One of the many forms of stop motion

Stop motion

Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...

, but certainly blurring the distinction between stop motion and regular flat (drawing or "cel") animation.

Direct manipulation is a simplified variation of graphic animation

Graphic animation

Graphic animation is a variation of stop motion consisting of the animation of photographs and other non-drawn flat visual graphic material, such as newspaper and magazine clippings.In its simpliest form,...

 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

Will Vinton

Will Vinton is an American director and producer of animated films. He was born in McMinnville, Oregon, near Portland. He has won an Oscar for his work, and several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for the work of his studio.- Education :...

's Dinosaur (1980), and parts of Mike Jittlov

Mike Jittlov

Mike Jittlov is an American animator and the creator of short films and one feature length movie using forms of special effects animation, including stop-motion animation, rotoscoping, and pixilation...

's 1977 short film, Animato.