Hot Air Balloon for Lynn G

by | Feb 5, 2009 | Designing, Free Videos, Hot Air Balloons - Designing, Polyarc


I have another GREAT designing challenge to show you today! Thanks to Lynn G who posted a request on the KNK Studio GE Yahoo Group for help with desiging a hot air balloon. Once again, I had to play around for a bit, walk outside and think about it for a bit, and then it hit me that the secret was, once again, in the power of polyarc editing.

Here’s a link to the video:
Designing a Hot Air Balloon

A couple of things I discovered after making the video:

  • If you’d like to expand the balloon to include two more colors for the complete range of a rainbow, then just make your circle 3.5″ instead of 2.5″ and you can add two more circles/colors: see below.
  • When I tested 3.5″, it seemed that I needed to tweak the top node more, plus you’ll have two nodes on the left side to delete, rather than just one. But otherwise, it works the same.
  • You might want to flatten your balloon a bit after creating it. I just shortened the height without changing the width: again see below.
  • You might not want the circles spaced perfectly at 0.25″ each. To get a more realistic 3D look, try making the outer segments thinner and gradually increasing in size towards the middle. For the sake of time, I didn’t do this, but you can experiment with it yourself after you make your first one.

    • Once again, Klic-N-Kut Studio comes through for us with flying colors! (Pardon the pun! :P)