A new generation of physics-based animation approaches are beginning to emerge that are robust and maintain a standard of visual quality as high as data-driven synthesis. And even with the holy grail of control principles that describe human motion still a mystery, the animation research community continues to forge its own path. We've learned that we don't need to solve the problem of biological control, nor do we need to throw out the advantages of animator control and motion capture. Instead, current research aims to find the best of all worlds, judiciously combining physics with human-motion examples, animator input, or both. This special issue brings together four examples of the innovations in this exploding area.