How to create an enormous bunch of balloons?

I am trying to re-create a scene from the movie UP. I have modelled almost everything. Now only the balloons are left. This is the closest I can get (this is from particle system):


As you can see, the balloons are almost the same size and very well placed. In mine, the balloons are random size and very weirdly placed with many of them overlapping. How do I re-create this?

try with Particles objects and add some random scale and location

happy bl

I am using the particle system. It is not coming to close to what I want. Is particle object something different?

you create a group of different size ballons and use it as object in particles
then use the surface feature to distribute ballons all around random
mind you this might not add rope on each ballons !

but from far away you should not see the small rope anyway!

happy bl

a bit OT, but u might wanna randomize the balloon colors. This is one way to do that;

I have created the balloon. Then I used particle system. But I don’t want different size balloons. It’s the volume and the overall shape of the bunch of balloons.

I have randomized the color already. I want to create the shape of the balloons like in this image: http://wallpapercraze.com/images/wallpapers/floatinghouse-952499.jpeg

See the overall shape of the balloons (as a group).

Maybe this video might help:

Thanks a ton @andrew.p But now remains only one problem: the strings. D you suggest a better way of doing this? or how do I approach this? I played with almost all the settings in the particles system, that which I know of.