On this page I am going to give you the very basics of how to simple animations. I am still learning a lot, and I am by no means an expert. I have learnt a lot from books and web sites, but nothing is better than actually trying out techniques yourself. Go to my links page to find out more information. If you're looking for a brilliant book about animation then the best one I have come across is Cracking Animation by Peter Lord and Brian Sibley. This book is the source of all animation knowledge for me.

The best material to use when doing animation is plasticene. Although you can use many more materials, plasticene is the most useful. You can get plasticene, or modelling clay from your local craft or model shop.

When you are making more complicated puppets, you need to use an armature. This is basically a skeleton that holds your puppet together. For an amateur, wire armatures are best. These can be made out of ordinary wire.

To animate you will need some sort of a camera. I use a standard digital camera. I can then put images onto my computer and run them using a piece of software called Videotrope. I downloaded this off the internet from Go!zilla.com. You can also use film or video cameras that have a single-frame facility. There's loads more different software that you can get hold of. Here's a list of software I know of that will help with animation. I haven't tried them all, so I'm not recommending them to you.
Name                     Publisher         Price
Paintshop Pro 7      Jasc                  £99
QuickTime pro        Apple                £40
MediaStudio Pro 6  Ulead               £483
VideoStudio 4         Ulead                £95
Videowave III           MGI                  £81
Premiere 5              Adobe              £422
Photoshop 6           Adobe               £450
1349DV                    Pyro                 £99

If you can't afford to spend this amount of money on software, then you may be able to find downloads on the publishers sites. Just search for the name of the Publisher in a good search engine, and you should find a site.
Normal animation plays at around 25 frames per second. This means that for every second of film there is, 25 images have been taken. This means that Wallace and Gromit took around 43,500 frames altogether.

Obviously this is a  very brief look at the basics of animation but hopefully it will give you an idea of what animation is and how it is done.