Fish Can't Fly is a short film written and directed by Richard Murphy and produced by Scott Horsfield.

The film is live action but required a computer animated fish as a main character, to act in ways that a real fish could no. I was brought in as head of animation for the film, which also involved explaining much of the animation process to the director and producer because neither had ever worked with computer animation.

I was responsible for all areas of 3D production, from designing and modeling the fish, through to character rigging, shading, lighting, animation and render wrangling. All work was carried out using Maya. The surface shaders used procedural textures rather than bitmaps and the character rig involved a combination of boning, hand painted weights, blend shapes and driven keys.

The film was made with the support of the National Lottery through the UK Film Council new Cinema Fund, with the assistance of Screen South.