flip book vs raw image and whats flip book

recently i heard this thing about flipbooks and im kinda confused because i know nothing of em and there are very small amount of documentation in that on the internet…i first thought when i needed to make an explosion is a alpha keyed rendered footage of a explosion made through a 3d programme(which is blender to me )can anyone please explain to me about this things…is it okey if i used video footage anyway or i cant use videos? and how to me those flip books ?i asked this on reddit and some discord server but i didnt got any answeres so is this doesnt make sense and i dumb plz let me know in the comments