these were the tutorials I was working of: Cinema 4D Tutorial - Create Balloons Using Cloth Dyn... and creating a Pillow in blender (Timelapse)

but no luck :/

PHEW... tbh this is going to be very tricky. This is as starting base very good. I would start sculting from there - i guess mainly with the smooth brush to make the folds not that massive. And then - yeah - remesh the ballon and bake a normal map

PacoPooley: thanks Paco! I'm super meh with sculpting, but this will be good practice. I will give it a try, thanks so much!

make a copy of the base mesh first of course in case you mess something up that can happen fast

PacoPooley haha yea, I do that probably more often than I should, all my layers are usually filled with copies >.< haha