CG 3D animation is a completely different beast from 2D, and modern TV/Film 2D animation is completely different from the "Classic Hollywood Cartoon".
Here's how it worked back in the old days -- I use Looney Toons as the point of reference:
yes, you had a storyboard and dialog.
The image consisted of a background and at most four cels. A cel is a transparent piece of celluloid on which an animation element can take place. So every movement has to be plotted and budgeted. For reasons that should be obvious, you generally want only one "motion" per cel. So, for instance, you could have a background, then one cel with the character(s) (say Bugs and Daffy -- which only happens something like 6 times), then two cels for the parts that are actually "moving" at any moment. The Disney "screen in motion" effects are _very_ expensive.
Anyway, the timing is done by plotting extreme positions (for example, hand by the side to hand pointing at something), and the interval between them. For much of a Looney Toons cartoon, the pace between extreme positions is 6 frames (or four beats a second). When things pick up, the pace will go to 5 and then 4 frames.
The Animators draw the extreme positions, and their subordinates, the "Tweeners", do the in-between positions.
With regards to the music, composer Carl Stalling, who worked with Disney in the '30s, then came to Looney Toons in 38/39, developed a system where he would take the studio orchestra (permanent orchestra that did all the studio's products), and make them play to a giant metronome-like device that followed the beats of the extreme positions. Basically, he composed the music to the beat of the extreme positions of the animations (after all, cartoons arose as animation set to music).
This meant that everything -- even the dialog -- was planned down at the frame level. It also explains why the products are masterpieces of comic timing, and won't ever be repeated or surpassed in their genre.
There's nothing wrong with being impassioned by other forms of animation; but for me, when I see a Looney Toon, or something Tex Avery did with MGM, I'm blown away by how much attention to detail went in, and how easy it is to ignore that attention and just laugh my bellybutton off.
By the way, what's the deal with the single frame Budweiser can in the missile flyby in the Robotech Movie? I always wanted to know.
