The Red Balloon

Children’s Health of the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area uses the red balloon to symbolize the promise that they will always be by your side. Placing the balloon within the context of the spot along side the children and parents was a great way to reflect that idea. In practicality, however, balloons go wherever they want. So we were called in to create all of the balloons digitally in the post.

On set we carefully captured the lighting of the environment using HDR imaging and took careful measurements of the area around the balloon to ensure that the 3D camera tracking came off without a hitch. Using on-set reference of the balloon, we modeled, rigged, lit, shaded, and rendered computer generated balloons for each shot, even going so far as to have several shading models of the balloon depending on the ambient temperature of the environment into which the digital balloon would be placed.