February 28 - Horb Kraken

“What a Kraken grasps it does not lose, be it a longship or leviathan.”

~ George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

I spent the weekend playing the stress test for Sea of Thieves and loving it.  That was the inspiration for today's Horb, balloons for terrible children.

Sea of Thieves has you as a pirate in a multiplayer world where you can sail solo or team with up people for a swashbuckling adventure.

It's fun to hunt for treasure, but it was the player interactions and the keep-your-head-on-a-swivel dangerous ocean that made this game a pre-order for me.  There was one point when we noticed another ship had landed at the same island.  While our captain made casual conversation about how we're friendly - two crewmates and I snuck over and stole the treasure chests off his ship.  It.  Was. Awesome.

They have released information and screen shots of a Kraken they are adding to the game.  March 20th can not come soon enough!

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February 27 - Horb Bitey

“Well, once again, my friend we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice, it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences... but the other head of science is bad! Oh, beware the other head of science, Arthur, it bites!”

~ The Tick

The next in the Horb line of Dorbs, balloons for terrible children, is "Bitey".

Bitey is a small blind parasite that feeds on outer skin cells.  The infection can go unnoticed for a long time and actually has somewhat of an exfoliating effect, but if left untreated the victim will become more and more surly as he or she becomes thin-skinned.  High-school bullies and people who discuss politics on Facebook tend to have a Bitey.

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February 26 - Horb Bear

The horrible people, the horrible people
It's as anatomic as the size of your steeple
Capitalism has made it this way
Old-fashioned fascism will take it away

~ Marilyn Manson The Beautiful People

Buster Balloon's Dorb concept is great for making some quick cutsie balloon designs, and like every balloon concept - I'm sure we could spend days making the standard group of animals.  Instead lets just play.

... and if Dorb is short for adorable, let me introduce you to my first "Horb", balloons for terrible children.

Grumbles the Bear wants a hug, but watch out for those claws!  He is known for sneaking into the rooms of children who haven't brushed their teeth and replacing their chewing gum with squished beetles.

There were some problems photographing this guy I didn't realize at the time.  The muzzle area is completely washed out and he's distractingly reflective, but I gave him away soon after these were taken so I didn't get a second chance.

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Other Dorb balloon designs:

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February 25 - Dorb Circus Animals

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.

~ Ethiopian Proverb

I've had these images for a little bit now and neglected to post them.  Here are some Dorb circus or safari-type animals using the basic design Buster Balloon shows in his latest tutorials.

The elephant is one that he demonstrates on the videos and the lion is one that he describes.  I thought I would make a quick tiger to lock in the design, as these use all the most generic body style.

My first attempt at the elephant I with for a basic 4-leg body, but the head assembly attachment point confounds it in a way as to have the head pointed straight down.  Adding a bit of a neck helped, but too much neck looked weird on an elephant and too little neck still angled the head weirdly.  I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board for that one I think.

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Other Dorb balloon designs:

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February 22 - Dorb Birds

“The woods would be quiet if no bird sang but the one that sang best.”

~ Henry Van Dyke

This quote is apropos, this design was a bit of a failed attempt but I'm going to stop myself from stopping myself and talk about it anyways.

Buster shows a decent variety of these Dorbs animals (I still might build them) - but I really just wanted to play around a bit instead of copy a design, yet still .. keep it simple, stupid.

I built the swan with a very basic body rather than a trying support the head on a long neck in the traditional pose.  Though I didn't really like how that turned out, changing the color of the feet on both the duck and penguin look nice.

What I believe did not work, and the reason I was hesitant to post this without rebuilding - are those ears.  I have ideas on how I could use the concept and get a better rounded head, but I'll have to save those attempts for a future balloon...  I went completely off grid for

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February 21 - Dorb Skunk

“In the land of the skunks he who has half a nose is king.”

