Hello all

Every so often I am asked to host an evening at my local magic club called 'Robs video night', I fill the evening with various magical themed videos along with some of the allied arts. I have one to do in a couple of weeks and I am thinking of featuring a few balloon videos, so, can you recommend any? I am not looking for teaching videos, I am looking for the type of thing that a non balloon person would watch and say "wow thats cool", along the lines of Zin Sheng, the winning act at the Millennium jam (if you were there).

Thanks in advance

Rob

Hello all

I am currently running 2 competitions at the moment to win a Twisted cinema calendar AND a mouse mat featuring my Lady and the Tramp sculpture. The first easy competition is to head over to my facebook page and do 2 things, share my competition post with your friends and like my Bowtie Balloon Guy page (easy huh) - //https://www.facebook.com/BowTieBalloon/

The second competition is a bit trickier, I have a photo competition over on my website here - //http://www.bowtieballoonguy.co.uk/blog/2015/12/30/competition-time - There are 9 photos of mixtures of balloons and then 9 more photos of sculptures from my Twisted Cinema series. all you need to do it match the balloons with the final product, a kind of before and after competition, Check out the pictures and it will all make sense. once you have worked out the answers you can email them to me at mailto:bowtieballoonguy@gmail.com">bowtieballoonguy@gmail.com (closing date for this is midnight on 10th Jan 2016)

See you all soon

Hello all, I now have a Calendar available featuring 23 of photos from my Twisted Cinema series of pictures. It is available for just £10 including P&P in the UK (ask me for costs outside of the UK).

To get your calendar you can email me at mailto:robbieaibm@gmail.com">robbieaibm@gmail.com or send me a private message on here

I was just messing around with some balloons in my bathroom (best not ask) and I made this minimalist mini mummy man,
Mummy's (or is it Mummies?) are something I have been trying to get my head around for a while and Danny made a neat little one at the last Balloon jam, I will continue to work on some ideas I have I think.

I noticed an increase in the website hits recently so I did some research and found that my Twisted Cinema series of balloons have been appearing on a few other blogs around the world.

Here are a few of them

Digital spy - //http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/movies/news/a669072/twisted-cinema-awe-inspiring-balloon-modeller-recreates-movie-scenes-in-you-guessed-it-balloons.html#~poKC9Knck0T2Is

Mental Floss - http://mentalfloss.com/article/68656/tw ... vie-scenes

Fast company - //http://www.fastcocreate.com/3051220/these-balloon-versions-of-classic-movie-scenes-are-bursting-with-detail

and this which I think might be Spanish - //http://www.nopuedocreer.com/quelohayaninventado/28733/carteles-y-escenas-de-peliculas-con-figuras-de-globos/

Rob

This coming Wednesday (Sept 23rd)  I am attending the Isle of Wight balloon Jam, It is taking place near Ryde which is easy to get to from Portsmouth via the 15-20 minute ferry crossing and on arrival at Ryde lifts can be arranged to the venue.

More details can be found on the facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/events/455214737982727/

Rob

Hello all

I have been playing around with a bit of a different technique for a few months and I recently came up with this, I first started to play with the technique for my Twisted Cinema project but I wanted to try something else and this is what I came up with. Im not going to say too much about the technique at this time.

I saw this that someone posted on facebook, its a few other ideas for using balloons, thought it was quite interesting.

//http://sadtohappyproject.com/diy-ideas-balloon-yarn-bowls-craft/

Ever since March this year I have been heading to a boutique market in Southsea, they take place 1 weekend a month and I usually do just 1 of the days over a weekend, This month however there are some special events so I am doing 3 markets, the first was the usual boutique market, the second is an annual food festival and finally at the end of the month is the Americas cup weekend.

I thought I would share some photos of these 3 events and maybe some more. I always make a big sculpture to put outside my stall to attract attention.

Firstly the Boutique market on July the 5th, it was a busy weekend and I didn't have much time to prepare a big sculpture so I kind of threw the Windmill together at about 1am during the night before so I am not overly happy with it however it is a fully functional windmill with turning sails, I also forgot my big 'Bowtie balloon guy' banner AND my hat (grrrrr).

Here is a video of the Windmill in action - //https://youtu.be/ZmInCRyAjbM
Sadly it was the wind which killed the windmill in the end, around 3pm the sails decided to stop turning and I couldn't get them working again.

