If you read the article about Sam Chen, then you know that he scanned his Post-it® notes and made an animatic of his animation from them. Animatics are a combination of slide show, rough animations, and maybe a rough sound track. This gives you a surprisingly good feel for how your animation will work. It will help you establish the pace and timing of the scene before you animate it. The animatic video can even be used as a template for animation. With Blender, you would drop your graphics into the Video Sequence Editor and spread them out over time to give yourself a rough idea of how everything will look after it's animated. You will examine using the Video Sequence Editor to edit animation in a later chapter.
Note
Links about animatics
Using Blender for Animatics available at http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/testimonials/animatics-for-motion-pictures
Sintel, the Animatic available at http://www.sintel.org/news/1st-minute-animatic...