A Generic System for Interactive Real--Time Animation The authors present a new approach to an interactive design and analysis environment for visual languages. The main components, i.e., editor animator and interpreter are introduced. Their interactions are being investigated emphasizing the interpreter-animator interaction and defining an interface supporting different levels of automation. The interpreter performs the executions on a logical level and triggers the animator. The interactive animation provides a very high degree of liveness since it is based on the tight integration of the animator and editor. The proposed architecture permits the distributed implementation of a system for real-time animation. Their concepts are validated by the implementation of a debugging environment for the complete visual programming language Pictorial Janus.