Animation in general is the frame by frame photographic process in which the illusion of movement is created. Animation can be moving a box from one side of the screen to another, or a character in a...
Animation consist of making the animation its self, flash animation consist of cutting out photos of other photos and does not really make the animation.
Traditional animation is done by hand. Computer animation is completely digitized. Rather than creating a movie screen by screen, they can create a 3D character first and then input movements for it...