--------2, when did you get started with balloons?

If you let me make a comparison with music, I started making scales in 1995 but didn't play any nice songs, just lots of tries but no real music and after practising that much I started to play songs in 2006, so that means 11 years of occasional fun making scales and then I got all the "sheet music" to play using my skills from the trained years, sometimes the opposite happens and you get lots of "sheet music" but you don't know how to play scales so all the music you play sounds crooked. I was lucky to get the right way to twist proper balloons.

So, balloons: in 1995 I twisted my first balloon; in 2006 I became a real twister...


--------3, What's your best twisting experience?
 
 
I really love the experience of getting a new way to make a figure, to get new designs and if they are simple and nice, much better, but the very best experience is that balloon twisting made me meet amazing people from all around the world that share the same passion for balloons, people that I admire deeply and I can say they are my friends, that is priceless.

Quote from: "Simply Shonna"I am looking forward to reading your answers as I truly appreciate your passion and love of balloons and I feel blessed that you took your  time to encourage and help Dustin last year at Twist and Shout even when you had your own sculptures to finish.   Not only are you a great balloon artist, but you are also a very great friend and person with a very huge heart.  I think Dustin would have quit right at the end if you had not been there to help keep him motivated and make him laugh.

Dear Shonna it was great to help, he asked for ideas for the see plants to cover the x figther and i had the perfect distortion for that so... Great team work really nice to twist for hours there in Phoenix. Looking foward to see you and you kids soon. Hug from Altea

Quote from: "Graham Lee"Antonio has a wealth of knowledge which I think the forum members should pick and ask questions as in the past we have had some amazing twisters doing the "Star" Interview and the forum members have only asked the odd question now and again. I'm sure Antonio would love to answer anything you wish to ask balloon'ish related. He also busks and makes a living full time from his balloon art. He also has two great DVD's out ao please check out his website and if you can please support him, thanks.

You made me blush... Thanks and yeap here i am happy to answer!!!

Hello Danny, thanks for the spectation... Sorry but i dont know yet if i will go this year or not, i will let you know for shure if i am going. I am shure your workshops are going to be great ones,hope not to miss them, we will see...
Big hug

Are you going to Twist & Shout in St Louis?

Best wishes,

Danny[/quote]

Hello to all the members of this amazing Forum, you are making the balloon art spread and grow all over the globe, thanks for the effort and dedication to this balloon world,
it's a world that I totally adore!!!
I really like the title of this section the "star" interview and the thing I like the most from the name is the " " because from my heart I don't feel like a star, I am just a human being with a passion, with a passion and lots of free time to dedicate to what I love and respect: Balloons and the audience, so once that is clear, let's start answering...

---------1, What road led you into balloon modelling?

I live in Altea, a small village (20,000 people now, but 30 years ago when I was 6 it was even smaller) so I didn't see any balloon twister in my childhood, but I had the amazing influence from the amazing Magician Juan Tamariz who had a show on TV and that show was the most amazing thing for me, I started doing some magic with a magic box for kids that I got for Christmas, I only used the book to do all I could without using the included props because all the props looked too tricky, so in my opinion will never illusionate my audience... (don mistake the difference between fooling and illusionating the audience, they are similar but not the same...) this love for magic was forgotten for a while but every now and then I could use what I learned from the book to make people happy.

After some years when I became 18 (1994) I bought a second-hand magic book called "The Best Card Magic in the World" a big lie, but it helped to start so I started to learn card magic, then close up, street magic... A year later I became the president of the magic club of Alicante (50km from Altea) and to be honest I had to study a lot to get to the level a president must have and then to keep the level high. Being the representative of the club, I travelled around Spain from magic meeting to magic festival and at one of them (Almussafes, Valencia 1995) I learned from a magician to twist a dog and a 4 loop petal flower, I remember even today the street where he showed me while we waited for a magician friend to come down from the hotel room, for me to be able to create such a beautiful thing out of a balloon was really really nice, since then I always tried to learn some figures and to make them to entertain people, I was more focused on the illusion and the magic but somehow I collected new ideas and figures from everywhere I could, in those days the knowledge was much more difficult to get than today, so I really took all the flavour to each new design that passed my hands making as much variations as I could... but until my first time in Euro-Jam 2006 I didn't really start creating, before then I just played with 260, I didn't even know that 160 and 350 existed so all my balloons for more than 10 years were copied from other people (or like I read these days in the Internet "inspired" which means same colour and proportions and techniques...) it was my first time at Euro-Jam that made me become a passionate balloon twister, that first year I saw truly amazing artists teaching, I still remember the amazing knowledge I got from the workshops of: Alberto Falcone, Luc Bertrand, Colin Myles, Sabina Kellner, Dennis and Guido, Niko Fric... just too much info and passion for a whole year practising and waiting for the next year of Euro-Jam. One year later I went to the Euro-Jam and to the Millennium Jam and from there on I am a declared balloon lover.