One of the many forms of stop motion, but certainly blurring the distinction between stop motion and regular flat (drawing or "cel") animation. Stop motion (or frame-by-frame) animation is an Animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own
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. Graphic animation was also used as a History of Playboy Magazine piece used on Saturday Night Live when the magazine's founder Hugh Hefner, appeared on that show
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. Will Vinton (born 1948 is an American director and producer of animated films Mike Jittlov (born June 8, 1948) is an American Animator and the creator of short films and one feature length movie using forms of