November 20 - Cow

"The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it."

~ Molière

Today I'm thankful for Matt Falloon.

Matt is to balloons what Ken Jennings is to Jeopardy.   Somehow the right person ended up doing the right thing at exactly the right time.

His lessons make you work: your fingers, your patience, your brain, your vocabulary... everything gets used.  They're finger-burners in the best way, the kind that leave you stronger for having survived them.

Like beating a Dark Souls boss ... 

   

(view other cow)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Matt Falloon:

October 9 - Bull

"It is not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving."

~ Mother Teresa

Life as a plushie toy at the Windslow house was anything but routine.

Most mornings I fall out of bed, or get stepped on or dropped before breakfast.

By sunset, I've been squished, squashed and used for a hat more than once.

But every night, I get scooped up.

She needs me.

And that's what matters.

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This uses Marina Filatova's double-stuffing design ideas, the way the feet are attached to the body base create a nice tripod area to sit on. I made this with horns but had referred to this as a cow for a while, I have to remember two cows - when I make a cow I have to make an udder.  (Ba-dum-tish!)

 
(view other cows)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Marina Filatova:

July 14 - Jojo Cow

"Never kick a cow chip on a hot day."

~ Will Rogers

A cow's eye is like an elephant's, deep and serene - they look at you is if they know secrets and are politely chewing them over.

A cow's moo is like an elephant's trumpet, just softer and closer to a sigh - similar sound played through a shorter, squishier tube.

A cow's poo, though, definitely not like an elephant's.  It's an undignified mushy splat.  It's what a "blapppfffpptrrrt" sound might look like.  

It is ... most definitely NOT ... a pie.

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This cow form is one of the Jojo Cuties instructions for Tobi Twist's instructions.  

(view other cows or jojos

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Other balloons by and inspired by Tobi Twist:

April 10 - Bull Mini-Doll

"Even the most artistic bull must make do with the china available."

~ Terry Pratchett

"Moo?"

Same basic structure, completely different creature - the shape is super adaptable and the way she constructs their bodies gives them a bit of a "cute baby animal" feel. 

The red lower lip/jaw/tongue was an interesting choice that I probably would have never thought to try.  It works - whatever it's supposed to be though.   I'm going to say it was the tongue on brown, the jaw on white speckled, and some kind of emotional statement from the the lower lip of pink one.

(view other cows)

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Other balloons by and inspired by MeyiaArtBalloon channel:

February 9 - Elefunt

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

~ Pablo Picasso

I feel like some of my favorite posts start with the phrase "So I had this corny idea..."

So I had this corny idea ... this was an attempt at something like a "refrigerator worthy" kids drawing?  

Any sort of overlap kind of ruins the 2D effect I realized after making the cow.  So I tried a 'simpler' animal, a cow requires more cow-like features to look cow-ey.   An elephant needs a trunk.

(view other cows or elephants )

January 8 - Loopy Beaverz

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

~ Samuel Johnson

I feel like I'm part of a musical montage, but living it slow real time as I sort of retrain my fingers and brain.  Later it will be cut to the Rocky theme song, but right now we are rocking out hard to a book on tape.

Consider this Day 3 in the "Quest to Build the Anything".

The beauty of a simple design is that you get a lot of attempts and freedom to play and experiment and try different approaches.  "I wonder if I could ..." becomes almost second nature, and if this is an experience point bubble, I want to collect as many of those as possible.

I originally made the beaver's teeth much bigger, but the effect of the large buck teeth carries even with tiny teeth since they're the only ones visible and having them big seemed to interfere with the log chew.   

Other balloons by and inspired by the David Brenn:

May 14 - Cow

“The cow is of the bovine ilk; one end is moo, the other milk.”

~ Ogden Nash, Free Wheeling

This cow is one from a recent "Balloon Adventure in Isolation" with Phileas Flash (link) - based on a request he received for a cow jumping over a moon.

Phileas puts an amazing amount of work on these projects (thanks Phileas!), each balloon adventure has been accompanied by a big build, each Fizzlewick Fairy Tale is a handwritten story -- and he's still putting out about four videos a week.

His udderly ridiculous moo-torial was actually for a Cow-I-Sake Mootorcycle (link), but I thought the animal of it looked great as is, plus would be more poseable.

One problem I ran into was that udder, so many pictures were unusable because of a protruding V.U.L.J. (Visible Udder that Looks like it's Junk).




(view other cows)

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Other Phileas Flash and inspired-by balloons:

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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May 30 - Dinosaur

Some things start out big, and some things start out small, very small. But sometimes the smallest thing can make the biggest changes of all.

~ Dinosaur (2000) opening lines

Hervé Guyonnet is a newer balloon artist friend of mine from France.  I first met him in a Facebook group at the start of this year, he is on a 365-day balloon challenge.

His designs show off not only his skill as a balloon artist, but his creativity. As an example, his balloons for the challenge today was the Hindenberg crashing - before that was Alf I believe.  A month ago he started posting tutorials on his YouTube channel.  This dinosaur is currently the most recent (link) and uses a geo for the face, the perfect opportunity to try out one of his models!

