All Star Animators Recreate the Entire Ocean Online

**Waqas** · October 24, 2011

Screens from theBlu

Wemo Media has partnered with top animators from Avatar and Tron, the director of MIT’s Media Lab and other high profile activists for an ambitious, underwater animation project called theBlu.

TheBlu is, more or less, a recreation of the entire ocean ecosystem — from North America to Asia and everywhere in between — largely powered by user submissions. It is part art project (users can create and customize underwater creatures), part social network and part educational tool.

The main action in theBlu is exploration. You navigate through different underwater environments observing the user-created species. You can click on new species and complete “collections” native to those regions. Finding an entire collection will then gift you a creature, which you can name and let loose in the wild or monitor in a virtual fish bowl. All of these collected fish will populate the digital oceans. Clicking a fish will bring up some quick facts about the creature and its owner, with options to connect.

â€œOne of the biggest problems that the oceans face is that people don’t see what’s going on in the Ocean,” says Wemo Media leadership team member and Academy Award winner Louie Psihoyos, director of The Cove. “This project is a way for people to put their heads under the water without getting wet, a terrific way for people to not only see the Ocean but actually create it.â€

There is actually a fairly robust creation engine where users can pick a fish model and upload their own custom skins. The feature, for now, is a little heavy for casual users that might just want to switch colors. New species designs are all vetted by animation all stars, including Andy Jones, animation director for Avatar, Joichi Ito, MIT’s Media Lab Director, and many other Wemo experts.

These new creatures aren’t just for show, they can actually be bought and sold through theBlu’s marketplace, which will feature standard, common fish, user creations, and exotic or rare animals tied to philanthropic missions. Prices will be dictated by the popularity of the designs, sort of a like a digital fish market price. Fish are bought either with credits earned in-game or with real money.

Artists will receive a cut of all animal designs they sell and a certain percentage of all profits from theBlu will go to ocean conservancy. The team is also planning to “sell” specific designs for charity. For example, users might be able to purchase a swordfish or manatee with funds going to support sustainable swordfish farming or manatee awareness campaigns.

The team is now entering more complex conversations about animal behavior and scarcity. Should sharks eat the other animals? Should there be a cap on the quantity of endangered or rare species that people can own? For the time being, there isn’t much fish “AI” but subsequent builds will work to create an ocean environment that not only looks like the real thing, but behaves like it as well.

TheBlu is currently in a closed beta but the team has offered Mashable readers 500 invites to test out the ecosystem for free. Just enter the code “MASHABLE” at the login page when registering.

Take a dip into the digital ecosystem and let us know in the comments if you think the platform will hold any water.