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. Pre-viz 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

Framestore (UK) is the largest visual effects and Computer animation Studio in Europe, with more than 20 years of experience in digital film and video technology. Employing over 750 staff, the Company works out of three buildings in London’s Soho district, with another Office based in New York. Among numerous international awards, the Company won the 2008 Academy Award for Visual Effects for its work on "The Golden Compass".