December 8 - PPAkee

"Sometimes, you can't think everything out. You have to listen to your heart.' And, 'Heroic? Human? Those are just things people say after the fact... It's not what the people say afterward... What's important is being true to oneself."

~ Zidane, Final Fantasy IX

PPAkee is a DeviantArtist who had a JRPG styled sample and proposed building out pig in this same style.

The JRPG style is 100% on point, I could see this on a sign in a store as characters are walking by, like it's the latest Funko toy on the market, or an advertisement for a grape soda.

December 7 - popadorabledoesart

One person’s craziness is another person’s reality.

~ Tim Burton

There is a "weird" to popadorabledoesart's DeviantArt gallery that let me know this would be a fantastic commission.  This is "Pinned to Spot".

Instead of spikes coming out ... they are stabbing him.  But look at that happy expression, this is a good boy.  This guy just defended his owner from a porcupine attack and those trusses up top are to keep the quills from going deeper into the ear canals while he's getting helped.

That'll do pig.   That'll do.

December 6 - gytfu

"It's thanks to the wonders of genetic engineering that soon there will be an end to hunger, disease, pollution, even war. I have created things that will change the world for the better. For instance, here is a monkey with four asses. "

~ Dr. Alphonse Mephesto, South Park

gytfu is a Canadian DeviantArtist that had a fantastic idea to make some sort of animal hybrid.  I suggested that I wasn't sure if it should be a Oinktopus or an Octopig - and they ended up creating both..

This is the kind of Dr. Moreau hybridization I could get behind.  The Octopig has fully grow goateentacles.

December 5 - KuffinsUniverse

"Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!"

~ Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

KuffinsUniverse is a DeviantArtist from the United States that had a fun YCH of your character eating cereal and enough fun samples of characters to know it would be delicious.  

That's a bowl of Nozzle-O's, fortified with vitamins B and Q.

July 8 - Windsock

“Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.”

~ Native American Proverb

Drills you run on a team, finger exercises for an instrument, it doesn't matter the discipline - they all start with a series of practice exercises designed to help train your mind and muscle memory.  I was told at one point as a kid that a ninja had string and unstring his bow 10000 times before he was allowed to pick up an arrow.

Chun-Lin, Sung taught a good number of weaving lessons in his Hahow series and just recently released a new one on distortion (available here).   I was looking back through some images and realized I hadn't shared one of his practice pieces from his weaving series.

Practice, practice, .... practice x 10000!

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Other balloons by and inspired by the Mr. Sung:

July 7 - Box Chain

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

~ Heraclitus

There is a certain ... mathematical satisfaction(?) that comes with building a weave or a repeated pattern.  It speaks to my inner nerd, and this balloon was a bit of a research project.

I followed a set of instructions I found for weaving a box chain and built a few of them using the similar sized rings to the jewelry (Lagenda 1.6), but I never really felt things were right - constantly adjusting to expose the pattern only to have one thing fall out of shape.

Isopresso recently released a tutorial on a balloon box chain so I tried then following his instructions and figured out where I was going wrong.  Firstly his box chain was slightly different in that it uses three rings, but more significantly - he sized things properly (L1.0) so that they would fit snugly - you could throw this thing like a football.

Made a rainbow -- I really need to level up my color combo skill if I'm going to make more patterns...

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Other balloons inspired by Isopresso:

July 6 - Jewelry

Who will save your soul when it comes to the flower?
Who will save your soul after all the lies that you told, boy?
Who will save your soul if you won't save your own?

~ Jewel, Who Will Save Your Soul?

While looking around at Celtic chain patterns I saw a piece of jewelry made up of links that looked like it would be a fun exercise.

... and it was, up until the final 10-15 minutes of minor tweaks and adjustments to try and get some symmetry (and I see more places I want to smoosh around).    These are the kind of things you would avoid if you made this with actual metal rings ... or balloon nozzles .. hmmmm ....

July 5 - Buko96

“Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20–20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past. Creativity, originality, inventiveness, intuition, imagination—“unstuckness,” in other words—are completely outside its domain.”

~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Buko96 is a long time DeviantArtist from Argentina.

I sometimes I feel like I stumble through my explanation of what I'm looking for in this exercise, so it's fantastic when I see something like that that gets the concept fully and approaches everything from their own style.

This motorcycle helmet and gloves combo is a brilliant idea and use of inspiration!  

Instagram: @abigail_coccaro

July 4 - m-idlifecrisis

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America."

~ Bill Clinton

m-idlifecrisis is a DeviantArtist from the United States that offered to show us what that can do with our pig and Kid Pix - I thought the result was perfect for the 4th of July.

I remember using Kid Pix oh so long ago, I'm glad to know it's still around - it seemed to be the perfect kid creativity spark.  A fairly basic set of drawing tools, but enough effect buttons to make it exciting and keep your attention.  This is no small feat to create this, imagine creating this post in HTML just using notepad.  

