Tracey Kobayashi
50 Phelan Ave, NGYM
San Francisco, CA 94112
(415)452-7311
tkobayas@ccsf.edu
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Physiology/Kinesiology
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Study of the human body and its major systems. Includes how the body grows,
specializes, moves and functions as a complex system.
Covers structure and function of major systems and motion concepts.
Schedule, Activities, Outlines
I don't teach this course anymore, but the pages are still on the server.
Feel free to peruse them!
Term Project
Check the
Project Page
for group project information.
Links
These links are to projects and products that I find interesting.
If you find an interesting link, let me know, and I'll add it!
Biomechanics and Animation
For those of you into animation, the work you do has been made easier because of work completed by
researchers in the field of Biomechanics.
The first response I get when I tell people I have a degree in Biomechanics is a blank
stare. The second is usually some excuse to get away from me, but sometimes it's What's
Biomechanics? Biomechanics is the study of animal motion, and animation as you know it originated
in the discipline of Kinematic Analysis (describing motion from a mechanical standpoint).
The original animations
came from a desire to understand, and perhaps improve, movement patterns, and were done by filming people
doing various tasks and digitizing their segmental endpoints frame-by-frame using the Lafayette
film digitizer (a sonic digitizing board and program set up to spit back numbers representing positions,
velocities and accelerations). I used one of these for a class project, and when you're shooting 300 frames
per second, the process is quite tedious. Needless to say, many early studies involved short time frames
One of the indirect benefits of kinematic analysis came not in enhancing performance, but in depicting
movement, hence the algorithms you use in your animation programs. Times have changed since the
Lafayette digitizer, and the tools have improved greatly. Below are links to some relatively recent work
in Biomechanics with respect to animation.
Other links.
Text
Physiology
by Costanzo and Schmitt. Publisher WB Saunders. ISBN 0721695493.
Available in the bookstore for $36.95.
Amazon has used copies (previous editions) from $23.
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