Yes you do have to texture the plane object with an image.
To animate it you have two options:
1. Use multiple images for the frames and just simply texture the object with the new image.
2. Alter the UV of the texture to reflect the portion of the image you want to display on the plane.
ie. top-left UV would be 0,0 and bottom-right would be 1,1 to show a whole texture. UV coords of 0.5,0.5 would be halfway through the texture. So for the last frame in a 2x2 animated image would be top-left=0.5,0.5 and bottom-right=1.0,1.0
A bit fiddly yes, but neither way would slow anything down.
Mental arithmetic? Me? (That's for computers) I can't subtract a fart from a plate of beans!
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