Clay animation is one of many ways to make a stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, can be formed and reformed into different shapes. People making a clay animation usually use something soft, like Plasticine clay.

An example of clay animation showing people sitting near a campfire.

Most animation is made the same way, whether it is cel animation or stop motion. Each frame, or still picture, is recorded on film or digital media and then played back quickly. When played back at a frame rate of more than 10–12 frames per second, the human mind sees the series of slightly changing, rapidly playing images as movement. To us it seems as if the object is moving by itself. This way of tricking the mind into seeing "movement" is the way that all moving images work, from zoetrope to movies to videogames. The way CGI animations are made is different from the frame by frame method.