've already gotten a first draft of some of the character work I need from him. Unfortunately, he's reported to me that he's busy and cannot focus on a bulk of the character work until late March. While this sets my goals back a bit for character animation, I can continue to work on other aspects of the episode such as lighting, camera, and particle effects while he completes his bit. I can pretty much guarantee that I'll have finished the rest of the character animation by that time, especially at my current pace.
I've also contacted my sound editor, and he's ready to get started on the sound design, which I plan on passing to him after I finish animation on "C" or possibly earlier.
This is coming together and I can feel progress being steady. Thank you all for your support. Hopefully by next week I'll have good news about "C".