Jeffrey Hayes was playing with this design and shared his version of a cow.  It's getting close to the end of this geo run, so I thought to include both designs in this one post.

Thanks guys!

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Other posts specifying geos:

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January 15 - Cow

Line 'em up now to greet the sacred cow.
My hands are full of protein, my arms are made of fire.
If you're calling me a diplomat, I'll be calling you a liar.

~ Primus Greet the Sacred Cow

This build was actually a request from one of my wife's friends, so I figured I could take care of two birds with one stone and build it using the Truscheit-style head.

This one is a hodge podge of a lot of different people's work:

• The muzzle is based on the Balloon Blast Patreon video Bull by Sam Cremeens (Patreon link)
• The body is Buster Balloon's Spike the Dog from his Adorable DVD (link)
• The tail bobble is David Lima's contribution in the Betallic "Be Brilliant" video series (link)

Once I built the first muzzle, I thought the nostrils were a little funky with a big ring, so I replaced that with one that just used a puff inflated balloon and gave it more structure.

It was pointed out to me that I forgot to add ears (!!!!) so I did some emergency repair work and built another, trying for a squatty pose.  It didn't work so well trying to get the legs straight with such a chubby belly..  I also faked the cow in the field picture to include ears.  I feel shame.  But dare I say - No sense crying over spilled milk?

They're looking for latex Terrestrials

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Other posts with Truscheit-style:


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September 8 - Sweet Bull

It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.

~ Sitting Bull

This bull is the next in the Eric Weinstein Sweet Cheeks line of creations.  I've probably overdone the amount of sweet cheeks I've shown on here, but it really just speaks to the versatility of the concept and darn it if it's not a great one!

I was there when he created this in the jam room at Bling Bling and knew it was destined to be a hit.  The body, though similar to the hippo, does a number of things differently.  That's one of the things I really like about balloon concepts that are explored so well - it really gives you a lot of possibilities of how you might play with changing the form around.

Although this was initially designed to be a bull, it was Billy Damon's suggestion that it could easily be a Chicago Bull mascot -- brilliant!  After building the according to the video, I tried playing around using different muzzle colors and building a normal bull to see how it would compare.  I think the normal bull looks great with a lighter muzzle, but I'm not sure it's necessary for Benny the Bull - the basketball is more of a focal point.

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.	Here's the beef!
Actually it's called  "Running with the Humans"

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Other posts with Eric's designs:


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July 8 - Bull

Gil: They call me Cowboy Gil, as in guil-ty. I saw Cowboy Dan. I didn't like the look on his face. It was like this...
[smiles goofily]
Gil: ... so I killed him. I blew a hole in him this big. Actually it was about this big. You know, when I think about it, that hole was about THIS BIG! And his guts were spilled out all over the floor. As I was walkin' away, I slip around on his guts. A couple of other people came by and started slippin' on his guts too. After I blow a hole in somebody and slip around on their guts... afterwards, I always like to make balloon animals. That's mighty courteous of you. Here we go!
[holds up jumbled of twisted balloons]
Gil: Your lower intestines.
~ Parenthood

The Patreon video for the Balloon Blast show is here - no bull!  It's incrediBULL!  It's memoraBULL!  It's unbelieveaBULL!  It's adoraBULL!

Sam Cremeens is an extremely efficient twister and makes everything look so easy despite the complexities - this face distortion took a few attempts and re-watches to get close - but in re-watching without my balloon noise, Sam was telling me exactly what I was doing wrong (make sure to tie this here, keep this soft, trim out knot bulk, etc)

This bull is actually taught as a rideaBULL structure - but I put it on a body to display here (it's a convertaBULL).  I really like the front of face/nose area - the distortion between the nose and lips give a great curve, but I do wonder how well a pressure-held section like that will keep in shape, especially during bronco riding!  Thankfully something I don't have to deal with or worry over.

I decided not to make any Rocky Mountain Oysters...

It's a bull (not Constantinople)	We bulls wobble, but we don't fall down
mah node itches!

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Other posts with Sam's designs:


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June 24 - Sweet Cheek Cow

"Otis, a strong man stands up for himself, a stronger man stands up for others."
~ Ben the Cow Barnyard (link)

Eric Weinstein's new set of instructions, "Sweet Cheeks" are sure to be a hit!

Eric's chubby cheek balloons are some of my favorite go-to balloons for small, amazing-yet-cartoonish, creatures.   This new series shows the refinement he has put into his concept, some quicker ways to build things and demonstrates it on a good variety of creatures.

I ended up watching most of this video while working on something else, but I knew after seeing this cow it would be the first I built.  It's got double the chubby cheek!

I tried one in mocha, but compared to how cool the spotted one looks, it just seems kind of boring.  So it got horns.

How Now? Prep for what surgery?	Sometimes you really do get the horns....
Ballooncowism:  You have two cows, the government moos quietly.
I herd they are in a good moo-d.

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Other posts with Eric's designs:


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