Clay painting animation is a form of clay animation, which is one of the many kinds of stop motion animation. It blurs the distinction between clay animation, cel animation and cutout animation. Clay painting animation (which is also a variation of the direct manipulation animation process), is animation where clay is placed and flattened on a flat supporting surface and moved like "wet" oil paints as on a traditional artistic canvas to produce any style of images, but with a clay 'look' to them, filmed frame-by-frame by an animation camera (shooting from above, and in a traditional animation stand) after each small adjustment of the clay images.