Of course, it all starts with a story - perhaps a novel, a manga, or just the outline of an idea. The team of artists who will turn the idea into reality then has to be found - a director, chara and other designers, art director (in charge of backgrounds, etc.), camera crew and principal staff and introduced to the idea; or the person with the idea might approach a production company to put together a team for them. It's often better to work with an established team who've handled other projects together, rather than with a bunch of artists who don't know each other's working methods and styles.
A long series of meetings begins; to read and discuss the story, to find sponsors to get the money together so that the project can go ahead, and to develop the ideas. What mood or style do they aim for? Is this story going to be cute, funny, sad, violent, cheerful, crazy or what?
The storyboards - known as 'A conte' - are started, perhaps by the director, or by a team of special artists, and the designers, animators and other key staff meet to fix the look of the designs - characters, uniforms, mecha and so on. The Art Director makes up the background boards, which 'set' the colour range of the whole production universe. The director looks at all this work and makes sure that the 'look' of the production is headed in the right direction.
Now it's the turn of the senior key animators to decide frame by frame, exactly what happens on screen. The director, producer and even sponsors may also sit in on these meetings. Then the animators get to work on the layouts basic ideas for the scene, how big is each chara in the frame, what are the movements, is it night or day, and so on. After a check by the director, the layouts go to the key animators to draw the key, or most important, frames for each scene - usually the beginning and end of each action. The director checks these, ensures the basic movements are right, and has any necessary changes made.
Now the animation supervisor draws corrections, so that the inbetweeners, who will draw the intermediate frames between each key frame, can get every detail right. This is the stage where the 'look' of the chars throughout the film is finally fixed. The inbetweeners clean up the extreme drawings and ink the inbetweens, working from the key animators' timesheets, which tell the cameraman what cels to shoot in each frame and how many cels are need for each scene. All this work is then checked by the inbetweens checkers.
The backgrounds are started at the same time as the inbetweens process, so they will be ready when the cels are completed. As soon as all the inbetweens and key frames are finally checked and approved, the cel department starts work. Cel painters trace down all the animation onto cels, clean up the lines, and paint the cels. These are checked again for colour balance and accuracy of drawing before the director does a final check.
The backgrounds are now laid up under the cels to make sure everything 'works' together - the colour balance, the flow of action, and so on. The director decides on what lenses, filters and so on will be used to create the effect he wants - all the camera details. The whole package - cels, backgrounds, detailed instructions and those all-important timesheets - can now be handed over to the camera company for shooting.
After shooting, the film is sent to the lab for processing and the cels and backgrounds go back to the production company. When the rushes come back, they are checked to ensure everything is OK. Now it's the turn of the voice actors. Sometimes the film is spliced into one reel and sent over to the voice studio, sometimes the cast starts work on small sections, a bit at a time. If schedules or budgets are tight they may not even work from the film, but from small sections of animation roughly assembled. Mouth movements are approximate, rather than precisely lipsynched. After the post-recording edit and cleanup, the next stage is to dub on the music track and sound effects.
The final rush is made and checked; then, if there are no problems, film prints are struck and the production process is finished. Another anime production is ready to go out to the TV studios, video duplication company, or cinema.