Category: Improvisation Inflatables

Inflatable 1 -2

Inflatables 1

My first inflatable mainly consisted of random small pieces that I cut out from the plastic bags. I tried to keep the color scheme random as well because I was going for the mosaic design feel. It was successful at first, but since the pieces were small, it became harder to tape the pieces together. In the beginning, I tried to make it so that tape is on the inside of the inflatables, but I realized that I have a royal blue colored tape and it would be nice to show that. This first inflatable had an end result of an asteroid or spaceship shape. It was intriguing to see how it turned out to be even though I struggled the most on this one.

I wanted to utilize more of the corner pieces of the plastic bags in my second inflatable. At this point, I already realized that bigger pieces will be easier to work with so all my cut-outs were big, random pieces. I started out with the two orange corners and taped the other pieces onto them. I also used a lot of cut-outs that w ere cut at the folded edge of the plastic bag to make symmetrical shaped (similar to how you can one cut a snowflake with paper). It was less time-consuming than the first inflatable. The main issue in this one was that corner pieces are hard to tape together as you have to alter them to a certain angle before you can apply tape. In addition, I ran out of my blue tape before I could finish it, so I had to use some green tape. This may have changed the aesthetic of the inflatable a little bit, but I think it still overall fits the mosaic feel. The end result looked like a pillow with lots of different colors.

Inflatable 3

My third inflatable was the least improvised piece. I had been experimenting with random shapes from the plastic bags in the previous two inflatables, so I decided to make something different: a longer inflatable with a star shape figure somehow. This “long shape with star” reminded me of my childhood times when I watched cartoons about magical girl protagonists who would use their magical wand to help solve the crimes around them. Inspired by that, I needed to figure out how to make a star. I searched up how to one cut a star, but since the plastic material is so slippery, it did not turn out to be great and took a couple of tries before I felt like the star pieces could fit with each other. Then it was the white part of the wand, which was originally supposed to be a wing shape, but that was too difficult and I decided to improvise that part. The bottom was just cylindrical with a smaller red cylinder shape. The hardest part of this inflatable was taping them together because there were so many creases and angles that tape could not entirely cover. Even now, air would escape quickly after I inflate it, so it would deflate almost immediately. As my friend says, the speed at which my wand deflates is how long my magic will last. 🙁

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This project has challenged me greatly, perhaps too much. Before receiving the materials for the project, I decided that at some point I’d want to make a bag out of rogue items anyways, so I decided why not first for practice. This was a rude awakening to the art form because I was unhinged cutting the most irregular shapes for myself out of trash bags of varying textures, of varying qualities (some riddled with tiny perforations that had me retracing many steps at times), using three separate kinds of tape, and both inside and outside taping methods. Looking back, what was my most frustrating piece may truly be my favorite. I enjoy the recycled look, the organic form, the semi-deflated state structure, the ingenuity, and the personal symbolism for me that represents trial and tribulation as well as growth as an artist.

The cube was my next inflatable and a protest to my previous irregular organic form. I wanted to cut neat (as neat as my unsteady hands allow) regular shapes and make an straightforward and what I thought would be easy shape. Turns out a cube is not as easy as it seemed. This presented challenges and learning opportunities in how tiny errors in pattern pieces can add up to create cattywampus edges that do not desire to meet. This was also an opportunity to practice using tape to crease the edges and as a structural element. Going forward, what I will think about most from this cube was the 3 unique states of this cube: pre-inflating deflated, inflated, post-inflation deflation. They range from flat to almost spherical to a “perfect” cube.

The sun/flower was the result of a post dinner communion drinking tea on the kitchen floor. An excited group of friends saw my supplies for this class and were inspired to join me making inflatables. To their dismay, it is a bit harder than they first thought and had to reel in their tremendous ideas of grandeur, ultimately making a non-inflated headdress, a bag (from pieces of a cut bag), a mitten like structure, and a “floaty”. From this night of arts and crafts, was born an interesting play on how to play with a 2D image of an inflatable. The uniqueness of this third inflatable is the fact that when deflated, one will claim it is a sunflower, though when inflated, the pillow like sphere and conical petals create a firey sun effect.

