  When animation of a humanoid figure is to be generated at run-time, instead
of by replaying pre-composed motion clips, some method is required of
specifying the avatar's movements in a form from which the required motion data
can be automatically generated. This form must be of a more abstract nature
than raw motion data: ideally, it should be independent of the particular
avatar's proportions, and both writable by hand and suitable for automatic
generation from higher-level descriptions of the required actions.
  We describe here the development and implementation of such a scripting
language for the particular area of sign languages of the deaf, called SiGML
(Signing Gesture Markup Language), based on the existing HamNoSys notation for
sign languages.
  We conclude by suggesting how this work may be extended to more general
animation for interactive virtual reality applications.
