What are storyboards? A storyboard is a graphic organizer... A displayed sequence to plan your film, animation or other digital work. Each frame is shown in drawings with comments and writing to explain the action. Arrows are used to direct in the drawings the action and movement along with the drawings and words. For a long film you need a script and a storyboard that works from the script it can refer to pages on the script. For very short animations you can just create an animatic.
Storyboard Template: ( Drag from computer or go to web and google Storyboard Template)
What is an Animatic? Basically it is a moving storyboard that shows most of your final ideas, sound timing and story. A preliminary version of a movie, produced by shooting successive sections of a storyboard and adding a soundtrack.
To prepare your animation take pics or images of your storyboard or you can draw directly into an animation program. I like to draw on paper first so I can erase and plan. You should have a script before starting a storyboard. EXAMPLES: