Making a cartoon is a lot of work and involves many different processes. From storyboards, character/background/prop/effects design, inking (clean up), coloring, to many other important tasks. Its all broken down scene by scene and episode by episode.
This applies to most cartoons, including the one I'm working on at Cartoon Network Studios called
Adventure Time. A lot of this process is nicely documented and shown on the
Adventure Time Blog over at Frederator. Take a look by clicking the image below:
"Ghostshrimp and
Santino Lascano are the show’s background designers,
Martin Ansolabehere and
Sandra Calleros handle the painting.
Nick Jennings is the art director, while P
at McHale is the creative director"