The Pitch
When I first pitched The Test of Time it was the story of two neighbors. Space was a grouchy shut-in, and Time was an energetic and peppy guy. The rough idea was that Time would want to hang out with Space, but Space would push him away, and it would escalate into a fight until they came to some kind of understanding in the end.
Eventually the story evolved into a story about Time and Space working in a magic textile factory. Time was a mechanic, keeping the machines running, and Space was a weaver, weaving together the fabric of reality. Time thinks weaving looks like fun and wants to give it a try, but accidentally scared Space causing him to tear the fabric of reality. Time tries to help fix it, but Space pushes him away. It escalates into a fight until Time manages to beat Space, and uses his power to rewind to fix the fabric.
However, this story was too much to do in the two minutes I was allowed. I had to establish their unusual world, establish their unusual jobs, establish their unusual powers, establish their personalities, get them into a fight, and have an ending where they come to an understanding all in two minutes. My teachers told me to either make it a story about regular seamstresses trying to fix a torn fabric, or make it about Time and Space fighting over something simpler.
I chose to make them boxers, because you hardly need to establish a reason why boxers are fighting. I just needed to establish that they were fighting over the title "4th Dimension," and then I could have fun playing with all kinds of crazy powers they have.
If I redid this project, I would have gone back to the story where Time wants to hang out and Space doesn't. I feel like in streamlining the story so I could have a fight, I got rid of the characters' personalities.
Designs
Next came the script, the storyboards, and the designs. Above is the animatic I made, outlining the story.
One of the weirdest things in my animatic was Time originally controlled his powers by winking and blinking. I changed it to him slapping the watches on his wrist, because it wasn't clear that his blinks controlled his powers. Another thing that wasn't clear to the audience was that Time could pause everything (including the audience), move, and unpause it, making it look like he teleported. Since the story was from Time's perspective, it was weird to suddenly not be seeing things from his perspective.
Time went through the least redesigns. I knew I wanted him to have a helmet to make him look like a clock, and I knew I wanted him to have an hourglass shape with his body and shorts.
Even though I got a passing grade, I wasn't happy with how Space looked. I spent the summer redesigning him, until I could get him to look just right. I took reference from Tangled, and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze to get the right body shape, and it was a really important reminder to always use reference. And this still wasn't the final design, because I decided to make him bald for the final version because I still didn't like his hair.
Sometimes it's easy to forget that you have to draw every prop that appears in an animation.
And then I designed the environment.
Production
After the idea was approved, I got to work on modeling, texturing, and rigging the characters, backgrounds, and props.
Before animating, it's important to get the camera in the scene with a quick layout pass.
And the rest of the process was just months of animation, lighting, compositing, and color correcting until you have a finished product.
