im trying to improve the color scheme in particular. Suggestions?

Very nice look ! The materials are good, except maybe the one on the mouth . Did you model it ? litst

Yea, i modeled the body as a spline and converted it into a vertex. Then i separated the tail fin mesh and the body mesh to shade them differently. The small fins and mouth are just "magnetized" spheres. The large fins are splines.

Changed the colors and did some tweaking on the large fin models.

Great modelling too, then :) The spline and vertex modellers can work together pretty well . Except the fact that you can import a silhouette in .ai, you can also model things in spline that would be impossible to model in vertex, and then convert them to vertex for editing . Keep us updated on your fish ! litst

Can you read my mind ? I say "keep us updated", and when i hit "post", there is already an update ! :) Nice new shading BTW . In fact, i like the two kind of colors . litst

Very nice model. Colors are great, too. If you're planning on animating this and converting it to a television signal (NTSC for you, since you're in Texas, as I recall), the pattern on the body might be too fine and cause a moirre pattern. But if you're just using him for pretty pictures, no problem!