no keyframing

Research in animation and dynamics, in order to build non-keyframed animated entities.
Geometry and object's behavior must be a natural consequence of embodied interactions.

Indeed, 3D animation is of great interest for the animator, as soon as he starts dealing with the timeline, that is, as soon as he actually starts animating.

Nevertheless, one could also aspire to genuinely autonomous creatures, whose behavior in the 3D environment is the consequence of clever wiring and physical interactions embedded in the environment.

This may be a way to describe the actual work of robotics, AI or cognitive science in general. Here, for "no keyframing", we are interested in situations where the dynamics and the scene setup produce expressive and soulful behavior.

There are several ways to setup such scenes: for instance, one could write scripts and compose geometry, producing abstract, nervous and graphic results, as with the remarkable work by Zeitguised. One could also look for a more traditional and recognizable aspect, by harnessing physical interactions and scales we're used to. In such case, the setup work inherits from choreography and scenography, where we make design, rhythm and composition choices. In all cases, it's up to the world setup and body design to produce appealing motion, where animation is a reconstruction process, using rational rules and inducing aha-like results. The dream of an autonomous, sensible and willingful entity still holds, but it's a far distant dream.

By the way, since it's the environment which is set up, and since work consists of rules and design choice, and since it's a machine that's running it out, then, one could look at the real-time behavior of the system. One could think of interactive situations including the user action. Put another way, we could undertake the playful aspect and the, may be, delightful experience. Crafting the whole system would lie on the visual research, as well as the deliberate constraints choices and user interface design.

In this sense, video-game might be an interesting platform to work on.