The promotional video for a recent Chemical Brothers single, The Salmon Dance, features an aquarium filled with all-rapping, all-dancing fish. One of our animators came up with some preliminary fish sketches, from which the directors could select the way they wanted to go. Previz gave the team a chance to block out some of the big chorus sequences. A two-day shoot saw the necessary plates captured, with challenges, including cloudy tank water and a malfunctioning periscope camera, successfully overcome. After a little over two weeks for rigging and so forth, the team were able to complete work in Maya on some 320 hand-animated fish in just six more weeks. One thing that really helped was a brilliant dynamic script developed by a junior TD for animating the fins and other features. This was a massive time-saver in the animation and brought an extra level of realism to the renders. The trick was to walk a line between necessary stylization, and an overly “cartoony” look.

VFX supervisor: Ben Cronin; Lead TD / 3D supervisor: Simon French; Animation leads: Mike Mellor, Nicklas Andersson; Animators: Dale Newton, Sylvain Marc, Andrew Daffy, Florent de La Taille; TDs: Dan Seddon, Henry van der Beek, Paul Denhard, Ben Falcone, Alex Doyle, Diarmid Harrison-Murray; Junior TDs: Richard Coley, Jabed Khan, Peter Claes; Compositors: Chris Redding, Pedro Sabrosa, Darran Nicholson; Telecine: Dave Ludlam; Producer: Sarah Hiddlestone