The good news: I’m working on a Raricow update featuring some as of yet unseen characters in early morning attire, such as Apple Bloom, Big Mac, one of Apple Bloom’s friends who is obvious, and a certain bespectacled class mate who normally would not be associated with them...
Just finish the characters and leave either no background or just lineart for the background. Shaves off quite a portion of work without badly marring quality.
I don’t like cutting corners just to get it out there faster, and even then it’s the characters that take the longest for me. I think the longest time I’ve taken on a background was a complex background of Canterlot for Papi, and even that only took a couple hours max. The backgrounds in Raricow have been pretty simple and this one is no exception.