Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay.

Traditional animation, from cel animation to stop motion, is produced by recording each frame, or still picture, on film or digital media and then playing the recorded frames back in rapid succession before the viewer. These and other moving images, from zoetrope to films to videogames, create the illusion of motion by playing back at over ten to twelve frames per second. The techniques involved in creating CGI are conversely generally removed from a frame-by-frame process.