August 8 - One+ Balloon Pig

The treasure of a life
Is a measure of love and respect
The way you live, the gifts that you give

~ The Garden - Rush

When I'm in a jam room at a convention, I tend to practice and play with the designs that were just taught.

It not only helps reinforce what I just learned, but I feel it's ... respectful? to use what an instructor just taught.  ... and yes, I was the kid in middle school they trusted to go fetch and set-up the projector.  

Does the design purple pig? Yes it does.

Cecilia's one balloon base body was perfect for the random balloon bundle I brought to the show.


(view other pigs)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Cecilia Ladyballoons:

July 24 - Jojo Pig

"That'll do, pig. That'll do."

~ Farmer Hoggett — Babe (1995)

I believe we can all agree that I think a purple pig is the true test of a balloon technique.  Tobi chose to make his in pink, so I had to make some necessary adjustments.  

Not all techniques work for all creatures, but Jojo pig is a cutie patootie with a big ol' snootie.

(view other pigs or jojos)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Tobi Twist:

February 23 - Silk Pig

A wise pig once said, 'Always sit in the shade, don't go bacon in the sun.'  And then he laughed and laughed and laughed.

I wanted to try Silk Light Amethyst for all the obvious reasons. It's a new color to me - but the twisting feel of it is just awful. They fill up feeling excessively tight, such that a pop is a terrifying explosion.  Trying to soften them gives you weird bulbous expansion bits like balloon tumors.

But they're purple -- and that means one thing.  Let's build a pig!  This one's face is somewhat similar to the Falloon tubby turtle.

I originally intended for it to be upright, but the limb choices sort of pushed it a different direction.  The "silk" gives a bit of a metallic sheen that I have no real use for other than it just being different, I would not keep these in my kit and I don't even look forward to using the ones that remain.

 
(view other pigs)

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February 3 - Little Body Pigs

"Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers – and never succeeding."

~ Marc Chagall

The Little Body technique is fantastic for creating a simple, stylized humanoid - especially one with a hat.

Animals are a bit trickier, and in my opinion the form isn't ideal.  But I'm not going to let that stop me, there’s only one inevitable conclusion. At some point, in some way, I will make a purple pig. 

How could I not?

(view other Little Bodies)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Stephanie Morace:

January 26 - Papal Pig

All that you touch - you Change.
All that you Change - Changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change.
God is Change

~ Octavia Butler Parable of the Sower

I love the "karaoke effect".

When you are going to sing karaoke soon, listening to songs takes on a whole new meaning.  You assess and weigh and measure and hum each tune to see if it hits right or you shouldn't bother with it --- music has more flavor when you're planning to sing karaoke.

I'm feeling the karaoke effect more and more these days as I've returned to making balloons.

A Papal Pig (not to be confused with that PayPal pig) was a delightfully stupid idea I had filed away ages ago, but inspiration struck as my wife read the above quote from her current book.

(view other Little Bodies)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Stephanie Morace:

January 23 - Loopy Pigz

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes... or pigs."

~ Douglas Adams

So with this post, I'm drawing the primary run of the Loopy Headz balloons to an end.  Tradition has the last of any balloon concept be a purple pig, and I feel like this technique lent itself perfectly to the task.  I ended up building a few styles.

Super great concept to begin with, it gave a lot of good squishy 360 work, a big wide surface to practice eyeballs, and was no frills quick enough to work with that it was tolerable for the most part to use my super old balloon stock.

It seems like this would fit perfect for some casual linework, since you can accessorize and enhance a basic form as much as you have time for.  

(view other pigs)

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Other balloons by and inspired by the David Brenn:

January 5 - Mr. Jack's Pig

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.

~ E.O. Wilson

Mr. Jack, an incredible balloon artist from Germany, recently shared a pig design on Instagram that looked a lot like this one. 

For some reason, though, he made it in pink. Pink!? 

At this point, I can’t see a pig design without wanting to add it to the menagerie. It’s like a rule.

The nose was the trickiest part - I’ve made noses like this before, but my hearts are soooo old at this point ... I may have said some things loudly.

... I built the head upside down on purple. I would love to say intentionally.  I will not.

