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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The process, generally, goes something like this:
**1.** Script is written, which includes all dialogue.
**2.** Storyboards are drawn. They’re basically like big comic books that help animators know what to actually animate later on.
**3.** Animatics are crafted from the Storyboards. It’s like turning the comic books into a fancy Powerpoint presentation that they can click through at any time.
**4.** Voice actors read aloud/recite from memory the script to the “rhythm” of the animatic. They make the funny noises and voices for the drawings as they move from drawing to drawing, like a dad reading a bedtime story to his kids.
**5.** Animators take the combined resources of the animatic and the voice recordings to animate everything in sync. Usually, they’ll animate the actual mouths last, focusing more on the movement and positioning of the characters in the scene.
**6.** Finalization. Everything else that goes into making everything nice and shiny, like line work, coloring, lighting, etc.
During the voice recording phase, the VAs occasionally have the opportunity to throw in a joke or two or add lines of improv, and the storyboard artists will manually add to or revise the storyboard/animatic if the director likes it enough. Since there hasn’t been any actual animation done for the project at this point, there’s plenty of room to experiment. Sometimes (apparently more often than I originally thought), the VAs record their lines first, and then the storyboards/animatics are drawn after, basing their animation on the energy and tone of the actors themselves.
Maybe this is too simple, since I’m relatively new here, but these are the basics, and the process is generally different from studio to studio.
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