Venturing into animation requires flexibility, patience and a big deal of imagination. Phil Lord, who co-directed and co-wrote ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’ with Chris Miller said, "We always joke that you make an animated film backward: You start with editing the film, with the animatic (mock-ups); and then proceed to shoot it. That's the beauty of the animation process: It takes so long, you have so many chances to improve it". If you have a favourite animation, why not store it on a solid state disk.

Like any movie, animation begins with a character, which develops into a screenplay. For a live-action movie, a finished script usually ends in production, but for animated films, it only marks the beginning of a collaborative process.

Storyboarding comes next, in which the story will be broken down into 30-40 sequences. The boards will go through a scanner and will be edited; effects, music or voices are added into the story for the final product.