Thanks for the help guys. As it turns out, there's a really simple method of achieving what I'm looking for.

Make the paint Effects stroke. Keep it active and then go to the Paint Effects menu in the Render toolset. From there go to Animate Stroke>Make Stroke Spring. The settings need to be tweaked a bit, but it works a charm!

Learned a lot about soft bodies and jiggle deformers in the process though!

I've attached a little Quicktime Movie to demonstrate the result on a basic shape. Sorenson Compression, so you'll need at least QT4.

Thank you again.

Julian