"What we describe as animated photography is not animation at all. All that happens is that a long string of snap-shot photographs..are passed at rapid speed before the eye." - F. A. Talbot Moving Pictures: How They are Made and Worked 1912
Animation is the use of motion picture media to create the illusion of motion. While a conventional motion picture records objects in motion, an animated picture records still objects. The animated film may record thousands of individual drawings or it may record a single object, which is moved between frames. The art of animation predates cinema, having its beginnings with devices such as the zoetrope.