January 6 - Anastasya's Boy

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

~ Søren Kierkegaard

This week I worked through a bit of what I will refer to as creative paralysis.

I have a lot of things I want to do, but with the freedom to work on any of them and lack of the structure I had established made it so I was doing and second-guessing and redoing and changing my mind as to if it was good enough.  There was an assumed apology with previous entries here "well I only had 24 hours" - but now with the freedoms I'm allowing myself, there are no excuses.

I'm reminded of a video poker game I built back in the early internets, easily worthy of being published freeware.  But I instead I thought would add  the ability to import your own deck of cards.  ... and then what about allowing you to paint your own deck of cards.  ... and then what about adding a CD player to the program ... custom sounds ... etc.  Feature creep in hindsight that was probably to avoid publishing.

You feel exposed, it's a bit of an assumption when you make something and say - "I created this for you to enjoy".  I want it to be something great, but I have to realize and not to wax too poetic but it's a journey and not a destination.  So here we are - one step on the next bit of the journey together.

The idea for this image was to embody the notion of starting fresh with the knowledge of the past and the freedoms of the future, cliche idea perhaps - but I won't let that stop me.  The head is based on one of the designs from  Anastasya Sokol's faces collection. This is a simple example, but I really love the hair style varieties she's able to achieve. The body is a copy of the little girl by Tatyana Djeta Lyashko. One of my projects for this year should be to build bodies with more confidence, I think this style matched okay - but not perfect.

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Other designs by or inspired by Anastasya Sokol:

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Other designs by or inspired by Tatyana Djeta Lyashko:

July 2 - Fairy Flower

When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.

~ James Matthew Barrie Peter Pan

We are out of town so I have a few things scheduled to post while we are away.  This is one of Anasatasya Sokol's designs, a fairy flower.

This was brought into work last week, Anastasya's designs are always a hit!  The video was very easy to follow and for being a fairly simple design, the result is spectacular and inspired a good number of ooh's and aah's.

We just moved offices, this next month will be our first in the new space, so hopefully they'll enjoy my Monday creations!

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Other posts with Anastasya's designs:

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March 28 - Playful Kitty

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”

~ Robert A. Heinlein

This kitty is an Anastasya Sokol design from her "Figures from balloons for modeling" tutorials (link).  I can't get enough of these tutorials, one of my favorite things to build are detailed or creative decor pieces like these.  I've built a bunch of cats, but never a calico (?) not one as playful as this one, having it on it's back and playing with a ball of yarn was brilliant.

I've only built four (of nineteen total) from this particular set, but I can easily see myself building all of them.  Each is very well stylized.  In this one, Anastasya seemed to be measuring things very carefully against a ruler, but she shows everything quite clearly and I was able to eyeball match the sizes and keep up with her.

I brought this in to work today.

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March 13 - Girl Clown

After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street footsteps dressed in red

And the wind whispers Mary

~ Jimi Hendrix The Wind Cries Mary

Anastasya Sokol teaches this girl clown on her DVD "Figures from balloons for modeling" (link).

It's always best to watch a tutorial in its entirety and then attempt to build anything - and probably doubly so for these due to the level of detail and the language barrier.  But Anastasya is a wonderful instructor, despite not understanding a word she says - she's able to communicate clearly with her actions what she does, and does so with efficiency.  She will build one arm and then attach both, or fast-playing through sections that have already been discussed.  You can see that a great deal of care has been put into these designs.

I have never weighted anything down the way she does with these - but I really like it a lot, in addition to the weight, it provides a nice bit of suction on a flat surface.  It's nice to be able to pose this without having to worry about it toppling over.

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March 11 - Anastasya's Clown

Be a clown, be a clown,
All the world loves a clown.
Act the fool, play the calf,
And you'll always have the last laugh.

~ Cole Porter Be a Clown

Here is another tutorial from Anastasya Sokol.

Her tutorials are fantastic, but you have to pay strict attention if you don't speak the language. Details that she explains I have to glean from what her hands are doing, and sometimes it's a struggle when you're a few steps along and realize you might have made something too tight/loose/over inflated or something.

This one (as most of her designs) has great hair, but it's set in there in such a way with the hat and the eyes that wasn't apparent to me until I tried to put it all together. I undid some steps, but it probably would have been much better if I started over again.

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March 10 - Beautiful Girl

You're beautiful
You're beautiful
You're beautiful, it's true
I saw your face in a crowded place
And I don't know what to do
'Cause I'll never be with you

~ James Blunt You're Beautiful

This is from another one of Anastasya Sokol's tutorial compilations, this one of seventeen new and interesting hair styles for both male and female faces. Even though this would technically classify as a balloon concept, each of these designs are fantastic and distinct, and with seventeen to build I will just be interspersing them throughout this year. Besides, no one needs to see a purple pig with beautiful flowing locks of hair ... or do they?

One thing that Anastasya provides with these tutorials are some printable eyes to cut out and apply rather than drawing them. I haven't been able to print them yet, I need to replace an ink cartridge in my printer, so I did my best to try and paint them. That's why I took a couple "before" pictures, I get nervous I'm going to mess up the work I had done.

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March 3 - Genie

One of my friends and fellow thespians from high-school, Dylan White, played the Genie in Disney's California Adventure for over 14 years until it was unfortunately replaced by Frozen. That's him above during the final performance. You can view the entire final show here, but be warned - the audience is full of die-hard fans and production folks, the WOO is high in this one!

This Genie balloon is one of Anastasya Sokol's creations.

I'm pretty positive I will end up building just about every single one of the designs she demonstrates, they look fantastic and are full of smart, next-level balloon twisting. There is a lot I like about this model, but I think the arms are my favorite part - she shows  how to get a fantastic shape to them.

Oi!  Ten thousand years can give you such a crick in the neck!

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February 12 - Flower Girl

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.

~ Pablo Neruda

It tends to be stressful to try and get a bunch of designs ready for one day.  Depending on what you are making - you might have to start a day or so in advance, and there are inevitable compromises that have to be made. I'm not great at that kind of planning, so I like the way I have been able to participate in this week long event. Every day I bring one new large delivery style piece which hopefully has the effect of people coming back every day to see what's new.

This girl with flowers is one of Anastasya Sokol's designs - I've been wanting to build more of her designs and felt it was appropriate because the Peace/Love/Books fair because the flowers are made out of hearts.

This is a fantastic balloon design, I love the way Anastasya creates hair, and having her clutching a bundle of flowers is a perfect way to have a simple body.

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January 1 - Anastasya's Butterfly

Butterflies can't see their wings. They can't see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well.

~ Naya Rivera

Anastasya Sokol is a Russian balloon artist who does amazing large delivery pieces and I feel so fortunate to have found her by complete accident while browsing videos. Exploring a link referenced in a video to a Russian website (link), the images were fantastic so I used Google translate to navigate.  I find it interesting that in many ways some countries have a distinct style to their balloon art - and these are no exception.  She has a five videos that I see - and I couldn't help but purchase a couple to try.

The videos themselves are delivered in a unique way by infobiz in order to protect the intellectual property.  I was initially annoyed that I would have to keep track of an unlock key, but the system installs and works well as you only have to enter it once for one video - the user interface is intuitive, the only struggle is I have no idea what video is what.

Anastasya explains very clearly how to build these.   Even not speaking Russian I was able to follow her - though I had to pay close attention to her fingers so as not to miss things.

The flower was included in the demonstration and uses a weave pattern similar to the butterfly, I've never built a flower this big and beautiful, it uses a lot of balloons - but it's quite quick and certainly worth the effort.