A free AI animatic of your whole episode

What an animatic is for

Film and animation studios cut an animatic before they shoot or animate anything expensive. It shows whether the story works in time: whether a scene drags, whether a joke lands, whether a cut is in the wrong place. A problem found there costs a redraw instead of a reshoot.

With AI video it matters even more. Video credits are spent per attempt, and a shot that turns out to be unnecessary is still paid for. An animatic tells you which shots you actually need.

It also gives you something to show. Collaborators, a client or a co-writer can watch an animatic and react to the story, which is far easier than reacting to a script or a list of shots. Notes that arrive at this stage are cheap to act on.

How ShowMaker's animatic is built

The animatic is a narrated still-motion cut: slow camera moves, Ken Burns style, over the stills of each shot, with the characters' voices playing at their real length. It is free, and on the free plan it is a finished, watchable cut in its own right.

Because the stills are generated with your cast, wardrobe and locations as @references, the animatic already shows the faces and rooms the final video will use. You're reviewing the real film, just without motion.

Because each line plays at the length it was actually voiced, the animatic's running time is close to the finished episode's. If a 90-second episode plays at two and a half minutes as an animatic, you know before rendering that it needs cutting.

• Real dialogue timing from the voiced lines
• Your actual cast and locations in every frame
• The whole episode in order, instead of shot by shot

What to look for when you watch it

Watch it once straight through, like a viewer, and note where your attention drifts. Then check the things that are cheap now and expensive later: a line too long for its shot, a missing reaction, two similar shots back to back, a frame showing something the script never mentioned. ShowMaker's checks flag several of these on every shot.

Fix them in the Script or with Shoot with AI, which redraws a frame from a plain note like make her face the camera and shows the cost before you spend. Then watch it again.

Listen as well as watch. Long silences between lines, two characters whose voices sound alike, or a line that ends on the cut all show up in the animatic's sound. These are the problems that make a finished video feel off without anyone being able to say why.

From animatic to video

Once the animatic works, render video shot by shot, choosing the model per shot: premium for dialogue close-ups, cheaper for wides and cutaways. Shots you're happy to leave as still-motion can stay that way. Cost is driven by attempts per shot, and the animatic is how you keep attempts down.

Many productions find that a handful of shots never need full video at all. An establishing view, a close insert of a letter or a phone screen, or a quiet reaction can read perfectly well as a slow camera move over a still. Each one you leave that way saves a render.

When you do render, start with the shots that carry the story: the dialogue close-ups and the moments of action. Check each one against the animatic before moving on. If a rendered shot is worse than the still-motion version it replaces, keep the still-motion version.