TED Education is a great initiative by TED that teams up educators with animators to explain and visualize a lesson of any given subject.
We collaborated with TED New York to develop this animation piece. The subject matter in this case is an ancient Japanese printing technique called Gyotaku, which involves fish and sea life forms.
Two main characters were designed to tell a 3 minute story to explain what Gyotaku is.

Creative Direction, Character Design, 3D Modelling, Rigging, Lighting, Animation & Compositing: Franco Barroeta
Assistant 3D Modelling, Animation & Compositing: Eduardo Sandoval
Sound Design: Orlando Ruíz
TED-Ed Producer: Gerta Xhelo
TED-Ed Team Assistant: Jessica Ruby
Educator: Karen Dodge

Styleframes

Early character exploration

The two main characters

3D model of the fisherman

3D model of Lord Sakai

3D model of cave fisherman

Fish design exploration

3D model of fish & namazu

Some props and water treatment