Sterling-Rice Group has been working with Don Poe at People Productions over the past year on several different ‘animatics’ for Horizon Organic Milk and Werther’s Candies. An animatic is an animated storyboard. Hands, arms, candies, cows, pouring milk - whatever, are hand drawn and then cut out using Photoshop so they can be animated and moved around on the drawn background. These are useful as they are much cheaper to create to see if a commercial or production will flow smoothly before the actors, sets and crew are all hired. If there is a problem at the ‘animatic’ stage, we can change the animatic to make the story flow more smoothly and so that the end commercial will be effective. Also, some clients have several different ideas for a commercial but only has the budget to do 1 finished spot. This helps them determine, often using focus groups, which ad is the winner.