Animation is the technique in which each frame
of a film is produced individually, whether generated as a computer
graphic, or by photographing a drawn image, or by repeatedly making
small changes to a model unit (see claymation and stop motion),
and then photographing the result with a special animation camera.
When the frames are strung together and the resulting film is
viewed at a speed of 16 or more frames per second, there is an
illusion of continuous movement (due to the persistence of vision).
Generating such a film is very labour intensive and tedious, though
the development of computer animation has greatly sped up the
process.
File formats like GIF, QuickTime,
Shockwave and Flash allow animation to be viewed on a computer
or over the Internet.