Disney meets Darwin-the evolution of funny animated figures

In this paper I discuss an approach to the generation of entertaining animated motion, using a genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms have been used successfully to optimize the physical behaviors of articulated stick figures and other animated creatures for goal-directed behavior. But an emphasis has not been put on the “optimization of expressivity”, whereby an animator inserts him/herself into the optimizing loop to aesthetically influence the evolution of motion behavior in such figures. A technique for bringing both automatic and interactive evolution together into one tool is discussed as a means to bring evolutionary tools closer to the concerns of the character animator, who may be just as interested in developing amusing behaviors in a world of “Cartoon Laws”, as in simulating realistic animals in a world of Newtonian physics