Balloons

I made my first animation last night just to see how it all works.  Turns out it's not nearly as complicated as I had imagined it to be.

It's pretty simple.  The balloon is a tapered sphere with a tiny cone and torus added to make the knot.  Add the white material, duplicate both and make the other material black.

Then I put both balloons into an emitter, which is a tool that spits out particles.  After that it's simply a matter of turning the particles into balloons, adding wind and selecting a camera angle.

The background is black because I added an alpha channel.  The idea is that I can load it into After Effects and insert a background or other cool stuff.  I've never touched After Effects before, so the idea is daunting, but I'll give it a shot and post the results here.