Direct manipulation animation

Direct manipulation animation^[1] is one of the many forms of stop motion, but certainly blurring the distinction between stop motion and regular flat (drawing or "cel") animation.

Direct manipulation is a simplified variation of graphic animation which involves the frame-by-frame altering (erasing or adding to) a single drawing or graphic image, while taking a frame of film or video as each small change is made, as close as the stop motion process gets to simply animating a series of drawings, but without actually changing to completely separate drawings or graphics for each frame of film, a more traditional process that most people associate with the generic "animation' term.

Examples of direct-manipulation-animation are parts of J. Stuart Blackton's 1906 Humorous Phases of Funny Faces , the chalk animation opening sequence of Will Vinton's Dinosaur (1980), and parts of Mike Jittlov's 1977 short film, Animato.

• 12 basic principles of animation

• Animation techniques
• Stop motion
• Animation stubs

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing additional references from October 2025
• All articles needing additional references
• All stub articles