During college i was on a task to create my own clay model i make my clay model and then i will take images with a camera every second and then move the clay model with the most littlest detail then this will make my animation look like it has life inside it.
This mainly takes patience and a little bit of skill because if the character moves to much or doesn't start in the same place as before then it looks jumpy.
I have used final cut pro to import my images then saved the images and then added them to the timeline then i can see the life in the images so i then added a background using chromea key (green screen)