The last inflatable was more for a joke than anything, though of course merit was found in this process. This inflatable allowed me to give personality to the piece which was valuable in character work for future inflatables when I will complete my desire to make an animal. How can I create it to represent a given emotion? How can I accessorize it to add flair? Also, with this long inflatable, I realizes that the inflating motion can be even more dynamic, for example if I rolled up the car wash man similar to a paper towel roll, and as I inflated it from the bottom, it would roll out similar to one of those birthday kazoos.

For my first inflatable, I started off with cutting out lots of random blue, clear, light green, and dark green pieces from the bags. I started off with the corner of one bag that I branched out of. At one point, I thought it looked kind of like a fish and the color palette was giving me ocean vibes.

I had lots of organic shapes that were kind of difficult to piece together. I used up the whole given tape roll on just half of the inflatable!

I learned from building this inflatable that it is hard to fit together pieces that are not made to fit together. Additionally, I figured out kind of how to make my own corners and points through joining together pieces in a 3-dimensional direction. This inflatable had a lot of leaks and holes that made it difficult to inflate so I also learned to repeatedly tape the bag on the outside and then turn it inside out to reinforce all the seams.

For my second inflatable, I decided to stick to some more regular shapes of mostly triangle-ish and square-ish shapes joined together.

I also learned how to use objects I had to lay the “seams” against them so that they are easier to tape.

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In this inflatable, I reinforced all the seams by taping on the outside and inside. This one kept air a lot better than my first one because the edges matched together better with these shapes. I also was literally making my first inflatable on my bed so it was taped together all wrinkly, but once I had a large flat workspace, it made it a lot easier to make this inflatable a little more “crisp”. I also got a lot of practice with making these corners that I thought were really fun to make.

With my last inflatable, I decided to go with a more festive color palette. I layered yellow, orange, and pink bags on top of each other, folded them up, and cut out this diamond chain pattern to try something new out.

I joined these edges together and then at the top and bottoms, began attaching random pieces and creating new corners to create a more interesting shape.

At one section, I tried to connect a star-shaped hole together with a star face, but I learned from this inflatable that it is very hard to do that and ultimately was not very successful, but it taught me that in the future, I probably need to measure things more accurately because I was free-handing all the shapes.

I also created a pocket in one corner that I could poke the straw into so that I could secure the straw more tightly.

Overall, this assignment took me a lot longer than I thought, but it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about how 3D structures are constructed. I was proud of how much I improved from one inflatable to the next.

Inflatable_1

Inflatable_2

Inflatable_3

For my first inflatable, I began by cutting random shapes from the provided silver and white plastic bags. These shapes included a mix of polygonal forms (often triangles or quadrilaterals) as well as longer strips and curves. I assembled them together using a combination of pink gaffers tape on the outside and clear scotch tape on the inside, observing observing the difference in appearance when seams are highlighted or hidden. At no point did I know what the final shape would look like, but I observed about 2/3 of the way through assembly that I had a tendency (though unintentional) to try to make my inflatable spherical. To combat this, I explicitly made a portion of the inflatable protrude which gives the form a snail-like appearance. I followed the process demonstrated in class most closely for this inflatable and had reasonable success making it airtight.

Initially, I struggled with having absolutely no direction for my first inflatable, so for my second, I decided to create two halves and join them together, each with a different prescribed rule. For one half, I had all of my starting pieces cut to the same shape (light and dark greens) while for the other half I kept everything one color (purple). I also flipped my inflatable inside out so that at first, the taped seams were not visible. However, I struggled to join the two halves of the form, and when I did the seal was not very airtight and I was unable to inflate the form completely. To remedy this, I used the pink gaffers tape to cover leaks in the inflatable, which intentionally disrupts the seamless look I had been trying to maintain. I found the second inflatable to be the most challenging because I tried to be the most ambitious in my assembly.

