"There's just something that bothers me..." I say in my best Columbo impersonation.

Recently, I've noticed a lack of true feelings for inflation art anymore; briefly, I wondered whether I was "cured" of my fetish, but my dreams discredit that hypothesis. However, upon analysis, I realized that the thing missing from most arts I view is the feeling of truly ballooning out, the visceral feeling of actually filling with air and stretching out. "How can anyone draw that, mister inflato-know-it-all?" you wonder, to which I shall elucidate...

I know most people are simply turned on by the inflated shape or the idea of getting to that shape, to which I am not badmouthing you, but for me, it's much more complex. I have found that much of my feelings come from a sense of visceralness, not just the getting bigger and rounder, but the true feelings, both physical and emotional, of such bizarre states of being. Of course, constant spewings of "Oooh! This air feels so good as it fills my body bigger and bigger!" and "Oh my, I'm getting so small and flat letting myself deflate." can get obnoxious, so I prefer that sort of stuff insinuated rather than expounded. Maybe I'm just too much of an intellectual that way.

Not to mention, with plenty of pictures of inflation I've been seeing recently, there's an issue of texture. I've seen plenty of inflation artists simply make their characters into big round balls; while I like the shapes they get into, I get the feeling that these characters have always been ball-shaped, rather than having been forced, or at least coerced, into such shapes. I think it's because they are colored in such a way that they simply become shiny rather than stretched, and I don't mean transparent (not always). I have found that the best way to portray balloons or balloon characters, especially over-inflated ones, is to have a very subtle "stretch mark" texture.

While hardly as obvious as the stretch marks on a human or animal, balloon stretch marks occur on the balloon body due to stresses and strain, especially when over-inflated. Balloons are hardly ever perfectly smooth and round due to whatever little errors crop up in manufacturing, and if you're inflating an organic being (heaven forbid for real!), such effects would show up naturally, perhaps more noticeably due to the imperfections of flesh. The lack of such strain marks, especially at exceedingly large sizes, rather messes with my perception of it as inflation; more like embiggening or magnifying.

Speaking of magnification, the same can be said of giants. Not just macro inflation suffers from a lack of detail, but macro in general. Without a sense of texture to say that a giant is interacting with light in a way a large object would, it looks no better than a photoshop job. I guess I'm spoiled by the way Eiichiro Oda draws giants with plenty of hatching, so you KNOW their skin is not just smooth and sweet (except on lady giants, of course :|). Maybe I just stare too much at my own skin, wondering what it would look like multiplied over the area of a football field.

It's too bad that I can't express it into words very well, but I suppose it's good that I am at a loss for words, since I would hate to come off as self-aggrandizing, especially as I haven't posted any good art in forever. My favorite texture is still the fur textures that come with Krystal for Poser, and I think they "inflate" so lovely.

Anyways, here are some of my favorite arts that illustrate more of a sense of balloon texture that I so love, or otherwise actually look "ballooning".
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3051784/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10554988/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/4153002/ - Don't forget to check out the sequence from beginning to end.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5325392/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/10754068/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12443170/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13754431/ - Love his works in general
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13681066/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13895822/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14189151/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14562767/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/13898220/ - Sound warning, but good sound design
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15134476/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15877041/


You may note that a lot of the textural examples are vinyl, if only because the strain marks are so much more pronounced on such a relatively inflexible material. Latex can and will strain also, but the effect is much more subtle, apparently unachievable in more cartoonish works. Also, if you think any of these arts don't mesh with my "high standards", let's civilly discuss what there is to look for rather than argue "DUMB (SUNNUVA) BITCH, DON'T BE AN ELITIST PRICK!"

Can't we all just get along?
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