Storyboard and Animatic

Hence, a director's plan is laid down, visualised through the development of a storyboard. Unlike storyboards for films or shooting boards for advertising, the storyboard for a cartoon is more detailed in terms of the construction of camera movements and the visualisation of the characters' actions. As it is a cartoon, there is not, in fact, a physical place and real actors, and it is therefore necessary to know exactly what will be "shot", before "shooting" starts.

Starting from simple three-dimensional models, an animatic, is prepared, a first staging of the film for trying out the camera movements and the rough movements of the "actors" and defining the times and durations of the individual shots. The output of this stage is a rough version of the final film, a kind of low quality "working copy" to be kept as a reference for the animation timings.