Our storyboards are drawn, our characters and sets are designed, so now we need to find voices for our characters and start recording their lines. Casting in animation is unlike casting for live action movies. Since we create the physical characters on the computer first, we’re much more concerned with what an actor sounds like than how he or she looks. In other words, we cast with our ears, not our eyes.

Rigging
Every animated CGI character needs to be rigged before it can move. Dozens of expressions and mouth shapes are rigged for each speaking character. Those shapes are then synchronized with the dialogue during the lip syncing process

Layout
Translating the story into three-dimensional scenes, the layout crew choreographs the characters in the set and uses a virtual camera to create shots that capture the emotion and story point of each scene. The scene has been cut; the final version is released to animation.

Character animation
Once the sequence is working well in layout, the animators start bringing the characters to life in the computer. Computer animators carefully create the specific key pose that dictate the movement of every attribute of every character and object on screen.