Movie clips containing animation, both solely and partly, can be classified as animated movie clips. In general, the best example of an animated clip would be a small cartoon film or a cartoon character in a normal clip.

Animated clips are used predominantly in advertisements. This is so because they are both different and eye-catching. However, movie clips from animated movies such as Shrek 2, Finding Nemo and Toy Story 2 were also released on the Internet as trailers.

An animated movie clip can be saved in all normal formats such as AVI and MOV, but the format SWF or shockwave flash is best suited for files containing animation. However, the drawback in using this format is that the user must have the shockwave flash runtime player installed.

Animation movie clips can be of two types: 2-dimensional (2-D) or 3-dimensional (3-D). A 2-dimensional animation clip is often created using traditional methods that involve drawing the characters on paper. Hundreds and thousands of individual frames are drawn and then transferred to clear plastic cells. These are then hand painted and filmed in sequence. On the other hand, a 3-dimensional animation clip is created mainly with the help of computers. The basic difference between the two, apart from the increased realism in 3-D, is that, in 3-D animations, the amount of time, labor and equipment required is far less.

Creation of animated movies has now become a large industry and provides immense employment opportunity to thousands of people. For those wanting to pursue creating animated movies as a career, courses in both 2-D and 3-D animations are taught in colleges across the United States. Learning basic animation can be exciting and a lot of fun. Just about anybody can create his own animated movie clips and release them on the Internet.