Slime mould is a very simple character model, only 164 surface patches - constructed, animated, and rendered using Hash Inc. Animation:Master way back in 1997. If you ever migrate to a new 3D software package, as I did here, start with something really simple before frustration strikes (3D software in general is especially renown for nasty learning curves). This initial attempt at character animation with Animation:Master took a couple of days, off and on, to complete and was my first shot at using Animation:Master to generate a character focused animation.
Within the body, antenna and eyes, bones are used to control all movement. A simple lighting rig is used for illumination; one warm colour 100% intensity point source light casting shadows above and to the right of the camera; a second cool colour 50% unidirectional light behind and to the left of the slime mould (simulating bounced light from the back wall).
The 8 stills shown above, are from the 100 frame test animation that shows the predictable events for any small slimy cartoon character found in a test animation. Slime mould makes several squirm movements into center shot, glancing about with twitching antenna. Startled, he suddenly looks up, gives one twitching pupil look into camera - and gets splattered by a large wooden mallet from above. Antenna wave about flat and limp. Bones within Slime Mould were adjusted about every 5 or 10 frames to create the squirm motion, eye and antenna movement. Then at about frame 75 a muscle level change to the slime's shape is used to create a splattered slime. Back then, the 100 frame 320x240 animation took about 40min to render on a PII 266.