An Animatic is a moving storyboard with music and sound. They are created in soft preproduction (for fundraising purposes) or during preproduction, and are used extensively in animation and VFX. It is a valuable tool for directors to test the pacing of a scene before they’ve shot it.

Creating A Simple Animatic

The stages are: visual, audio, and export

VISUAL

• Draw storyboards 
• Take photos of your storyboards OR create digital storyboards (e.g. Photoshop)
  • you will need .png or .jpg files of each storyboard
• import your storyboards into a video editing software (e.g. Adobe Premiere)
• lay the storyboards on the timeline in the correct order
• change the duration of the storyboards; add transitions: basically cut together the storyboards to how it will look
• if you have any footage, edit that in

AUDIO

• record your voice as the voice-over (this can be rough)
• lay the voice-over onto the audio section of the timeline
• cut it to the correct timing
• add any music you intend to use (or music that is similar to what you want to use)

You have just created a SCRATCH TRACK

EXPORT

• with your edited storyboards and scratch track, set your OUT POINT, and export the video (as a .MOV or .MP4)

You now have an animatic