July 3 - Celtic Chain

“A society that has no respect, no regard for its bards, its historians, its storytellers, is a society in steep decline, a society that has lost its very soul and may never find its way.”

― Laurence Overmire

Celtic chain weaving is an artform that I feel I could spend some time exploring with balloons, there are really some beautiful and amazing artwork and patterns out there.

With this balloon I am attempting to use the technique with similarly sized rings, and ended up with something of a pendant.  I like what I got but it was not what I was going for.

I am wondering if I should have made the colors go in the opposite direction though, shouldn't the rainbow colors be clockwise? 

July 2 - Triskele & Triquetra

“Men brave and generous live the best lives, seldom will they sorrow; then there are fools, afraid of everything, who grumble instead of giving.”

~ Anonymous, The Poetic Edda

I was still thinking God of War when making these...

These are two Celtic Knots, the green one is known as a Triskele and the white is a Triquetra, sometimes referred to as a "Trinity Knot".

The number three being significant here, it represents stages in life;  mother, maiden and crone.  Mother symbolizing creation, the maiden innocence and the crone wisdom - all interlocking and part of each other. 

July 1 - Dog of War

Dogs of war and men of hate
With no cause, we don't discriminate
Discovery is to be disowned
Our currency is flesh and bone

~ Pink Floyd, Dogs of War

PlayStation is the better console.  I say this having been a die hard early adopter of all XBOX consoles, but they have rolled over and completely given up on the console exclusive content war.   It wasn't even a good fight, it was a rout.   So with PS5 looming on the horizon (zero dawn), I bit the bullet and bought a used PS4 to catch up on some of what I missed.

God of War was in a word - Epic.  In more words it was a Dark Souls-like journey into Nordic Folklore, the story of Kratos and his son Atreus taking the boys mother's ashes to the highest peak in Jotunheim.    

Game of the Year 2018 - well earned.

June 28 - PhantomAlphaArt

“This little piggy went to Hades
This little piggy stayed home
This little piggy ate raw and steaming human flesh
This little piggy violated virgins
And this little piggy clambered over a heap of dead bodies to get to the top”

~ Neil Gaiman

PhantomAlphaArt is a DeviantArtist from the United States.  Much of her art was dragons or some sort of winged beast so I was looking forward to what she might come up with here.

This is her "Keeper of the Molten Hellscape" - The keeper of Hell, trapped forever guarding its glowing depths.

I would say that she got the heart of the project and then devoured it whole.  This is the upgrade from that old three headed dog "whatshisname", a razor backed pig with an acid whip tail, broken free from it's chains it now roams the depths finding lost souls that it ruts up like truffles.

June 27 - ArtWithoutHeart

"I can't believe I fell for Muppet Man."

~ Miss Piggy The Muppets  (the movie)

ArtWithoutHeart is a DeviantArtist from Mexico that had some wonderfully surreal sample images and offered to have a go our pig.

What he came up with is equal parts magical and weird.  I can imagine a gigantic muppet-man filled with these trying to get away with buying only one ticket to the movie.  ... or maybe this is a superhero transformation and those are secret identity clothes ... or maybe some guys head is really just a purple pig.  It's a crazy world!

June 26 - Geo Dinos

All the explanations proposed seem to be only partly satisfactory. They range from massive climatic change to mammalian predation to the extinction of a plant with apparent laxative properties, in which case the dinosaurs died of constipation.

~ CARL SAGAN, Dragons of Eden

These are two of the balloon taught in the Balloon Brothers Geo Dome 2 tutorials, I thought it would be fun to make them together.  But then THIS happened ...

(view other dinosaur)

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Other balloons by and inspired by the Balloon Brothers:

June 25 - Azathoth

Outside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

~ HP Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Here is another one I'm going to cross off the bucket list.  I've wanted to build Azathoth for a while and the ideas presented in the Balloon Brother's Geo Dome 2 tutorials I felt were a good fit for what I had in mind.

Azathoth is the creator diety of the elder gods, not the progenitor, all of reality is a manifestation of its dreams and if were ever to awaken, everything is immediately erased from all of existence.  

So metal.  \m/

(view other gods)

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Other balloon designs or inspiration from the Balloon Brothers:

June 24 - Alien

Well, I saw the thing comin' out of the sky
It had the one long horn, one big eye
I commenced to shakin' and I said "ooh-eee"
It looks like a purple eater to me
It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater!

~ The Purple People Eater

Site unseen I would have never thought the alien the Balloon Brothers were going to teach on their Geo Domes 2 tutorials would be this cool.  I love their design!

The decision to build it purple was really because it's was the biggest leftover color in my multipacks so far.

(view other aliens)

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Other balloon designs or inspiration from the Balloon Brothers: