E-konte (絵コンテ) is a japanese term meaning "drawing" 絵 (E) and コンテ (konte) is short for continuity. E-konte is made up of a column for action, pictures, dialogue, and sound.
| 1) Scene / cut | Scene number and cut number. One scene has multiple cuts. |
| 2) Page # | Number indicating how far into an animation the page is. |
| 3) Action | Action and instructions, including acting and camera moves. |
| 4) Storyboard Area | Thumbnail drawings showing composition and basic acting. |
| 5) Frame | Size of the final output image, matches an HDTV ratio. |
| 6) Bleed Area | Extra space not shown on TV, to allow for adjustment. |
| 7) Dialogue and SFX | Spoken words and onomatopoeia for sound effects. |
| 8) Time | Length of a cut in (seconds + frames). |
| 9) Total Time | Length of a whole page of e-konte. |
The drawing area of e-konte matches the aspect ratio of most home HDTVs, 16 x 9, just like layout paper. It's common for a storyboard artist to draw outside this box for camera moves, shots with lots of detail, or any number of other reasons. Movement is shown in sequence. Drawings lower on the page come after higher drawings. A new frame doesn't mean a new cut or scene though. Those are tracked by the Scene/Cut column.
Sometimes a single cut might take a dozen drawings to show. Other times you might have a single drawing (for example of a city as an establishing shot) which is the only drawing for a scene + cut together. Always follow the labels in the Scene + Cut column. never assume you’re moving on from one cut to the next based on the drawings alone.
The time column is used to show how much time passes with each bit of motion. It's measured in parentheses as (seconds + コマ). Koma means "frame." Animation is typically made at a rate of 24 frames per second. A 1.5 second cut is (1 +12) a 0.75 second cut would be (0 + 18). This takes a little getting used to, but actually makes timing out cuts much easier once you are familiar with it. Imagine how confusing it would be if you had to deal with decimals each 0.0416666667 seconds long! Timecodes would be a nightmare.
When a director writes the timing for the total length of a cut, they mean it. You'll get some wiggle room in a scene to play with the precise timing of movement, but the second you start trying to change the length of a cut, expect trouble. Anime budgets are extremely tight and often have their funds accounted for down to the frame. If you start lengthening or shortening cuts without express permission, you can completely throw off that careful accounting.
If the CT sheet (the pre-filled timesheet) has a different cut length or timing from the e-konte, follow the CT sheet.Sometimes, sections of e-konte are removed or replaced. These are shown with a big "X" or scribble through them. It should go without saying, but don’t draw something that has clearly been scribbled out. Occasionally, there will be a note to refer to a different section of the storyboard for the correct drawings. Other times, the new material might actually be pasted over the old drawings.
When a character speaks, they'll always be labeled with their name in the dialogue + sound section. Pay special attention to this for characters you'll be drawing, as you will need to know who's saying what to animate dialogue. If a character speaks but isn't shown, it's indicated with OFF or O.S. (off-screen) If they're doing the typical anime trope where they think through a problem mentally, it's indicated with MONO (Monologue). Don't be the animator that wastes hours drawing a cool anime protagonist's mental anguish with a bunch of unneeded mouth flaps. Sometimes onomatopoeia is indicated in the sound section. This is used in e-konte the same way you'd see it in comics. Sound effects are always written in katakana, and they're usually not too hard to figure out. Sometimes, you'll need to time your animation to particular sound effects.
Since e-konte is created by the director and a small team of storyboard artists, it's going to drip with personal style. Some directors, like Hayao Miyazaki (almost every Ghibli film) and Satoshi Kon (Paranoia agent, Patlabor, etc.), are renowned for their detailed e-konte and extremely rigid standards. Others, like Hyrouki Imasihi (Kill la Kill, Gurren Laggan, etc.) draw so rough and fast that their work looks more like hieroglyphics than anime. Time and experience will teach you how to work with a given e-konte style or director, but it’s usually a good idea to see how other work by the director looks–from the same show and any previous work they’ve directed.
One thing I don't have a picture of up above is an animatic. An CT Movie is the first video made for a production, taking images from the e-konte and timing it along with sound according to the CT sheet.
Once layout work begins, daily and weekly updates are made to the CT sheet, importing those layouts so those working on the episode can better imagine the final product, and so the overall flow of the episode can be visualized. The animatic is called an offline for the duration of this process. Once it goes on air, it's sometimes called an online.
Depending on where in production a project is, the animatic/offline can have dialogue, music, sound cues, effects, and animation at various stages for every scene. It's always helpful to refer to these videos before starting your work. It will help you understand where your cuts fit into the overall episode, and makes timing much easier to visualize.
The animatic is always extremely helpful, especially if you're having trouble imagining the timing of motion from static storyboards alone.The animatic will include a timecode in minutes + seconds + frames, along with a big character name exactly timed to dialogue. I can’t stress enough how useful watching this is! If it’s not provided to you, ask your PA about it and see if you can get it.
Over the course of working on an episode, the animatic is updated with more and more cuts, first in rough layout form and eventually in more complete edits. By the end of production, it's functionally a complete episode. If you're ever wondering why you have such tight deadlines for a show that's months or even years from airing, it's probably because the director is trying to update the animatic as quickly as possible so they can correct and improve the episode as a whole. Since the animatic is so important, most studios now require you to send a "render" of your work as part of the submission process, usually as a .mp4 or .mov (gifs aren't usually accepted).