Clay animation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable", i.e. a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay. The portmanteau term "Claymation" is a registered trademark in the United States, registered by Will Vinton in 1978 to describe his clay animated films. While the word is not considered a genericized trademark, it has become a trademark which is often used generically in the US to refer to any animation using plasticene or similar substance.

All traditional animation is produced in a similar fashion, whether done through cel animation or stop-motion. Each frame, or still picture, is recorded on film or digital media and then played back in rapid succession. When played back at a frame rate greater than 10-12 frames per second, a fairly convincing illusion of continuous motion is achieved. While the play-back feature creating an illusion is true of all moving image (from zoetrope, to films to videogames), the techniques involved in creating CGI are generally removed from a frame-by-frame process.