If the animation is done first, do the actors have to remain strictly to script leaving no room for improv and also have to nail their timing?
And if the acting is done first, how do they time it? Do they have to do it blindly, only by imagination?
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Opposite the other comments, dubs of course already have animation completed, so they have to make translations, and voice the lines in a way that matches the existing animation as best as possible. They might do a couple takes, then artificially change the speed of a line for some fine tuning later, and stuff like that.
The process has changed over the years. Nowadays, the voice actor has little dots placed on their face, and their facial expressions are video recorded along with the vocals. The movement of the dots is used to animate the CGI characters face perfectly. It is even available to consumers. Search “desktop facial motion capture” for more info and examples. Blender software can do it. Sauce: I have done it in Blender.
From me – VFX artist whos worked on a number of animated cartoons in my day: Voice acting is done before the animation. They generally stick to the script, but it’s up to the director if they want to do multiple takes, allow for some improv etc. *Generally* speaking there is not much improv in what is said, but they can do multiple wildly different reads of the same lines (which is an art in itself).
For the animation part you’d be surprised how quickly animators are able to match the lip sync. We will animate based on the acting from the voice track. *Sometimes* we had recording of the voice actor in studio to refer to, but not *always*. Most high-budget movies will record the actor these days but it’s not always referred to.
Sometimes after the animation is done they will do a polish-pass of parts of the voice acting. We call that ADR (Though I think we use that term incorrectly). ADR is where they might want to adjust some lines once they see how the sequence looks in the edit, or to add grunts/effort/reaction noises that just add little bits to the animation. The actor will watch the cut and act/grunt/etc which being able to watch the latest cut on a screen.
Full disclosure: I work in post production (VFX) and haven’t worked in animation in 15 years or so so some of the process may have changed, but this is loosely what my experience was.
I work in the film and tv industry, there is almost never animation done before the voice acting. There can be sketches of what the characters look like but not usually. They will video record the actor as well so the animators can use the actors facial expressions as reference. I’ve done sessions for some big budget films and they only have animations after they’ve done the majority of the principle recordings and decided to change the script, either to add/change lines.
The principal voice cast are normally first, doing multiple takes and allowing for improv at the recording sessions. The final voice performances are edited together from different takes, and are the basis for the final animation. The voice actors may have a simple animatic to help them get the timing right, or just a script and their imaginations.
If it’s practical, putting dialogue partners together to record shared scenes helps get the flow of a conversation right.
Additional voice cast such as translated versions are often much more constrained by the timing of existing animation. Sometimes a film can be re-rendered for translation (For instance, [Zootopia](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76784/zootopia-has-different-news-anchors-different-countries)) but it’s not really common.
Not an expert by any stretch, I’ve just watched a few documentaries. Seems like it is a little of both. Kind of like its live action cousin, the voice acting is done after blocking but before final production. There is still room for some flexibility in higher end productions. My guess is that in lower cost productions, the voice actors are held to a more strict dialog. Think Aladdin with Robin Williams vs Scooby Doo.
I want to say that there have been many excellent answers that go into great detail why and how voice acting is done and I can confirm as well, voice acting is done before the animation.
*In the west*
In Japan it’s often actually the other way around. Usually the production team would have a good idea what the scene is going to be about, but won’t have any finished dialogue and the voice actors would work off of the almost finished movie. It has thrown a lot of westerners off when they work on any anime production.
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The audio is recorded first. The animation is drawn to match it the best it can. Audio is then rerecorded to match up perfectly.
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