December 31 - Alien Quad Bod

All Aliens: [pointing up] The clawwwwwwwww!
Alien #1: The claw is our master.
Alien #2: The claw chooses who will go and who will stay.

This is the last hidden Jeff Hayes post I found in the backlog of posts I had set up to complete some day.

Thank you, Jeff -- not just for everything you taught, but for being the person you were, for inspiring not only me, but so many others to reach for loftier goals.  "What would Jeff do?" will stick in my vocabulary forever.  Miss you, friend.

Original text:

This Toy Story alien is one of the many uses of Jeffrey Hayes Quod-bod design.   Jeffrey Hayes does it again with a simple concept that you could use for a bajillion things (I've counted).  You could add attachment points anywhere on this simple 4 balloon structure, change up the colors and accessories to make a pudgy "whatever-you-want".   It kind of has that "Weeble Wobble", or chubby anime (chibi?) look. It works perfect for this toy story alien, just like something you would win out of a giant claw machine.

I'm bustin' you out of here!

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Other quad bod designs:

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All balloons by and inspired by the Jeffrey Hayes:

December 30 - Hayes In Space

Two possibilities exist:
Either we are along in the universe or we are not.  Both are equally terrifying.

 ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Here is another from my bucket of misfit balloons, from 2017 based on carbon latex dating and some guessing ... miss you, Jeff.

Original text:

Jeffrey Hayes has created many lat-extra terrestrials that have visited this blog - this alien spacecraft is from his DVD Seriously Out There.

I made a couple before I realized that I had snowflake instead of star print clears ... so I made an Olaf-ship and called it done.

It doesn't really show up in the images, but the bottom of the ship uses a light.

Do you want to build a space man?

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Other balloons by and inspired by the Jeffrey Hayes:

December 29 - Boy Tiara's

"What is lovely never dies, but passes into another loveliness, star-dust or sea-foam, flower or winged air."

~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

This post was in my half-finished-need-to-get-back-to-work-on bucket, but I feel like I need to let it go now.

I pretty much fell off the face of the earth in regards to social media and the balloon world, so it was only a couple days ago that I stumbled across a video that referred to a "Jeff Hayes memorial fund" -- ...   I need a minute ... 

Jeff was indescribable in one word.  Uncanny?  

I first met him in the very beginning of this balloon blog when I attended a Steve Klein seminar, the original host was having technical problems so he stepped in like a boss for one of the most inspiring hours in my early balloon twisting.  When I reached out to him afterward to thank him, we struck up a conversation that went on for months.

Jeff has a knack, no - a super power, of elevating simple ideas to something extra-ordinary.  I believe I have said frequently on this blog that I would try to think about things in a "what would Jeff do?" sort of way.   This is a good example of his brilliance I think.

Original post text:

These tiara's were designed by Jeff "The Uncanny" Hayes and taught at our webinar.  Taking the normal tiara type crown and spicing it up with sticks and snails and puppy dog tails.  Since it's Jeff, I had to try and make it ride a shark and shoot lasers, so I went for a dragon.  Not entirely happy with the result, especially since I didn't put the tongue in for any of the pictures!!  He also showed us a zombie using a similar structure, but with a brain in the belly - guaranteed to make anyone who sees it laugh in ...horror?

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Other balloons by and inspired by the Jeffrey Hayes:

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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February 1 - Quad Ewok

Coatee cha tu goo; (Yub nub!)
Coatee cha tu doo; (Yah wah!)
Coatee cha tu too; (Ya chaa!)
Allay loo ta nuv.

~ Ewok Song

I built these Ewok based on one of Jeffrey Hayes images for the quad bod form in my inspiration folder.

I did a bit of playing around with this one.  Originally I was attempting to keep to the true "quad" bod, but the chest area was looking a bit plain in comparison to Jeff's version.  Then I tried separating the quad into two twos (as I pondered in an earlier post) to make the head pose-able for the green one, but the form is lost a bit when the ends don't meet.

