Balloon Artist create Life-Size Inflatable Dinosaurs

Mark Verge combines his balloon-twisting talent with a passion for collect fossils to generate life-size balloon models of dinosaurs. 43-year-old Mark Verge, from Ontario, Canada, first started working with balloons in 1995, after getting his hands on a book on creating balloon models. It was a lot trickier than he thought, as balloons would constantly pop when twisted, but after 16 years of practice he has reached a point where he can generate intricate sculptures using thousands of balloons. He has developed his own technique and uses a range of different-sized balloons to create his inflatable masterpieces.

The idea of making life-size models of dinosaurs was enthused by his passion for collecting fossils, so one day he just started twisting balloons to make a dinosaur skeleton. It was a success and now he has a collection of balloon dinosaurs, as well, including a spinosaurus made from 800 balloons, a stegosaurus and triceratops made from 700 balloons, and an utahraptor made from 200 balloons. But his most inspiring work yet is a 39-foot model of a T-Rex, made from 1,400 balloons. It took Verge 55 hours to finish, as he had to make each vertebra individually and put them together at the end, to make sure his T-Rex looked just right. You might think there’s a metal frame in there somewhere, but it’s all in the balloons. It took lots of effort, but this inflatable masterpiece won Mark Verge the first place in the world balloon-sculpting competition.