Marlin and Dory realize they are surrounded by dangerous pink jellyfish. (Photo Courtesy Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios)

If you're looking for a whale of a mystery, a splash of intrigue, and an ocean full of adventure, get ready because Pixar's hottest, new computer-animated film, Finding Nemo, swims into theaters on May 30.

The story begins with the fishnapping of Nemo as he swims off for his first day of school. As his father looks on in horror, Nemo is snatched up by a diver. His new home is a fishtank in a dentist's office, where he spends his days plotting an escape. Meanwhile, Nemo's dad, Marlin, and his new friend, Dory, hatch their own rescue plan—a daring voyage that takes them face-to-face with dangerous sharks, deadly jellyfish, and hungry seagulls.

Besides concocting an entertaining story, the film's producers had another challenge—creating a spectacular underwater world.

"Our goal is always to make things believable, not realistic," says John Lasseter, the film's executive producer. "By stylizing the design of things, adding more geometry, and pushing the colors, we were able to create a natural and credible world for our characters."

While Pixar's superb team of animators has successfully brought toys, bugs, and monsters to life, making an underwater world come alive wasn't an easy task. They dove head-first into their research. They visited aquariums, went deep-sea diving in California and Hawaii, attended lectures on fish behavior, and even studied underwater scenes in films like Jaws and The Perfect Storm.

First, animators had to create fish movements that were believable. They quickly discovered that unlike humans, who can simply turn their heads to look at something, a fish must turn its entire body to look at something. There was also the issue of swimming speed.

"Fish underwater can travel three feet in a flash," explains Dylan Brown, supervising animator on Finding Nemo. "We were wondering how they did that and studied their movements on video. We always tried to incorporate naturalistic fish movements into the acting. By putting things like one-frame darting and transitioning from one place to another into our acting, the characters became very believable."

The film's animators also had to learn how to make the film's aquatic actors look like they were floating in water. The fish, themselves, got the star treatment. With the help of a computer, they shed their scaly image and adopted a warm, velvety, and shimmering style.

"One of our first priorities was to make the fish seem appealing," says Ralph Eggleston, who oversaw the production design for the film. "Fish are slimy, scaly things, and we wanted the audience to love our characters."

Finding Nemo's producers feel confident that all their hard work will pay off.

"The entire set is like a jewel underwater," says Eggleston. "I always thought it would look good, but I had no idea it would look like this. I was the third person to work on this film, so I've been part of the technical process since the beginning, and still I found myself sitting in the theater thinking, 'How did they do this?'"