Daniel Slade

Language, Technology and Education                              

LEARNING GOAL: BALLOON ART

GETTING STARTED

For many years now I have been intrigued by kids entertainers, and the talents they perform to captivate the attention of little people.  With this project in mind I recalled a close friend who dressed as a clown and entertained kids by creating amazing balloon art at festivals and events in my area. 

To begin my journey I put on my thinking cap to figure out as to how I could learn the technics needed to grasp the basics of balloon art.   First step was to call my friend in Traralgon and ask if she could teach me what was required.  We realised the tyranny of distance and time restraints were not going to be favourable to the project, so I grabbed the phone book and looked up city based balloon artists, clowns and balloon suppliers instead.  Spending the day doing a ring around of a dozen different organisations I concluded the following.  If I was to attend a teaching session, or take individual tuition, it was going to cost me an arm and a leg.  However I was in luck, one of my contacts advised me that they had education DVD’s and books on the art of balloon animation.  I wrote down their address, and planned to visit the very next day to obtain the required paraphernalia.

I navigated the best desired route to the intended destination in my trusty Melway and jumped in the car.  Loaded with my wallet, I set out to obtain the Holy Grail of balloon art. Obtaining the handbook, balloon pump and balloons was a complete success, the staff were ever so helpful and in total charged me just $14.95 for my balloon art equipment.

I arrived home with my newly acquired balloon art belongings and set to work reading through the hand book, complete with pictorial directions and my very own bag of Qualatex 260Q figure tying balloons, in assorted colours.

INFLATING

One of the most difficult things to learn in the creation of balloon figures is how much to inflate the balloon.  With each twist the air in the balloon must escape towards the tip of balloon and if there isn’t enough uninflated balloon you can’t finish the figure, or the balloon will simply pop.  The general rule is leave approximately half an inch, or one and a half centimetres for each twist you have to make in the figure.  The balloons can’t be blown up by mouth, because of their size and shape and the stem isn’t long enough to grasp between your lips once it begins to inflate, so you have to use an inflator instead.  The inflator is a little hand pump, it has a nozzle you hold the balloon end over and then pump until the balloon is inflated to the desired size.

TYING

Some people find it hard to tie a balloon, I don’t, so it wasn’t a problem. But if you were to have difficulty then the handbook had step by step directions and pictures on how to do so.

TWISTS

A figure is made up of different bubbles, these bubbles are formed by twisting the balloon at the desired places to form the size bubble you want.  A twist must then be held in place by twisting one around another.  A bit hard to understand from my explanations, but again easy to follow in the handbook, that has the same step by step directions and pictures as mentioned previously.

Having perfected the tying and twisting I moved onto actually creating my own balloon zoo with a dog and a cat.  Having proved my ability so far it was now time to move onto two bubble twists.

The two bubble twist enables you to create two bubbles side by side, used to create legs and ears joined side by side.  Again perfecting this technique I began to add to my zoo a giraffe, a mouse, a basset hound and my favourite, the bunny rabbit, (pictured below).

TIPS

Most of the animals and forms are very similar, what varies is the proportion of the bubbles.  You have to take particular care with the proportions to make the animals look like they are supposed to.  Having numerous bubbles twisted, but not tied at one time, your fingers have to be agile.  My balloon escaped my grip numerous times and I had to start again.  Holding the balloon, bubbles and twists while creating your figures is an art in itself. 

LEARNING REFLECTION

I perfected the basic art in a couple of hours, even though I’m not sure I could stand and create figure without the book for reference.  The handbook was a great learning tool, better than the DVD, for the fact that I had to keep rewinding the DVD, where as I could move through he book at my own pace.

The hand book was very bland and boring though and the figures were pretty boring and repetitive.  I am positive that a tutorial from an artist would have been better, where you can actually see first hand there hand and finger movements and they can assure you that you were doing the steps correctly.