~ Chris Farley

Dorbs is one of the final installments of videos that accompany Buster Balloon's calendar for this year.  I'm not sure if he's going to make these videos available elsewhere in the future, but you might want to get in contact with him if you are interested.

This is one of the designs Buster teaches on video, and the first I wanted to attempt mostly because I like the different way he created the big bulky skunk tail.  Unfortunately with such a large tail, it was pretty difficult to get it to sit flag and they end up with a Tigger-like bounce spring underneath.

It actually works pretty well if you imagine they did a jumping celebration pose picture.

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February 20 - Butterboy

butterboy: (n)- a living being who continues to thrive in the misery of the world, despite all outside forces causing their bodies to gradually melt every moment.  Butterboys are those who deal with it.

I have been drawing a lot of inspiration from watching Alex Pardee TwitchTV recently on his show "Sketch 4 Sketch".  It's not an instructional art show, it's more of a hangout and really just an exercise in his own creativity as he creates sketches from other people's drawings.  ... and it's become my weekly jam.

I usually twist balloons while watching, but this time he challenged us to make a butterboy.  The definition is above, but effectively is a little cube guy Alex would draw on other sketches that would help show perspective and give a sense of scale.  A number of people sketched theirs while watching and posted during the stream - I was inspired to join in.

I first built the giant cube guy - but felt his face was lost behind the structure.  I think the smaller works better for the form, but I have fallen in love with the pair of them together, butterboy and butterdad.

So here are my 4 sketch 4 sketches from sketch 4 sketch. 

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February 19 - Book Fair 2018

"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."

~ Orson Welles

I enjoyed a little time off since the last post and did some thinking about the state of this blog.

I have a number of big plans for how I want things to evolve this year, but without the ever-present engine of a daily entry, I'm finding it difficult to feel like things are "good enough" to post about.  The goal was to force evolution and progression by removing what were considered obstacles, but I've gone to prove today's quote true.

So in an effort to get past the idea that this is supposed to be something more than it is, I'm going to still keep focused on the big plans - but not to the exclusion of all else.

This year's book fair was right around the time of the Oscars, so they asked for a couple Oscar columns, but with the available space we just went with the one.   I love working with these chrome balloons, last month this column would not have looked as nice.   I would have liked to get a better taper towards the top, but this was my prototype and everything was measured precisely by eyeball on site ...

February 6 - Major Super Ultra Mega Smile Man

~ Captain Super Ultra Mega Smile Man

I've been wanting to try using pinch line teeth/gums for a while in a face.  This is what I built while watching the Super Bowl using just the balloons I had in my "extras" bag.

The teeth attach to the lips in two different ways, and I think it's worth the pain of additional attachment points to really lock them in.

I really wanted to show the gums, so I went for a super wide mouthed look, but it would work equally well with just the hint of a gum line under those teeth.  I think this might be what I build the next time I go to the dentist's office ...

February 5 - Chrome Bot

~ The Alan Parsons Project I Robot

I finally got more than sample packs of the chrome balloons and wanted to have a go at what I could make with them.  I've been enjoying the creations people have posted online, but sometimes it feels a bit ... unfulfilling?  Here's a chrome .. duck.  Here's a chrome ... watermelon.   Here's a chrome ... donkey.

The color is fantastic and a thousand times better than any previous metal alternatives, but at the end of the day it's probably more of an access color unless you are building something very specifically metal.  I wanted to build something that gave me some play time but made sense -- so without trying too hard to think of something, here is a robot.

I decided against building any sort of known robot and just played around with the design.  The first build was the small one using the few remaining sample pack balloons I had, but I knew I wanted to build something bigger. 

The legs on the bigger were a first attempt at doing something like Pascal's alien legs, but I wasn't able to get the extreme variation of sizes that he is - and I think part of that might be the chemical makeup of the chrome, the chrome balloons are not as "elastically retractive" as a normal latex balloon.  If you stretch a chrome, it keeps generally stretched and doesn't rubber band back much.