Created a sine and bend nonlinear deformers as a way to animate the feeding plasmodium.

For
this I had the sine deformer as the vertical deformer and the bend as the horizontal deformer.
From there I then parented both deformer to the feeding plasmodium model.
Here I repeated the process of applying the sine and bend nonlinear deformers to the mature
plasmodium model. For this I used two sine and two bend deformers to get movement in all
areas of the model; so that parts can be raised and lowered to exaggerate moments of the
model. From there I then parented the deformers to the mature plasmodium model so that the
model and deformers can be moved without the deformers changing the shape..
Finalized Fruiting Body Model
Used blend shapes
to create a deform
slider to animate on.

To start with I used a

lattice deformer to
get the desired
blend shapes to go
between.
From there I then opened up the blend shape options in the deform menu and then went to the shape editor, so
that I could see the model deform once I hit apply with the in-betweens option in the blend shape options.
 From there I then created a control rig using a
nurbs circle. I then opened up the connection
editor to line the transform controls to that of the
model so that it scale a moves with the nurbs
circle accordingly.
 I then added a new attribute
called squash with the parameters
of 0, 0.5 a 1 for the slider to work
within.

I then linked up the weight in the

shape editor to the squash
function in the connection editor.

Model now squashes and

stretches accordingly