Animating Background characters

I have began animating the background characters for the fight scenes between maynard and blackbeard. I have never used the paper cut out style of animation before, and although I found it difficult to get used to at first, once i got used to it i really enjoyed it. The main challenge was getting in enough variation of movements, and if i had more time id like to go through the animation again and add more details, such as more movement in the head/arms of the characters.
*Unfortunately my background characters were not able to be used in the final animation due to a problem with rendering and an error the file caused. At this point in time we dont have time to fix this and re render the entire animation so we will have to leave them out, however i intend to fix this for the screening and for my own use after handin. I am disappointed but still got experience with paper cut out animation i wouldnt have otherwise had because of this.

Finished bgs

Below are the finished backgrounds i have produced for our groups animation on blackbeard. I am really pleased with how these have turned out and this week has mainly been adding detail and refining the backgrounds. Seeing them in the animation i think they look really well and match the design of the characters that weve gone with. 

Backgrounds

Below is the background ive done that will be used for most of the water in our final animation. Im very pleased with the look of the water ive achieved here, and after weve applied a ripple effect to it on after effects i think it will look very good.
Ive also planned out the layout for the background of colonial Virginia which will be displayed when Spotswood is introduced in the animation. I have included some illustrations i found which gave me a good idea of what an american colonial town would have looked like at the time, which i then based my layout off.

interior bg progress

This is the progress on the room interior background im working on; im very pleased with how its looking so far, especially the blending ive done with the paint, as ive never been very good at digital painting. However, i found it easier to blend the paint by playing with the mixer brush tools settings, rather than manually blending everything, which im not very good at yet.
what went well
-using new tool, the mixer brush, with different settings to achieve blended look
-colour scheme works well
 what could be improved
-by painting i think ive lost a bit of perspective, particularly on the left hand side panels