WHAT IS ANIMATION?

 The internet say:

Animation is a filmmaking technique by which still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets (cels) to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within the entertainment industry. Many animations are computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation, in particular claymation, has continued to exist alongside these other forms. Animation is contrasted with live-action film, although the two do not exist in isolation. Many moviemakers have produced films that are a hybrid of the two. As CGI increasingly approximates photographic imagery, filmmakers can easily composite 3D animations into their film rather than using practical effects for showy visual effects (VFX).

But to me animation is an expression of imagination turned into reality through illustrations. A sequence of illustrations maged together to creat a story, with a little exaggeration add within the illustrations. Taking drawings and making a movie or a series, taking your impossible imagination and changing the nature of reality to make it possible. As they are different types of animation, your( stop and motion, 3D, 2D and Hybrid animation)

In  "Stop and Motion" that's where you take pictures (imagines) and turning them in to moving pictures they are accurately (Realistically) real . Where else in 2D illustrations are flat also turned into motions. In 3D, the illustration  you can see 3side which create a 3 dimension, which makes the illustrations more realistic, but remain illustrations. In Hybrid animation you combine the 3D with 2D animation, or stop and motion with 2D  that's how the hybrid is created.