Animation Flowchart -done-

Stage One: First you have to have your idea, or in come cases ideas are given to you, like with commissions and such.

Stage two: Concept design is to create the look of the animation and also decide some story elements that will go into the final piece.

Stage three: Storyboarding is used to create the first visual representation of what episodes will look like, artists will be working close with the director in this stage, the storyboard will usually change throughout production to allow for new ideas to come in to play.

Stage four: Production design and planning visuals, visual artists will start to create the look and feel of the animation by planning a style with models and drawings.

Stage Five: Audio recording, this consists of everything from voice acting to the rustle of a tree if need be.

Stage six: Building the models is a very important part of any animation, having a solid model assures that any movements done with the character are smooth and look natural, as even natural movement with a character that looks unnatural will look strange.

stage seven:layout planning is very important to an animation from a crew standpoint and from the producer of the animation, knowing when things are going to be completed and when to do them make an efficient team and efficiency is what you need when working in a large team to create a large project like an animation.

stage eight: the animation, the animation part of an animation will obviously be very important being as the animation needs to be animated, this comes very late in the scheme of things but will also take the longest, the animation is usually split up between a team to work together on.

stage nine: backgrounds and colouration, once you have a working animation you need to polish it and give it backgrounds, this includes castles, hills and holes and anything else of the sort, the animated characters also need to be coloured and brought to life.

stage ten: lighting, to make an animation look realistic (if that is the end goal) then lighting is what you need, realistic lighting is what can make the difference between a good and bad animation and is what makes an end goal look professional.

stage eleven: post production, this is where people polish the animation, putting all the small finishing touches to everything and making it all look as pretty as possible.