I have just had to make the saddest balloon delivery ever, A lady asked me to make a balloon for a funeral, it was for a man who died aged just 31, he loved Chameleons. The lady asked if I could make a balloon chameleon that they could attach helium balloons too so that they could launch it into the sky to join the young man who died. The Lady was really happy with it but it was one of those times where I didn't know what to say, it was really sad

Hello all,

Next Saturday (May 2nd) I am taking part in one of the worlds toughest obstacle based mud runs to raise money for Charity

Last year my Mum discovered she had Breast Cancer and after lots of treatment she has happily survived it and its near enough back to normal. Cancer is such a horrible thing for anyone to face so I have decided to take part in the Tough Mudder to raise money for Cancer Research UK, The Tough Mudder is a 12 mile long run involving mud, fire, electricity, water, ice and a multitude of other horrific obstacles, you can see more about it here - //http://www.toughmudder.co.uk or check out this video on youtube - //https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOawfAhWYyk

So I am now looking for people to sponsor me for this, I set my original target at £200 and I have now managed to smash that target and I am currently on £315, to those of you who have already sponsored me I thank you so so much, it means so much to me that so many people have contributed so much, but I am always looking for more money to go towards such an important charity.

Here is the link to sponsor me - //https://www.justgiving.com/magirob and all donations will be greatly received no matter how small.

Thank you for your time everyone
Rob

Over the past couple of months I have been having a stand at a boutique market in Southsea selling my balloons and promoting myself, I thought I would share a few photos of my set up.

Hello all

I was browsing through the forum when I stumbled across some comments in a thread about the Pop Twist (here - //http://balloonchat.co.uk/pop-twist-t1104.html)

In that thread was this conversation -

Quote from: "Rockinmagic"Which is why I'm going with the 4 petal flowers.  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

Quote from: "Graham Lee"PLEASE NO    Please make a 5 or 6 petal flower, anything but a 4 petal windmill.

Quote from: "Phoenix"One of Graham's pet hates is a 4 petal flower !!!

I have to agree with Graham when it comes to the 4 petal flower, it just seems lazy, with a little more effort you can make a 5 or 6 petal flower.

Anyway, it got me thinking, what are your pet hates in the balloon world? Does something really bug you?
Maybe it is a certain twist - like the pop twist or tulip twist?
How about a design of balloon model, like Swords, guns or the 3 twist dog?
What about a type of balloon, like 321s or a heart?
or maybe your pet hate is a costume or certain balloon carrier people wear, like Polka dots or balloon aprons?

It would be great to hear your thought

Rob

My other half sent me this link today, it's for the new Disney/Marvel super hero animated film Big Hero 6

Baymaxvs.Balloon:[url=http://youtu.be/L5dAxPhg6H4]http://youtu.be/L5dAxPhg6H4[/url]

Hello all

I thought I would share some information about how I put together the Terminator Photograph, this one has a LOT of photoshop work involved and is a LOT different to my last one of the elephant, you can see that here - //http://balloonchat.co.uk/the-process-photograph-elephant-t9612.html, in that post you can read all the reasons why I do so much to my photos.

So, here is the final photograph I am talking about
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] Term07.jpg[/attachment:38qmao5f]

This photo is made up of 2 photographs, firstly the balloon here
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] DSC_6760.jpg[/attachment:38qmao5f]

and then the one of me
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] Term01.jpg[/attachment:38qmao5f]

Hello everyone,

I was at Graham's house yesterday and during the conversations I mentioned that I use Photoshop to edit my photos, Now I know a lot of people do this but I quite often spend just as long taking and editing my photos as I do actually making the balloons especially when it comes to my new Twisted Cinema series, often the final photograph looks nothing like the original. When it comes to my new cinema series I want the final product to look as much like the original film scene/poster as I possibly can so it does involve a lot of editing.

I have many reasons why I spend so long editing my photos, (by the way these are all just of my opinion and I don't mean to upset or offend anyone and their work, this is just my point of view)

1 - I want my work to look at its very best, why spend all that time building a sculpture if you just take a poor quality photograph
2 - Every camera no matter how expensive or amazing will change the colour and light of the actual scene your seeing, have you ever taken a photo of a purple balloon? it often looks nothing like purple. By editing the photo I aim to get the colours looking more like the actual real colours.
2 - Lighting affects everything, house lights are a nightmare when it comes to photography and they turn everything yellow, I try and take my photos in as much natural light as possible but even then I like to tweak the white balance and lighting levels in photoshop to make it look much better.
4 - Composition, when taking the photograph I do try and get the composition as perfect as I can however I find there is always room for improvement once you see the photo on your computer screen cropping it and making the focus of the photograph sit right in the picture.
5 - I add Copywrite and other text in photoshop
6 - I enjoy it

Now as this point I want to make it known that I do not mean to disillusion anyone with my photos, as a professional photographer and professional balloon modeller I like to bring both these aspects together by putting my ballooning skills AND my photography skills into one final product.