After completing the first two inflatables, I found that I was nearly out of tape – both the supplied gaffers tape and my own personal tape. Consequently, I chose to experiment with constricting the shape of a default inflated shape, such that I could use very little tape. I sealed two gallon-sized Ziploc bags together to create a base shape, then cut thin strips of red, yellow, and blue plastic. I tied, braided, and weaved these strips into other forms, then attached them around the Ziploc bags in various ways to shape the final inflated form. While I had the most fun creating this inflatable, I felt restricted by the inherent shape of the bags; I would have enjoyed restricting a less predictable shape.

Going into the project, I wanted to lean into the “improvisational” part of the assignment. 

For the first sample, I created 4 inch by 4 inch squares and then started to patch them together without any rules. Starting from one of the most basic shapes, I wanted to see how far I can push to make it a less-basic three-dimensional form. In the end, the final form was not as exciting as I hoped to be but I enjoyed the process of it at least.

In the second sample, I cut out all the handle of the plastic bags to create a fan-shaped inflatable. I liked that the handle part was already double layered and when I tried to inflate each piece, it created a unique shape. The second sample is more planned, but I also had some trouble sealing each handle into one and fully inflating the final piece. 

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The third one is another more improvisational experiment. First, I cut off all the corners of the plastic bag and then taped one edge to another. Though I really enjoy the shape I have created, box tape didn’t really seal the edges together which made the air leak and the final form not fully inflate. Also, since each piece was not a smooth plane, It was hard to not make the edges crease. However, I enjoyed this sample the most since it was a different experience to create a three dimensional form using simpler three dimensional forms.

I honestly was a bit nervous to start this assignment. As someone who is so used to assignments having rules and constraints to follow, having this assignment where quite the opposite is true forced me to think (or, not think) in ways in which I was not used to. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed being able simply sit down, cut plastic, tape it together, and blow it up and see what I made once I finally got into the groove of things.

For the first inflatable, I went in with absolutely zero direction and simply cut random shapes out of 3 plastic bags. Then, when I put it together, I tried to put them together in a way such that no piece touched a piece of a similar color, just to see what kind of visual effect that would create.

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This piece almost resembled a really long fox head, with these 2 ears that seemed to poke out above the body fo the inflatable with a long snout coming out. I thought it was really interesting to see how various edges fit together, namely combining round edges and straight edges to create bends in the inflatable and experimenting with the how much I pulled the inflatable in a certain direction to adjust the tightness and size of it as I put the final pieces together, which seemed to add dimension and bumps to the inflatable.

For the second piece, I opted to use a different strategy when putting the pieces together. Rather than the last piece where each piece touched pieces of different colors, I instead put pieces of similar colors together to see how that could create a visual effect of more interesting forms being seen on the inflatable. I also tried to create more pointed edges to the inflatable by pulling the edges of the pieces more tightly to new pieces I taped on.

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This inflatable looks like a lot of different things to me. From one angle, it looks like a cat sitting up, with 2 distinct ears and a tail. From another angle it almost looks like a fish swimming through water. I also ran out of the provided tape with the first inflatable so I had to use plain Scotch tape.

For the last inflatable, I decided to experiment with making a 2D design of the inflatable, and once I was pleased with it, folding and taping it immediately into 3D without adding a single piece.

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The 2D design essentially looked like a flat Christmas tree, with a tall triangle and a rounded bottom. As I pulled everything to each other, I experimented with how to connect the edges. I ultimately decided on connecting them as if I folded the design in half vertically. It ultimately created this cone like object which seems to resemble a 3D Christmas tree. Honestly, I was pretty surprised with how this turned out – especially the fact that the 2D and 3D forms were much more similar visually that I thought they would be.