20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Pixar

Just because the Pixar movies are cartoons doesn't mean the team doesn't want to be as accurate as possible. So when they made a movie about undersea life, they really did their homework.  

For Finding Nemo, Pixar wanted all their animators to become familiar with fish behaviour and movement, so they all took a graduate-level, 12 week course in Ichthyology, the study of fish. It was taught by Adam Summers, professor of Ecology and Evolution. 

"They were infinitely curious about fish, and they were flat-out the best students I had ever had," Summer said. "By the end of each lecture, they would be asking me questions that I didn't have answers for."

The animators still took plenty of artistic license of course, giving the fish eyebrows and more muscles in their faces, but most of the movement is actually fairly accurate. For example, the animators learned that clown fish propel themselves around by moving their fins horizontally, while blue tangs flap their fins vertically, never wiggling their full bodies. It's rather subtle, but you can really see that difference in movement between Marlin and Dory in the film.