I have never hidden the fact that I edit ALL my photos, I have never published an unedited photograph, even that photo of Auntie Brenda at her 75th birthday party that I took on my mobile phone is edited, its what I do, I have been using photoshop for about 25 years so its part of what I do.

Now I said earlier that I have NEVER published an unedited photograph . . . UNTIL NOW. I mentioned to Graham about sharing my photography process with you all, I am not going to teach everyone how to use Photoshop, if you want to learn then I am happy to give pointers but that's another story, what I AM going to do is show you some of the processes I take from when I have finished building the sculpture to publishing the final photograph. and in this I am going to share some unedited photos (think of this as being like those "no make up celebrities selfies", the before and after)

So to start off I am going to share with you a fairly basic sculpture/photograph that I took last November, what you see bing done here is the very basic of work I do to a photograph, this one took me about 20 mins, so first of all here is the original photo.
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] Elephant01.jpg[/attachment:2vwrhulz]

So as you can see my set up is fairly basic, no photography studio, no big expensive equipment and although I use a DSLR camera everything I do can be done with a mobile phone camera. This is my conservatory, it provides huge amounts of natural light, the cardboard (from Hobbycraft for about £4.50) comes in a range of colours for different background, I usually use a tripod but its not essential. I usually take 4 or 5 photos (sometimes as many as 20) and then choose the best once they are on my computer screen, the photo above was not the one I used, this is the photo I chose, the elephant fills the frame more so will be better quality than the last photo.
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] Elephant02.jpg[/attachment:2vwrhulz]

Next thing to do is to straighten the photo and then cropping it to a better size/shape and getting rid of as much unwanted background as I possibly can.
[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] Elephant03.jpg[/attachment:2vwrhulz]

Hey all, I thought I would post a few more of my recent balloons
First I was asked by a friend to do a lotus flower and an elephant for a wedding

and then I made the Grenadier guard for another friend.

Twisted Cinema 1 – Bright light, bright light.

[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] 01-GremlinsA.jpg[/attachment:m933uf2y]

Hello everyone
Back in 2013, I made a balloon every single day for 365 days and I have since been itching to start another new balloon challenge. I now have set myself a new challenge and it is called Twisted Cinema. Each week I am going to publish a balloon twist photograph which is based on a famous movie scene or movie poster. The challenge will start now and continue all the way through 2015 with a new photograph every week.

I have decided to kick off with some Christmas themed films and for my first movie I have chosen the 1984 hit 'Gremlins'. For this I wanted to recreate the scene where the Gremlins take over the kitchen and Billy's Mum has to fight them off. In the film one of the gremlins ends up in the blender and another gets shoved into the microwave oven.

This photograph contains 3 individual sculptures, I have made Gizmo before several times and you can see him here – http://www.mydailyballoon.com/17th-may-gizmo/, the nasty Gremlin however is a new sculpture for me, I found a gremlin photo online and tried to make mine look as similar as possible. He is made from mainly 160s, Gizmo is made from a mixture of 160s and 260s. If you are wondering I have placed Gizmo back in his box and I will not feed him after midnight or get him wet.

Here is a clue for next weeks movie scene – "I'm sure I have forgotten something".

Hello Folks, So, I am a bit late for this but I guess its better late than never, In September I was nominated by Danny and Linda to do a 5 day balloon challenge, here is my first day.

Day 1 - The Starship Enterprise.

I chose this design because back in May of 2013 I was 5 months into my 365 days of balloons and this one was almost the first of my images to get shared and replicated by other balloon modellers, This was a real boost for me at the time, making a balloon a day was actually quite hard work for me because it was not only about the balloon, it was also about the photography, taking and editing the photographs often used to take longer than making the actual balloon in the first place.

[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] 130 - USS Enterprise.jpg[/attachment:1yxx427s]

[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] 130a - USS Enterprise.jpg[/attachment:1yxx427s]

Another one tomorrow

Rob

I recently attended the London Balloon jam and the South West University meeting in South Wales (thanks for the invites everyone). Anyway it was at both of these events I shares a Reindeer design which I have been using on and off for a while. Here is a photo I took last Christmas.

[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] 357---Reindeer-2.jpg[/attachment:3js523c4]

Anyway I have recently been playing with the design and I have come up with several variations to this design which turns the reindeer into other animals. Firstly here is a Panda

[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] 2014---49---PandaA.jpg[/attachment:3js523c4]

And here is a Rhino

[ You are not allowed to view this attachment ] 2014 - 50 - Rhino.jpg[/attachment:3js523c4]

I will post more Reindeer adaptations as they happen

Rob