Animatics

Please enjoy this short animatic from one of my favorite shows Rick and Morty! Yes, it is rather crude, but I really enjoy the creativity put into this show. It's hilarious and I'm a fan of science fiction so that's really adding icing to the cake. (Why, yes, I really am hungry right now). Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon really got something good going on here. Can't wait for season 3!
Back to the topic on hand. An animatic is an animated storyboard. Well, isn't that what the show or film is as a product of the storyboards? Not quite. Animatics are a pre-visualization of what the show or movie will be like. It lets the crew see how the film comes together before actually animating the final product. They need to be able to edit anything that needs improvement and will help the film out in the end. It's sort of like the rough draft of an essay before writing it and turning it in. They need to be able to see how it's progressing.
Dialogue and sound effects is added to an animatic unlike storyboards. Also, it allows the cast to see how the pacing is and if it looks like it's going to fast for their liking, they'll find a way to slow down that scene a bit. They'll add or subtract whatever they can to get the scene right. There are different mediums of software that is used to create animatics. Adobe is a common one that is used (I've used it myself quite a few times) and it works effectively. The scenes aren't fully animated, as you can tell from the Rick and Morty animatic, but rather certain main frames are chosen and put together to create a sense of movement. It's basically all the boards recreated but there is no inbetweening in the frames so a lack of smooth movement is absent. It doesn't matter, however, because it lets everyone know the general sense of how the characters are gunna move.
I'll be explaining inbetweening in a bit, but for now that is all there really is to animatics. If you go online and look up a few that are from certain films or shows they are actually really interesting and fun to watch. Next to storyboarding, I have a strong interest in it because it basically has both storyboarding and animation to it and I love both so seems like a pretty kickass thing to get into. To quote Rick, "And that's the waaaaayyyyy the news goes!" Coming up next is what we've all been waiting for: Animating!