[en] The early stages of radio source evolution are studied using a modified version of our previously developed approach to the twin beam model. A continuous source of energy and relativistic plasma lies within a cloud of confining gas in an active galactic nucleus. The nature of ''engine'' is not specified, but we assume an initially symmetric ejection of plasma. The boundary between the relativistic plasma and the confining medium is calculated using several approximations, and we treat the source's nondimensional reduced luminosity, its offset from the confining cloud's center, and the cloud's eccentricity as the key parameters, as the other properties of the cloud can be coupled with the engine's power to give the reduced luminosity. We conclude: sources with low energy tend to form bubbles while those with higher luminosities form jets; larger offsets increase the probability of direct jet formation; higher eccentricities provide better collimation, as do smaller offsets; even low offsets produce single jets or plasmoid streams in one direction