Jeff's version gives the Ewok a bit structure in the front for a cloak, and I ended up just copying what he did in the end.  It's a trio-bod maybe.  In hindsight, I made the head a bit large on the pig-trooper .. but I lost my source file so I couldn't fix it without remaking it completely ...

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Other posts with Mr. Hayes' designs:


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January 30 - Quad Sloth

They call me the sloth
Way down in the ghetto
Italian Spaghetti
Singing falsetto
Sleeping all day
Rip Van Winklin'
Spend my nights in bars
Glasses tinklin'

~ Phish The Sloth

Recently in the balloon forums someone asked to see versions of a sloth, and a nice variety have been posted - from realistic versions to Sid, the sloth from Ice Age. On the heels of making the koala, I figured I would try my hand at a sloth using Jeffrey Hayes quad bod technique.

One of the biggest complications with using this form is that it is not a very pose-able design, the body looks cute with squat against the head, but the head faces rigidly forward - come to think of it, it might be nice to try a two-duo quad bod to separate the two, hmmmmm.  I wanted to get a sloth in motion so I tried adding some simple legs. I'm not sure I like the result so I then made a "classic" version.

A balloon concept forces you to think in the simplest of terms when attempting an animal:
* What is a giraffe? Yellowish, long neck, brown spots.
* What is an elephant? Grey, trunk, enormous ears, tusks.
* What is a koala? Grey and white, big ears, prominent nose.
* What is a sloth? ... I went with "brown, prominent nose and eyes that stripe down the side of the face, three toes"

January 29 - Quad Koala

When my youngest son was taking me to the movie Moana, the projector broke - so we were forced to go to the movie Sing instead.  As I reluctantly entered the theater, I asked if he would rather see Rogue One again which was starting about the same time ...  I'm glad he didn't go for it, because I rather enjoyed the movie.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's fantastic, but I did find myself emotionally involved in many of the sub stories that were part of it.  As a father, I'm a bit of a sucker for "looking for his parent approval" stories, and both the Koala and Gorilla did a great job at tugging my heartstrings.

I took inspiration for this Quad Koala from balloon artist and face painter - Maria Behrendt, who I noticed has a Facebook profile koala that uses a quad body type form.  Thanks Maria!

I first tried keeping it simple with no arms (green base), but when I built one with larger ears I couldn't resist adding hands and a bit of eucalyptus.  I think it rounds out the belly nicely.

January 28 - Quad Penguin

Surf's Up is a animated mockumentary movie from 2007 about surfing penguins.  I saw it in the theater with my boys during the days when we would see just about anything animated.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I kind of enjoyed it - it was predictable, it was everything you thought it would be, it had an unlikable main character, but there were some pretty funny parts.  Chicken Joe is definitely a highlight.

This quad bod was another one that Jeffrey Hayes showed us in his webinar.

These simple concepts are fantastic, but it's evident to me that I didn't take very good notes in class. I didn't have a reference picture and once I started working out how I was going to stage the Purple shot, I noticed I should have made the bellies white so I had to build another.

I remember hearing in a Brian Potvin lecture at Bling Bling Jam how he builds everything three times before he calls it complete. I think this blog stands as evidence for the benefit in that. In the simplest form; a first build is an exploration, the second is a refinement and then the third is polish.

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Other posts with Mr. Hayes' 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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January 26 - Little Green Men

Buzz: This is an intergalactic emergency. I need to commandeer your vessel to Sector 12. Who's in charge here?
All Aliens: [pointing up] The clawwwwwwwww!
Alien #1: The claw is our master.
Alien #2: The claw chooses who will go and who will stay.

~ Toy Story

The LGM are a fun first representative from the next concept I will be exploring here. A little over a year ago, Jeffrey Hayes hosted a webinar where he showed us his design concept - Quad Bods. This was one of the designs he used as an example in that lesson.

I am a huge fan of Jeff's work, he has fantastic forward thinking ideas.  There are a few exercises I perform when working with balloons; if it's a design - I first try to build it as written, but then I ask myself a series of questions as I try to improve upon it.  One of the first of these questions is "What would Jeff do?"

