And then there was Carl Stalling, who wouldn't even wait for the final
edits of the cartoons he wrote for. He'd just compose against the
x-sheets the animators used, the timings worked out by the director
were so precise and detailed.
This is exactly what I am doing for SFX design for tube in phase 1 actually. When I started about 3/4 of the shots there wasn't any animation for, just storyboards. Now that is significantly down, but I am often still laying in sounds with just basic timings and ideas of animations at best.
Not quite the same as composing, but in some ways not to different either. I just need to write a SFZ to handle foley noises etc. sometime:)