Digital artist’s work posted on Instagram viral as close-up of Chinese spy balloon over US

The US Military shot down what they called a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4, 2023. The US government had been tracking this balloon as it flew over the Aleutian Islands, passed over Western Canada and entered US airspace over Idaho.

In this context, a short video has gone viral on social media that zooms into the spy balloon, giving a closer look at the object.

Twitter users claimed this video to be of the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down. A Twitter user named @fkjacksom shared this video. The tweet has gone viral with over 186,000 views.

原来被打下来的气球是这样工作的！ pic.twitter.com/yxoy1gnQL5

— FK (@fkjacksom) February 20, 2023

A user by the name @jineeminee shared this video and the tweet has over 133,000 views at the moment.

Received this one from a friend. If this is a legit video… my question would be, how do we prove that this was a “Chinese spy balloon 1.0” versus a US spy balloon? NASA is the biggest consumer of helium… didn’t the parts of the downed balloon have US parts? pic.twitter.com/EnSs4gZACF

— Jinee (@jineeminee) February 18, 2023

Another Twitter handle named @StatAlpha420 also shared this video and has gained over 1700 views.

Chinese spy balloon up-close pic.twitter.com/oYimQMkquH

— Ultra⭐Mega⭐MAGA⭐Stat⭐Alpha⭐ (@StatAlpha420) February 20, 2023

Fact Check

By reverse-searching key-frames of the video on Yandex, we came across the Instagram page of Hamid Ebrahimnia, who is a well-known VFX and 3D artist. His LinkedIn profile says he is based in Boston, US. He shared the video on his Instagram page on February 14, 2023. The video has gone viral since.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Hamid Ebrahimnia (@hamidebrahimnia)

By looking at the comments on the post, we saw that the creator responded to the conversation on whether the video is real. He wrote, “Yes it is CGI”. CGI stands for computer-generated imagery.

Following this lead, Alt News came across the entire tutorial on how this video was digitally made using special effects software. Readers can find the tutorial here.

Therefore, the video that has been circulating on social media is digitally created using special effects software by an acclaimed VFX artist and not of the actual Chinese spy balloon.

Vansh Shah is an intern with Alt News.