Missed a few steps, opera..... :P ;) 1) You get an idea for a character, scene or a film. 1a) Develop characters; both look and personality traits 1b) story premise. 1c) Actual plot(s). 1d) rough story draft. 1e) 1st revised script (words and action, no shooting info) 1f) initial storyboarding 1g) 1st shooting script 1h) first round of revisions to deal with issues of difficulty in implementation. 1i) Next round of script/storyboard revisions 1j) Repeat as neccesary to lean things out and simplify scenework as much as possible. 2) Model 3) Texture 4) Design shaders 5) if animation....Rig 6) if animation....keyframe 7) if animation...cloth sim 8) if animation...hair sim 9) if single image...pose 10) lighting 11) render 12) Post Production 12a) Special effects creation 12b) Vocal tracks 12c) Foley tracks 12d) Scoring 13) Compositing 14) Titles and Credits. 15) Distribution prep 16) Check-in at local sanitarium And I left out a lot of steps, as well..... BTW, have you ever checked out a piece of software called MovieWriter Pro? It is a nice, low cost script formatting word processor app with some story development goodies thrown in for good measure ( a scene map, synopsis, an expandable elements area to create custom info to tailor it for your scripts etc). I tried it on a lark, and was rather impressed with it.