Glossary
Animatic
Also called: Story reel, Leica reel
Definition
An animatic is a rough, timed preview of a video made by putting storyboard frames in sequence over a scratch voiceover or soundtrack, used to check pacing before final animation.
What “animatic” means
A storyboard shows what happens; an animatic shows when. Each storyboard panel is held on screen for as long as its moment lasts, usually over a temporary or “scratch” voice recording and sometimes with simple moves or crossfades. The result is a crude video, but one with the real running time.
Animation studios have used animatics for decades to catch problems early: a joke that needs more time, a scene that drags, a transition that feels abrupt. In advertising, animatics are also used to test a concept with an audience before committing to production.
Why it matters for short explainer videos
Short videos are unforgiving with pace. A scene that feels fine on paper may hold for six seconds on a single static idea, which is long on a phone. Watching even a rough animatic tells you where to trim words, split a scene or add a visual beat.
Animatics also reveal mismatches between voice and picture: a visual that needs a second to read but only gets half a second, or a long sentence over a single, simple image.
Example
A team prepares a 90-second onboarding video. They record a scratch narration on a phone, drop the nine storyboard frames on a timeline and match each to its line. Watching it, they notice that scene 5 (“connect your calendar”) runs 14 seconds on a single screenshot. They split it into two scenes before any animation is done.
In Motiongist
How Motiongist handles it
Motiongist doesn’t produce a separate animatic file. What plays that role is the combination of the free storyboard review, where you read each scene’s narration and what it should show, and the narration preview, where you can hear your script with the voice before rendering and check how long it runs.
On the free plan, previews and videos use a free draft voice, which is useful for timing. The words to minutes tool also estimates how long your script will run at different paces.