An animatic is a very rough video in the planning stages of an animation, which sets up the scenes’ order and length, basic visual effects such as fading to black and zooming in or out, and the accompanying audio. It serves as a basic plan to refer back to when creating the actual animation.

I created the storyboard (not pictured) using the program Storyboard Quick 6, which provides a variety of backgrounds, character models (in a range of positions and angles), and objects to create an approximation of the story. It was frustrating because it was tough to express my intentions for each scene using the wide but ultimately still limited selection.

For the animatic, I scanned in the pages from my graphic novel, divided them into scenes, and then arranged them in Flash with sound effects and basic visual effects. It was more time-consuming than I expected, because of how the timing had to be set up and coordinated. All in all though, it was very useful, especially for referring back to when creating my animation.