Getting the backgrounds complete by friday is looking very achievable, in general im almost happy with them except for the opening shot its not as slick as all the others, I'm not too sure what to do about it at this stage. Most recently I have been working out the correct aspect ratio for shot 15 of my animation as when I drew up the storyboards they where at 16:9 but later I decided to give the animation a more cowboy widescreen look and went for the 23.5 ratio so that took a little more mucking around as the photoshop canvas sized I worked out needed to be roughly 1.6 x 2538 wide and 1.18 x 1080 high.

I've added to my skys a bit more. So now I'm not just placing pre-made clouds onto the sky but also adding multiple layers of mist with varying opacity using the colors from my cloud palette. This has been great in blending the horizon hills into the sky, adding a very soft texture/difference in color to the sky and I also created a thin line of cloud close to the horizon.

I haven't had any more trouble with my hard-drive but have backed up my work every time I've made any changes just in case.