Sea Life Centre!

To get reference images and videos for fish, I visited the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham. A lot of the fish there are tropical and exotic varieties, perfect for animation with their bright colours and interesting shapes. It was also a good reference for lighting and rendering for the underwater scenes.





























Video references were very useful too, I can't upload them all here but here is one of the best when it comes to both fish movement and underwater caustics.




Observing fish I've realised that they move almost their whole bodies from side to side- not just their tail, to propell themselves forward. I will need to be able to replicate this when I rig and animate any fish that I model.