Abstract: A method and apparatus for animating a synthetic body part. The 3D-animation system and method use a database of basic postures. In a first step, for each frame, a linear combination of the basic postures from a database of basic postures is obtained by minimizing the Euclidean distance between the displacement of critical points. The displacement information is supplied externally, and typically can be obtained by observing the displacement of physical markers placed on a moving physical body part in the real world. For instance, the synthetic body part may be an expression of a human face and the displacement data are obtained by observing physical markers placed on the face of an actor. The linear combination of the postures in the database of postures is then used to construct the desired posture. Postures are constructed for each time frame and are then displayed consecutively to provide animation.