June 26 - Jojo Chicken

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

~ Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night

We lost a lot of good birds that year.

I don't think the cows were evil - just confused.  Corporate mercenaries given their own raw deal.   We could have stopped it, if only we had read the signs correctly.

"Eat Mor Chikin."

We thought it was a joke.

How would the humans fall for something so ridiculous?  

We laughed at the grammar.  

We laughed ...

... We lost a lot of good birds that year.

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This is another of the Tobi Twist "Jojo style" introductory critters, and it got me thinking about the Chick-fil-A cows in their ad campaign.  What a horrible misdirect, when the message could have simply been "eat less cow?"  

(view other chicken) or jojos)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Tobi Twist:

April 11 - Baby Chick Mini-Doll

"The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it."

~ Arnold H. Glasow

"Peep!"

('Cock-a-doodle-doo' felt a little too grown up.)

This was a little chick shown in the MeyiaArt channel that followed a similar structure of the previous two.  

To be perfectly honest, I built these a couple months back and just never got around to posting them.  When I see a balloon concept, there's always this impulse to run wild with it - but the whole "adorable baby animal" thing isn't really my natural habitat.

So they sat, never knowing that all the while I was considering turning one into an adorable little poultry themed villain or how many tentacles I would have to add before things became less "cute".

(view other baby chicks or chicken)

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Other balloons by and inspired by MeyiaArtBalloon channel:

November 25 - Chibicoro Farm Animals

No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills– Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal?

~ George Orwell Animal Farm

One thing that I admire about the Chibicoro site (link) is how clean each of the designs are they create.

I've been using the form, but I haven't been as precise as I probably could be - so to attempt to remedy this, I am using 4 designs directly from the site and doing my best to pay attention to these small details. Keeping the leg/hand sizes the same, sizing the top and bottom bubbles correctly, etc. The one thing I will probably keep doing different than the site is in drawing the artwork vs. using decal stickers. It's pretty hard to draw in pen on a rounded surface and have things line up well, some of that is the light I use while twisting (low) and my eyes (bad) and my hand (shakey). But practice practice practice is the only way to improve.

One thing of note is the baby chick design called for "pale yellow" - I'm not sure what color that is, but I was able to get something close by stuffing a yellow inside an ivory.

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Other Chibicoro balloon designs:

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August 10 - Angry Chicken

Coming in from London, from over the pole
Flyin' in a big airliner
Chickens flyin' everywhere around the plane
Could we ever feel much finer?

~ Arlo Guthrie - Coming into Los Angeles

Betallic was the big balloon sponsor this year at Bling Bling Jam and really stepped up when Qualatex dropped out.  A few years ago I switched over most of my balloon stock to Betallatex and feel good about that decision for a number of reasons of which I will now add this.

This design was just a simple something someone left in the jam room and uses their new "angry eyes" balloon top print.  I thought it was interesting how they were able to use an offset to the eyes and get an interesting shape from the balloon.

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Other balloon designs from Bling Bling Jam 2017:

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March 15 - Derek's Rooster

I was originally going to use this closer to Easter - but learned today while listening to the Jamroom podcast that Derek Wong was this years Top Twister at Twist & Shout. That is not necessarily winning in the small, medium or large categories at the convention -- it's a voted best (by cumulative score) for anyone who has entered all three. His small piece was his turtle with a small turtle on it's back, his medium sculpture was a Bruce Lee action shot, his large sculpture was an angel preparing to battle some demons. Amazing work, I'm not sure what he placed in the individual competitions - but each one was fantastic.

Congratulations, Derek!

This rooster is from his "Think Outside the Tube" PDFs and it makes interesting use of a geo balloon as a base. It's very quick to assemble, probably perfect for line work.

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Other posts with Derek's designs:


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January 27 - Quad Chicken

Love me some schmoyoho - accent on the yo. Chicken attaAAAaAAaaa-aack. If you're not familiar with the channel, it's a fun one to get lost in.

This quad bod chicken was posted online by Jeffrey Hayes after his webinar where he introduced the concept.  So simple yet so effective, I've kept it in my inspiration folder anticipating using it at some point - I like how he makes the feet out of part of the flower base.

It was pointed out in a comment last night that these are very similar to Chibicoro, and I absolutely agree.  There are some significant differences though in my opinion, enough to be considered by me at least as a separate balloon concept (by me at least) - I do plan on reviewing the chibi concept in the future (Chibi link for reference sake).

... I don't think the question really was can we do this ...

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Other posts with Mr. Hayes' designs:


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July 26 - White Chicks

How much would you pay to NOT have to watch this movie? 

White Chicks is actually another in the Sweet Cheeks line by Eric Weinstein.

The name is begging to be teased, but the design is very cute. ("Hush Fifi!  Don't bark at the nice man!") Eric really is the master of these chubby cheek designs, they're very quick to make and really are smooshy-cool. ("Have you like seen my other yoga pants?") Despite the name, I built a brown one to show it could work well with any color. ("I'll have a non-fat no-whip decaf machiato tall with a dash of cinnamon in a grande cup.  Thaaaaaaaaanks.")

These are definitely some hot chicks!

Beethoven, Beethoven, Beethoven	Bach, Bach, Bach
Just let it go, we crossed - it's over, quit questioning motive!
They lost their friends in Nom.  Nom nom nom.

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Other posts with Eric's designs:


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May 23 - Blossom Buddies

“A thorn defends the rose, harming only those who would steal the blossom.”
~ Chinese Proverb

Jami Stavlo just recently changed her business model and was going to remove her design videos/pdfs from the internet.  Thankfully first she offered all of us a chance to grab them all before doing so.  I bought her "impressive princess" a while back and it was well worth it, so this was an easy decision for me.

One thing I love about Jami's videos is that you can tell on occasion it occurs to her to that she should smile more, and she'll look up and beam a gigantic one right into the camera lens and get back to twisting.  I noticed that I was smiling back at the video every time she did that. :)

I had seen these blossom buddies posted on the forums last year.  This is a fun, quick and easy concept - I could see used for many abstract birds as long as you can get away with some sort of neck.  Not so sure it works with a pig though ...

I've got this, guys!	I may have made a terrible mistake ...

January 30 - Rooster

Today's balloon is a tribute to my amazing mother and a Nao Osaka design.

She loves chickens, but I also think they are a link to the past and happy times.  When I was growing up we lived in Colorado with a chicken coop and a massive garden, even though we weren't technically 'living off the land', we were certainly low impact compared with the modern convenient inconveniences of life.

I love you, Mom!

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Other posts with Nao Osaka designs:


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