This article was originally delivered as an illustrated lecture at the 2007 Pervasive Animation' symposium at Tate Modern, London, 2--4 March 2007. My goal was to describe a category of animation practice emerging today and to compare its various tendencies with my experience making films, books, and installations. I have attempted to balance my personal art history with an analysis of larger issues in animation.Concrete animation' refers to work that focuses primarily on materiality and process. It has a precedence in contemporary art practice; it has one foot in the distant, pre-cinema past, and one foot on a path leading to a future of digital and manual animation.