Eric Daniels has spent many years as an animator at Disney, DreamWorks, and other Hollywood studios... and has actually owned real goldfish.

Other than those two things, he says, nothing could have prepared him for the challenge of creating a realistic simulation of goldfish. He spent months researching; he visited goldfish stores from California to Hong Kong, and then more months trying to faithfully replicate the elegant motions he observed.

Along the way, he says he learned about the place of goldfish in the Chinese art/science of Feng Shui, and he learned that the Chinese have considered goldfish lucky, or "auspicious," for centuries.

He points out that goldfish have indeed been very lucky for him: shortly after he started designing this program, he was awarded a Certificate of Outstanding Technical Achievement from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences for his ground-breaking work developing a 3-dimensional painting process for Disney's Tarzan.

In addition to Tarzan, Eric has contributed to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, An American Tail, The Simpsons, Over the Hedge, and Meet The Robinsons.