Thank you for all of your reviews! They have all been very thoughtful and informative.
I agree, this is absolutely rough around the edges. Of the ones I made, this is the one I most want to go back to and develop further. I plan to go back and let the story breathe more and add some narration and more backgrounds, and add in some of the concepts originally abandoned for the sake of time. I also want to more fully develop the relationship, as it suffered most.
For the dragon scene, I do have some ideas for a background; I wanted to draw some sort of stars and planets concept with the gigantic 'sunflower' the dragon saw growing, being the center of the 'universe' but ran out of time. I have a nice concept on how I want to animate it, but I'll have to see if I can pull it off.
The yellow / sunflower obviously represented the love interest, but I ran out of time to implement the purple / crocus for the mc, which represents a phoenix and rebirth. (The other reason I chose those colors was because the local video rental store when I was in high-school was purple and yellow).
I desperately need to work on subtext. I tend to be very perceptive in some areas, and incredibly dense in others, which makes me always want to overcorrect in making things obvious for the reader. I can get a lot of work done very quickly, but have never been very good at polishing up and adding final touches.
If there is a next time, I'd maybe like to work on a team with someone so I can focus on just one or two aspects, and let someone else handle the story.