Motor

Ostrich

The person in the pictures is Mark ''bad-to-the-balloon'' Byrne.. photo taken in China.

''Bonnie, you're fonnie''  

Here's a..

Smurf

Giraffe

Egret

Quickly whipped up for the game..

Princess

Here you go Bonnie  

Elephant

Who would you like to work with dead or alive?

I admire the works and unique visions of artists like Eyvind Earle (former Disney background painter), Mark Rothko (painter), Steve Roach (ambient composer), Andy Summers (former guitarist of The Police currently into jazz), Patrick O'Hearn (former bassist of Zappa, currently into electronic music), Oophoi (Italian 'drone ambient' master).

Balloon-wise I'd like to spend some quality time with Don or Fabrizio.

What makes you laugh?
TV programs such as Jiskefet (dutch sketches in the inspiration/vein of Monthy Python)
There is a type of humor only my two brothers understand – the VandeVen humor so to speak. It's a vague kind of visual imaginative humor that comes from 'what if' situations.
Noone understands us however.

Willemijn (my girlfriend) can make me laugh.

How do you keep the enthusiasm going & what still excites you about our great world of latex?
I can keep the enthusiasm as long as it stays a 'may'. If it becomes a 'must' a passion can grow stale rather quickly.
It's good to challenge yourself by putting a limitation of material or theme of the sculptures and see what you can come up with. A good example here on the forum is formed by the alphabet games. It seems that people come up with creations, they thought they'd never make.
   
What inspires ... or is your thought process in coming up with a new design?
Inspiration comes from many places; I simply inspired by looking around. For instance toy stores and their magazines can be a good source of ideas, so are plush animals and the silly comical t-shirt imprints.  Store decoration is another source, a certain shape or technique or a combination of colours. Every small idea can be useful.


About my thought process in coming up with a new design I want to add an in depth example of that.

First steps towards a new design are inspiration, a few clever idea's and the overal approach/buildup. Try to limit your material to a few balloons.
Those first ideas can come from everywhere. Looking at stuffed animals for instance. They already have a cartoony shape, which is more easy to translate into balloons.
Another way is to hunt on the internet for pictures of animals or famous figures you want to recreate. Then try to really break that model down to easy shapes.
So, making a drawing in advance is a good thing to start with. It makes you concious of the shapes you'll need to create and attach all together.

Take for example the seagull from Finding Nemo I made today. Here it is again:

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I used a picture that I found through Google. Then I tried to describe the animal in terms of simple basic shapes: longish head, same thickness as the neck. Then a round body with triangular feet underneath.

My train of thought on that seagull was something like this:

   ''Hmm, ok.. head and neck have the perfect shape of the 260 already, so no twists in it. However how to attach that beak without damaging the already perfect untouched 260 shape? Perhaps I could make it work with a raisintwist. If I cut away the nozzle, but leave a small remainder on top it can act as small featherpoint on top of the head.

Then the body: I will use a 4 or 5-bubble rollthrough body, but I somehow have to make connection points for the legs. I can do that by making two of those bodybubbles more detailed: so split into three bubbles off which the centre bubble is a pinchtwist. I can make that body from the same white 260.

    How to do the wings? Hmm.. Ok, just wrap grey around it; 2 bubbles for each wing should do, and the remainder can make the tail. What shape is that tail? sort of square-ish.

    Now the feet. They look tiny (so 160) I see three toes, that make the foot kinda triangular. Could I use the same arrangement as my duck? yes, that would be the best option. I must be carefull not to make too long legs. They're unusually short in the photo.

    The eyebrows?  I could try to underinflate a 260, make 2 bubbles of it and wrap it around as a headband, creating the eyebrows. Nah, nice try.. but doesn't work. More simple... ehm?  ah!  white marker on white balloon: not too harsh as black, and still visible''

My experience is that I'm eagering to make a design if I can at least have 2 pretty good ideas to incorporate in it. Along the process of actually making it, I find new solutions and create side-steps again (also solutions and shapes for other animals).

So I build an animal with 2 ideas, then create another 3 along the way from which I can only use 1 of. In the end I have an animal using 3 ideas and gained 2 new ideas I can use in another animal.

Very important:  be critical on every step you make! Examine it from all sides to check if it has the desired shape. Pay attention to every bodypart. A bubblecluster can look good, but perhaps won't work for the desired shape you're aiming for. Then redo that step (you can always keep the former idea for another animal, so make notes of those side-steps). In the above example: try to really make feet that are realistic for the seagull, instead of standard birdfeet. Same goes for the beak.

A way to check afterwards if your design is good is to try making a drawing again of it. When your design looks like a kids drawing (because you had to draw that way too large arms for instance, or that very weird head-attachement due to a weird neck) your design needs your own improvement. ''Mistakes'' I often see in other designs is the always-presence of a neck, while in some cases there is no neck visible. So, really learn to look at the model. Don't fall into the ''rest is standard dog body'' syndrome.

Hope this helps a bit.

Ronald,

You could make my larger horse in a mocha-chocolate-black mix or a fairytale like white-pink-lilac combination.
Also you could just make the head and stick it on a stick or basic hat.

Another idea is making a ''sea'' horse...
Zebra, donkey are variations too...

Here are two rabbits from my archive

Thelma, great pictures!

That Bambi is just perfect.
A quick idea to prevent the camel's hump from coming unloose, is to tie a scrap around the joint.

What are your balloon goals for the future?
The term 'future' is never 'there'; it's always the moment of 'now'.
So, I'd like to keep my goals more short-termed and prefer to look to my current course. My general goal with balloon twisting or creating art in general (through music/painting/photography) is to put something unique, true, pure and dedicated into the world. Something that is so wildly unique that it can surprise me as much as others. To keep innovating, keep thinking out of the box.

If you could start all over again, would you change anything?
Nope, the way everything developed and put me on the right path was a naturally and perfect way.

How would you like the future of balloon modelling to develop?
If you imagine balloonart on a scale from entertainment to art, I'd like it to shift somewhat more towards art.
- Balloon art becoming Art. A gallery of balloon sculptures in a form that suits the temporary character.
- Balloons as an educational form for animal life or for raising awareness of endangered species.
- Balloon sculptures as photography subjects.

Who's the most famous person you have made a balloon creation for?
Let me think.. I did a balloon tulip once for a Dutch minister, called Wouter Bos.
I made cartoon characters for the kids of Dutch soccer player Marc Overmars.
And offcourse for mr. Colin Myles, for who I made a collection of cartoon characters too  

What is your personal goal when you set off to work? Is it money or to entertain etc?

While money certainly is like the fuel in a moon rocket, my goals are often of a multiple and artistic nature:
-       creating a new animal / design / technique / colour combination
-   have a great animating talk with the kids / creating a lasting memory
-   come home with some new cool photo's to share

A gig where you're in just for the money is often only half as fun as a gig where you forget about the money at all.

I envision a scenary where children walk around with their own personal colourful balloon object, causing the adults to say 'oh, look at that, how cute!'