[Innovan]

Fish (fresh or salt) require less animation than insects or reptiles. The largest problem is accurate interaction with the landscape.

Just swimming forward, fish need nine animation loops.

A butterfly would need nine animations flying forward, plus seperate animations for landing on different objects (twig horizontal, twig slope right, twig slope left, vertical twig), plus different animations for different flower landings (butterflies are very flower specific in which ones and how they can land). Plus preening animations and sunning animations when they're landed. Possibly even animations of them being blown away from perches by a gust of wind (a common reason they loose perch). It's a lot larger matrix of animations to make for each butterfly.

Plus to do it right, Jim would have to mimic the flight path of different species, which is another way of identifying butterflies.

When the animation loop matrix gets large, you really do want to be working with animation skeletons --which is mondo expensive and another learning curve to climb.

I'd say sticking with fish for a while longer is smart. Animation skeletons are going to be expensive in terms of software tools to make it happen. Majorly expensive.