James Cameron’s “Avatar”
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but that didn’t stop me from making one of the main characters of the movie Jake Sully.
This was the picture I used to develop the balloon sculpture.
Let me know what you think of the design? I always like reading your comments.
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Ha! Very clever!
Very impressive! Well done!
very cool
a good start
I gotta be honest with you, Dale, I’ve been dreading the day when balloon artists try to make the characters from AVATAR.
Even when Don Caldwell (to my mind, the best twister in the world-sorry) hinted on his twitter account that he would attempt a balloon sculpture I flinched and thought ‘nooooooooo!!!’ lol.
I hate to say this, but I don’t think that balloons have the realism at this point to authentically duplicate advanced performance capture techniques-and I’m a balloon artist myself!
I will gladly admit that I’m wrong if someone can prove it-I’m sorry, but you haven’t-I don’t think anyone will.
I myself considered making Jake Sully, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it justice.
If you see the movie, maybe you will understand why I am being so critical (really trying not to be).
I think to make a convincing sculpture of Jake, you would need a team of artists.
In my opinion, the best team would be Niko Fric and Rie HoSoKai (look at their work involving facial features-for example, Niko’s Michael Jackson sculpture), I think that Don would be of great use on the team as well, as he has a knack for thinking outside the box when he designs sculptures.
You’ll notice that I am commenting anonymously, lol…Really, I don’t mean to be too critical, but when James Cameron does something like this, you have to do it justice.
It’s not enough just to make it blue with yellow eyes.
Sorry.
Don’t know why you wouldn’t want to leave your name… but that’s you. If I was trying to duplicate the face perfectly I would have done what other artist have done and stuffed balloon inside balloons, glued balloon together to achieve a look, use more the 260 balloons. What I created is what I had in my balloon apron. If I really wanted to dupllicate it, I would have spend many hours working on the design and posted my very last finished “perfect” design. Instead I looked at a picture, recreated it with what I had seen, and post my first finished peace. I probably could have spent more time studying the picture. Be truthful, I only spent 20 mintues to make the face. The picture I found was on my first Goolge search and didn’t look for any others. This is why I consider myself an artist, I doesn’t have to look like the original to be art.
excellent work, as always….. I havent watch the movie yet but this looks great….
Despite the critique above, I like the figure myself. I WILL say that making realistic “human” figures is possibly the most DIFFICULT thing possible with balloons. That being said, I am ALL for trying! Keep it up Dale. EXCELLENT shot!
Papa Balloon
Hi Dale,
I have seen the movie with my teenage daughters and loved it.
I was impressed with your character and my daughter walked by as I was looking at it and said “Cool”. That was high praise, teenagers are not easily impressed
Regards Jayne
Can I say “dayum?” That’s good! very GOOD! I haven’t seen the movie yet but my daughter has and she says….will he tell you how mom???? LOL.. .Awesome!!!
Dale, you rock as usual. The nameless guy, who chooses to be overly critical first off, I believe is probably not a twister. That doesn’t really matter I know, but as a twister who is always searching for new and awesome ideas that are doable for parties or “special for the BD kid”, you have come through….and again you have succeeded. Thank you for sharing.
gr8 job as usual thanks 4 our conversationagain
Dale-
Really nice job. I think Mr. Anonymous is dead wrong. You did a good job at capturing the look of the character, and that’s what it’s really about.
Ken
I think it is great, especially since you didn’t even try too hard. The kids will love it. I have found that they like anything a clown will give them. I do minimal balloon twisting since we are a ministry but I would love to know how to make this one. I don’t think we want to make realistic people but we want to make characters and that is what this is. If you tell a kid that this is an Avatar character they will beleive it and tell their friends too. Kudos to you. You are awesome. Thanks for sharing so much with us. As far as the first comment I agree that the person probably never twisted a balloon so doesn’t know anything anyway. You can basically ignore the first comment because the person is not very knowledgeable from my standpoint.
Hello Dale,
The character you created was great! I havn’t seen the movie myself, but without looking at the picture My first thought was of the genie in Aladin, but when you look at the picture below there is much similarity, and considering geting it down in 20 mins I must say Fantastic! As a thought, I was wondering if the 160 for the lips and the hair would have given it a different look? I’ll try it myself and see if I come up with something different.
Cheers!
Richard.
Pretty cool, Dale…I especially like the way you looped the nose over (does that make ANY sense to anyone but me?! HAHA). Cheers…
Dale looks great any idea how to make the dragons square face?
Don’t know if I can do something like that. I do make some impressive arches & tree.
I think you have done a wonderful job. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be critical of such work. Keep it up. I am not very good at balloon making but you have inspired me to give it a little more of a try.
Have a good day and keep at it.
Darrell