Moodboard
For this project, my theme is “Dairy Free”.
Since nothing is freer than flying, I wanted to make a flying cow accompanied by flying dairy products.
Modelling & Texturing
I made three balloons in total: The Cheese, The Milk Carton, and The Cow.
Animation
For the animation, I considered different balloon placements and added some bounces to emulate how they would move in the sky.
Rotoscoping the Mountains
I separated the mountains into five different sections and I planned for one of the balloons to peek around the green area.
In order to place the balloons in a realistic manner, we had to first rotoscope the mountains to create different layers. When we add in the balloons, it will give a more realistic depth of field.
Blockout & Updated Background
This was the blockout for my balloons. After exporting the animations of the 3D models from Maya, I imported them into Nuke and scaled them accordingly. I received notes from the tutor that the sky was too bright for a snowy environment, and so I added in clouds behind the roto of the mountains to create a more immersive environment.
Video from Motion Array:
Storm Clouds Building Scary Sky Threatening Weather by Capturing Adventure
I used this as my plate for compositing the hot air balloons.
Compositing
Here are the nodes for the mountains’ rotoscoping, and I added the model renders separately. I then imported the render into Davinci Resolve and added a snow overlay.
Colour Grading
For the colour grading, I focused on balancing the colours to make the sky look darker and more convincing, making the snowstorm feel more realistic. I then added some camera movement to make it look like the camera is shaking from the wind and some cinematic haze to make the background blend together a bit better.
Final Render
During the final render, I added ambient wind and cow mooing to tie everything together.
Sound from Motion Array:
Elementals – Long Cow Moos
Umcsound – Cinematic Wind
Music from Motion Array:
Jan Sanejko – Mystery Island