5 Weeks in a Balloon Titles from Liam Major on Vimeo
Five Weeks in a Balloon, or Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen, is an adventure novel by Jules Verne. It follows the adventure of three men through Africa in a Hydrogen Balloon. This is the motion graphic introduction for a mock film adaptation.
Process
This project was created to be the introduction to a University project, 5 Weeks in a Balloon. The idea was Jules Verne’s novel was getting a modern movie adaptation (maybe they will be soon). For the introduction, I first introduced the balloon travelled in and then follow their progress through Africa on a 3D globe. The camera floats away from the globe into the atmosphere to transition to the film.
Figure I: After Effects composition screen shot
I acquired a royalty free map, which was used as the globe texture. This was wrapped around a sphere (CC Sphere tool within After Effects). The map was procomposed, which meant I could add and change the map texture and it would automatically update on the 3D sphere. I added the line (created with the Write-On tool) within this composition. The line takes the audience through the journey and follows the actually path of the balloon in the novel.
Cloud textures were added and animated with turbulence to prevent them from appearing static. They were placed within 3D space above the sphere. A camera was animated to go through the scene, firstly out in the clouds, then closer to follow the route and back out to the clouds. The sphere rotated as the camera moved across. Particles were created within the same 3D space. These were made to appear like bits of dust falling. I feel they made the piece feel slightly magical (as cheesy as that sounds).
Figure II: After Effects 3D layer positions
The text and balloon were created within Maya and rendered as image sequences. They were placed as 3D planes within the clouds. The balloon was rendered with a slight rotation and movement, just to make it look a bit more interesting.
I placed a point light in the middle of the composition to give fall off around the edges of the sphere. I made the light intensity flicker with an expression to simulate candle light. Colour grading was applied to create a sepia toned by lifting up the red channel. This grade was only applied to the sphere, not the clouds, which were left blue to add colour contrast. Film grain was applied finally.
The audio was from the Beowulf (2007) soundtrack by Alan Silvestri entitled ‘I did not win the race’. Questions? Leave a comment below.
- Credit
- Liam Major Motion Graphics & 3D
- Alan Silvestri Audio
- Software
- Adobe After Effects 3D model, texturing, dynamics & animation
- Adobe Photoshop Texture editing
- Client
- Bolton University Multiyear assignment (2nd year)
- Duration
- 4 weeks