Balloon festival
Manos and Gonzalo introduced the ‘Balloon festival’ project early in the winter term. Initially, I found it challenging to grasp the concept, unsure of what was expected. Manos clarified that the project involved modeling an air balloon. Without a specific concept in mind, I proceeded to model and texture the balloon, also completing the roto of mountains to separate them from the background.
After a few weeks, when attempting to create a moodboard, I was still undecided. During my leisure time, I turned to my Nintendo Switch for relaxation, and the inspiration struck to incorporate elements from my favorite game, ‘Legend of Zelda.’ The game featured symbolic elements like guardians, divine beasts, and an air balloon, providing a clear direction for my project. I created a moodboard aligning with the game’s aesthetics.
Given my limited modeling skills and time constraints, I searched for files online. Fortunately, I found suitable models on a website, which I then edited by adjusting textures and removing unnecessary models for rendering. Following this, I rendered the models for color grading. During this stage, I incorporated one of my reference images onto the mountain plate.
Moving forward, I sought a source for a sunset sky, incorporating it into the render of the models with textures. This allowed for further color grading in the video. To emphasize the concept, I added the ‘Legend of Zelda’ logo to the scene, reaching around 70% completion in terms of color grading.
In the final stages, I edited the rigging and created joints for the models, animating simple movements such as turning the head or moving the balloon. This process was facilitated by the image plane of the original plate. After positioning the models, I rendered each one using the ‘render sequence’ feature in Maya. With these elements prepared, I imported them into Nuke for further color grading to unify the entire scene. Also, I could utilize the ‘Glow’ node with the emission channel I set and rendered in Maya, adding atmospheric effects to the scene.
Finally, I rendered the completed video and added a soundtrack from the game, downloaded from the internet. This marks the conclusion of my ‘Balloon festival’ project, a culmination of creative processes and inspirations from ‘Legend of Zelda.’