December 29 - Celebrity Faces

Terrain seems a bit unstable. No readout yet if the air is breathable. And there seems to be no sign of intelligent life anywhere...

~ Buzz Lightyear Toy Story

These three faces are the remaining few from Eric Weinstein's Live Balloons Volume 8 PDF: Faces (link).

I've said it previously on this blog many times but one of the things I love more than any individual design is a balloon concept. When I first looked at this PDF, I really just saw it as a number of different types of faces to build - but now I see it as a complete concept. Each of these faces is a specific celebrity, and all use a similar structure with slight adjustments made to realize the individual characteristics -- Elvis has big chubby cheeks, Buzz Lightyear has a longer chin, Betty Boop is probably the most different because the "cheek" structure actually makes up much of her head shape.

This PDF was a good exercise in exploring more complex multiple balloon distorted faces, and it's one of those things that you really just need a lot of trial and error to get right. I only made one attempt at these three and there are slight changes I feel I could have done better.

I guess my one complaint(?) to using these techniques would be that in getting such a shapely head, you are not given many connection points and much of the features end up being glued on. Yes it would be possible to add a few more raisins, but I did have a few balloons pop late into a build - and it is not salvageable at that point, so it would probably be wise to tie them all off before adding any features.

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Recent posts with Eric's designs:


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