Help required for animation workflow

Hello!

I've found various tutorials and topics on CreativeCOW extremely helpful before, and have now decided to get involved myself.

I am embarking on my own private animation project, have almost neared the end of storyboarding, and am now sorting out the workflow. The finer points of which I am slightly hazy on, and would be deeply grateful for any insight that can be offered.

In terms of broad brush strokes, the workflow is this:
1. Begin with handpainted artwork
2. Scan in, and create individual elements using Photoshop
3. Import into After Effects and animate
4. Export from AE into Final Cut
5. Complete offline edit in FCP
6. Online grade in Color
7. Export graded image sequence from Color and
8. Export graded HD movie back into FCP to...
9. sync to completed sound and export final movie into various sizes and formats.

(The reason for also exporting an image sequence from Color is for the slim and distant possibility of going for a film-out.)

It's the finer points of format of exchange between these stages that I'm getting tied up in knots over.

Originally I thought exporting image sequences from AE would be the best bet. I would then transcode to ProRes 422 for the offline, use Cinema Tools to keep track of this relationship, and to then co-ordinate the online into Color.

However, as I understand it, for Cinema Tools to work properly with the image sequence coming out of AE (i.e. the 'film negative'), it would need timecode. Yet I am deeply unsure if an image sequence can have timecode. While an image sequence file name would store frame numbers, could Cinema Tools work with just these?

This led me to consider the plug-in 'Glue Tools' and using the DPX format for exporting out of AE, which I believe would allow me to use timecode properly.

Or, am I just over complicating the whole process?

Should I just export out of AE as some 24p format, perform an offline with a ProRes 422, then using Media Manager simply create a duplicate of the project once a final cut is done and relink the clips to the original 24p video?

My experience in film so far has always been with a tapeless workflow, first with the RED camera then Genesis, and I've always left before the online.

So as I say, any insight offered would be a great help!

Apologies if this shouldn't be in the AE forum, I will repost in another if more apt.

Many Thanks

Will Snow.