Boarding is one of the first steps. Animating is one of the last. Storyboards involve setting up all the shots, blocking the characters out, posing them, and making sure each shot flows into the next. It's basically a blueprint for an episode. They're timed to the audio and you can see how an episode will play out.
There's a step in-between called layout. Background layout and character layout take each shot, draw tighter versions of the chars/BGs based on the boards, and then they're sent to the animators.
The animators take the layouts and animate the characters within the scene. They animate scenes shot by shot. A lot of shows animate scenes based on exposure sheets, which instruct the animators how to properly time out the scenes. China IL doesn't do that. Animators time their own scenes.
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