My Little Adventure with a Digital Balloon Fill
So, I had this idea the other day, a “balloon fill” animation. Sounds dead simple, right? Just make something inflate. Like blowing air into a digital balloon. I figured, piece of cake, probably knock it out in an hour, tops. Famous last words, as they always are with these “simple” things.
First off, I did the obvious thing. I just took a circle shape – or something vaguely balloon-ish – and tried to scale it up. You know, start small, animate it to get big. Easy peasy. Except, it looked totally flat and boring. Like a disc just expanding. It didn’t have that feel, that stretch, that little bit of life you expect when something is actually filling with air.
Alright, plan B. I started messing around with a few more control points, trying to make it bulge out a bit more organically as it grew. Spent a good while tweaking curves, you know, those handles you pull to bend lines. I was trying to get that classic balloon shape, wider at the bottom, a nice round top. It was getting better, but still a bit… mechanical. And getting the inflation speed to look natural, not too fast, not too slow, with a bit of easing at the end – that was another fiddly bit.
I even thought, maybe I need some kind of physics thing? Like simulating air pressure? But honestly, that felt like bringing a cannon to a knife fight. Total overkill for a simple visual. I didn’t want to spend days coding a whole physics engine for one little effect. Sometimes you just gotta know when to pull back from the complicated stuff.
Then I had a bit of a lightbulb moment, not a super bright one, more like a flickering candle, but still. I remembered an old trick I used for something completely different years ago. It involved layering a couple of shapes and maybe a bit of masking. So, I tried that.
- I started with a base shape that was already kind of balloon-like.
- Then, I animated a fill color rising up inside it, like water filling a glass.
- At the same time, I did a more subtle scale animation, but this time I focused on making it bulge outwards in a more controlled way, almost like it was stretching.
- I also added a tiny, tiny wiggle or jiggle animation right at the end, when it reached full size. Just to give it that little “pop” of being full.
And you know what? It started to look pretty decent! It wasn’t Hollywood-level special effects, not by a long shot. But it had that feeling of something actually inflating. The rising fill color really helped sell the “filling up” part, and the subtle bulge made it look less like a flat object just getting bigger.
It’s funny, isn’t it? You can go down these rabbit holes, thinking you need all sorts of complex tools and techniques. And sometimes, yeah, you do. But other times, it’s just about combining a few simple ideas in a slightly clever way. This whole balloon fill thing took me way longer than that initial “one hour, tops” I thought it would. More like half a day of fiddling and sighing. But hey, I got there. And it’s another little trick in the bag for next time.
The main takeaway for me? Don’t always reach for the biggest hammer. And sometimes, just stepping away and thinking about old solutions to new problems can spark something. Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting old and reusing old tricks. Who knows! Anyway, the balloon fills up now. On to the next “simple” thing.