Canard (aeronautics) flown, including the Ambrosini SS.4, Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender and Kyūshū J7W1 "Shinden". These were attempts at using the canard configuration to give advantages in areas such as performance, armament disposition or pilot view, but no production aircraft were completed. The Shinden was ordered into production "off the drawing board" but hostilities ceased before any other than prototypes had flown. Just after the end of World War II in Europe in 1945, what may have been the first canard designed and flown in the Soviet Union appeared as a test aircraft, the lightweight Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-8 "Utka" (Russian for "duck"). It was
Creature animation earlier, in 1989, the pioneering digital animation studio Industrial Light & Magic created a water creature for the James Cameron film "The Abyss". Again, not knowing how a water creature might move, considerable effort was required by the animators to imagine how such a creature might perform and behave. Creature animation Creature animation is a specialised part of the animation process which involves bringing realistic animals and creatures to life. It is often distinguished from character animation, which involves breathing life into animated characters and creating the illusion of thought, feeling and emotion. Creature animators create highly realistic motion in