Following the bouncy ball, I first built the purple one above, but when looked up some images to reference when drawing his eyes, I realized I got the colors wrong.  My second attempt had fatter ears, which wasn't quite right but I realize I should have turned them sideways for the picture.

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Other posts with Mr. Hayes' designs:


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October 2 - Hayes Monsters

I was working in the lab, late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For my monster from his slab, began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise

He did the mash, he did the monster mash
The monster mash, it was a graveyard smash
He did the mash, it caught on in a flash
He did the mash, he did the monster mash

~ Bobby Pickett Monster Mash

These two are from Jeffrey Hayes Seriously Spooky DVD - and both use similar woven face/form.  The end effect is very cartoonish, but quite effective - this design, like much of Jeff's work, is just the foundation from which you can build a million designs.

Once again these are designs I built a while ago and queued for later release, and once again I tried to rebuild.  This time I don't think I did that good of a job, unlike the bat I didn't build after looking at the design tutorial and just started winging it from glancing at the image -- a thinner face would have made me feel like fewer rows would be needed.  Now his head looks more like a pillow or a giant marshmallow!

My daddy is a mummy	Frank Einstein
Frankly speaking -- uhhhhhNNnnng.

Other posts with Mr. Hayes' designs:


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August 25 - Jeff's Duck

Now, If the river was whiskey
And I was a divin' duck
Now, If the river was whiskey
I was a divin' duck
I would dive underwater
Never would come up

~ Sleepy John Estes - Divin' Duck (link)

Jeffrey "The Uncanny" Hayes offered PDFs of the designs he taught at OZJam this week.

Jeff is both a creative twister and an awesome guy, he is the still the guy I would think about when jamming on an idea and trying to come up with something different or a way to make it better - What would Jeff do?  A sharks with freaking lasers coming out of their eyes is what.

All of this new batch of designs are very quickly made, but have a different "smooshiness" to the design that makes it fun.

I didn't go all "laser shark" with this one, I just tried making it smaller. It was Jeff's suggestion that it would make a good Daffy, he was right. I had attempted to give him arms, but I made the neck too tall and it looked a little bit awkward poking out of the neck joint. I got a few ideas when failing at this one though ... I'll have to try again next Duck Season. (Wabbit season!) Duck season. (Wabbit season!) Wabbit season! (Duck season! Fire!) *BLAM!* (... ... you're dith-picable)

Get down?  Got it already ...	Got my ducks in a row
You're dis-piggable!

Other posts with Mr. Hayes' designs:


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April 30 - Wearables Grab Bag

Ready to form Voltron. Activate interlock.
Dynotherms - connected. Infracells - up.
Megathrusters are go! All form Voltron!
Let's go Voltron Force!

It's the end of April - already a third of the way through the year, I figure it's about time for some spring cleaning.  Every so often I will build something that for some reason or another just doesn't work for it's own blog post.

But together they form into mecha-blog post, capable of restoring peace to the galaxy and defending the Earth against King Zarkon's evil droid armies.

These first two are Jeff Hayes designs from his Seriously Out There DVD.  The brain in a jar is something he taught us as well in a webinar. I really have no idea what to do with headbands...

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This Flower Pot Hairband was taught by David Brenion is Balloon Magic #78. So. Random. This actually could have been a pretty cool post if I had put the effort into making a whole bunch of these and played around with varying the petal colors, but with the flowers being in their own vases it just seemed like a bunch of busy work rather than something exciting to do ... ... and I have no idea what to do with headbands...

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Ryan Lavallee showed us how to make a Pac Man bracelet in Balloon Blast Show season 3 episode 8. He showed us the blue ghost version which I thought would be instantly recognizable ... my kids had no clue.  #bahkidsthesedays  #stayoffmylawn

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Shark Hat by David Brenion - Balloon Magic #80 I love the look of this hat, the sidewall bubble in the front gives a nice pointed nose, and the artwork is so simple yet effective! I know even less of what to do with giant head wearables -- I struggled mostly with this one attempting to get a decent picture and they all pretty much ended up looking exactly like this.

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... rainbow head?  I have no idea what to do wi ... you get the idea.  But I do like how the lights turn each of these into little chubby faces.