The main goal of this article is to expand the set of tools for animation studies and introduce few concepts, which are necessary for further research of this medium. In order to archive this goal it analyses three crucial aspects of animation: (1) movement, (2) technique, as it relates to human perception and (3) morphing (transformations) of different entities in an animation film. A close analysis of a nature of movement in animation films is conducted in this paper. Based on its results, the concept of «abstract movement» as a fundamental unit of animation is introduced, a distinctive type of animation movement named «flickering» is explored and a new classification of «animation» and «live footage», which represents these genres as two extremes of one continuum, is proposed. To describe a connection between an animation technique and one’s perception, the article applies Marvin Minsky’s theory of cognitive framing. It argues that unlike live footage, which contains all visual properties of a real object,