Thankfully pig faces are round and squishy enough for it to be passable, and it's making me wonder as I look at it - does a wider face on top make it more masculine?  Is there some head shape rules that I should know about?  To ChatGPT! ... ... ... mindblown.gif

Yes!  You can think about it like this - a chunky baby sitting down looks like a little pyramid (cute/approachable), whereas a weightlifter looks like an inverted pyramid (serious/strong).  These subtleties are oftentimes used in character design -- BOOM!  Accidental knowledge drop!    

(view other pigs)

May 27 - Dome Head Pig

"Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig."

~ Albert Einstein

... of course I had to build a pig with this technique, but easily enough it is one they teach!  I feel like there is a good lesson in this.

The pink pig was made immediately after the panda at the Q Corner Convention, it seemed obvious and there was a pink geo in my junk pile.  The purple pig was made after watching the Balloon Brothers tutorial Geo Dome tutorial.

Of course it would possible to sit in a room, practice a lot and eventually probably come up with a perfect design, but why not start at the foundation of knowledge and build the next level version?

I took one picture in our house's pig sty because "insert funny joke about teens being home from college here".

(view other pigs)

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Other balloons by and inspired by the Balloon Brothers:

May 15 - Chef

“Cooking is an art and also science.”

~ Mohith Agadi

As people remain cooped up for safety sake, a number of balloon artists are starting to share more and more in live events.  I have been a fan of U-chan (@uoo2525 ) for a while, he has a masterful style and has started live broadcasting when he creates.

I knew I just had to recreate his pig chef.  I rely on technology to auto-caption/auto-translate, and freeze frame when things are shown, so I'm not entirely sure if it was a tutorial or not.  But the results were worth the effort!

One of the things that U-Chan does better than most I've seen is the artwork he does for eyes.  Inspirational, and definitely a sign of great art - when it makes you want to go practice.  That said, the eyes here are created differently and probably the coolest technique I've seen.  Check out his YouTube channel:  link

One of the things I need to work on is my penmanship.  I love this balloon, but it's a bit maddening to build it, start to take photos, realize you forgot one last thing, then draw the nostrils off-center.  *face palm*  *eye-roll*  *long sigh* *post anyways*


(view other chefs)

April 27 - Li'l Pig

Teacher: Kids what does a chicken give you?
Students: Eggs
Teacher: Very good now what does the pig give you?
Kids: Bacon
Teacher: Excellent now what does the fat cow give you?
Kids: Homework

Probably already expected at this point, but I do feel compelled to try a purple pig version of any balloon concept.

Jackie Ochitwa's "kawaii" creatures are a very versatile form, but there are two main issues you need to work with - first - they are not very poseable, second - there is no easy ear attachment points.

I ran into the same problems with ears as the tiger, but I think worked out a pretty decent solution this time with the pig.



(view other devils)

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Other Jackie Ochitwa inspired balloons:

April 16 - Pig

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

~ Ambrose Bierce

Stephanie Morace also showed us another one of her fantastic and more requested balloons - a pig.  This one has a nice big cartoonish face and I can only assume she was out of purple when she made it in pink ... ...

It is customary with balloon techniques that I build a purple-pig inspired version, this felt like a good place to include the Little Body for that.



(view other pig)

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Other Stephanie Morace inspired balloons:

April 3 - Pig, RA-bot, Owl and Cat Loop-Heads

“Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.”

~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Here are a few other Loop-Heads I made while playing around with Mr. Boma's head design.

I really like the way the owl turned out, I feel like this face design could work with most anything and so much of the overall look of the balloon is what you do with the body.

To whit, I think the RA-bot body should have been more like the cat body with those hoppy back legs, and the cat should have probably just been a standing "Garfield" body.

As with every balloon technique we explore here, I had to try my hand at a pig.


View other: owls, cats, rabbits, bunnys, pigs

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Other Mr. Boma inspired balloons:

February 29 - Chuunks

Creativity is a daily exercise, not a talent.

~ Stephanie Deming 💖

I'm a little sad to see an end to the run of purple pig artwork.  What started as a silly idea, turned into one of my favorite things ever - and a number of the images I now have hanging on my wall (they were so good!).

This quote is from a motivational poster the my lovely and brilliant wife helped create.  I'm not going to be posting balloons daily.  But I promise to exercise some sort of creativity every day!

.. and it's only fitting for me to make some sort of different interpretation of the purple pig.  So here is ... grouchy pig guard face man with chicken legs.

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Some other purple pigs: