Animatic

An animatic is an early copy of an animated episode or film, in which the animators show off a slightly animated, with no colours, version would look like.

The purpose of which is to give the producers and writers an idea of how it will look, and how long it will be, where they can then decide on what to cut down, rearrange or re-plot.

Generally, these are for "in production" use, and are often not released publicly, though, as a special feature, Futurama has 5 released animatics.