Good Characters, Inc. (oh, the irony) has launched a new application for Apple iPhones called "Chinese Alphabet".


http://goodcharacters.com/blog/blog.php?id=110

The application uses a set of random Chinese characters to correspond with 26 letters in English alphabet. The company claims this will "add mystery to your writing".

At least they are smart enough to put up this disclaimer at bottom of the page:

"The translation provided by Chinese Alphabet is intended for personal use and entertainment only. Not recommended for tattoo artists to use this to tattoo their clients, iPhone app developers to localize Chinese apps, CIA agents to communicate national secrets, or security professionals to encrypt passwords."

Maori inspired shoulder tattoo piece

Hi,

Here's another shoulder tattoo piece inspired by the Kirituhi / Maori style. This custom tatoo design is for the upper shoulder and top of the shoulderblade.
It has nice complex lines and fills:

















The final design looks like this:
















Regards, Mark

Kirituhi forearm tattoo design

Hi!

Here's a forearm tattoo design in Kirituhi style, it's a custom design for a customer from the USA.

He wanted an original Maori piece on his left forearm and a Kirituhi design on his other forearm.

The size of this tattoo sketch is 25 cm long and approx. 12 cm wide, narrowing down to 6 cm at the wrist.

First I started to draw the outline of the design and began filling the shape with flowing lines, koru curves and sharp edges.

I sent it to the customer to check if I was heading in the right direction. He really liked the first preview, so I could start on the fill with some tribal patterns.

Here are two pictures of the sketch, the outlines, the total sketch and finally the completed design.

Kind regards, Mark Storm

info@storm3d.com

www.storm3d.com

maori inspired ribcage tattoo sketch

Hi,

After some busy weeks, doing multiple custom tattoo designs, I would like to show you some sketches of my latest works.
I created a Kirituhi design for the side of the body, on the ribcage.
My client asked me to combine some maori inspired style elements, with the initials of his nephews.

I'm not really fond of doing tattoos with lettering, but this one wasn't that hard.

Here are a few photographs of the design in progress.
In the first images the balance was too much focussed on the upper part of the tattoo design, so I redesigned it.




















Finally here's a photo of the finished tattoo on the side of the body:




















In a few days I will post another tattoo design, this time it's a forearm design in Kirituhi style.

Kind regards, Mark Storm

http://www.bme.com/tattoo/A91210/high/jyc7-tribals-natural.jpg

At firs, it looks like pure gibberish - mixed Japanese and Chinese characters:

厉 カ ネ 羊

But looking more carefully, perhaps the idiot started with these characters:

励祥

But then he decided to switch from horizontal to vertical writing, and then split up the characters at the wrong places, making two characters into four.

Hopeless!

By the way, what does 励祥 mean anyway?

from: Herouth M.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 1:43 AM
subject: [Fwd: Emailing: P1230294.JPG]

Hi. I'm from Israel. Love your blog.

The story goes like this: I study Japanese for several years now, and I can read about 1400 kanji more or less. One day, my co-worker approaches me with his cellphone. "Can you tell me what this says?" he asks me, showing me a photo of a piece of fabric carrying the kanji 私変態. I take a look, and reply "It's not grammatical, but it basically says "I'm a pervert".

"What?!"

"'I'm a pervert'. The first character means 'I', the other two mean 'pervert'", where did you get that from, anyway?

"It's on my 1.5 years old daughter's shirt!"

After LOLing for about 15 minutes straight, I kind of demanded that he get me a photo of the complete shirt so I can send it to Hanzi Smatter. And here is the shirt, complete with the cute, luckless 1.5 years old "hentai" herself.

I mean, yes, I have seen intentionally-made "hentai" shirts around the web (and on Hanzi Smatter). Adults buy them and wear them for the laughs. But who in his right mind would put this on a toddler's shirt, and sell it in a children's clothing store rather than a joke shop? I can't imagine.

Yes, I suppose it *could* mean "metamorphosis", but really, outside scientific contexts, it's almost always means "pervert". Or am I wrong?

Cheers,
Herouth



Cute kid, though. The "bunny" or whatever kind of cute animal that is also on the shirt is a nice touch. We have obviously uncovered a diabolical plot to "pervert" innocent youth with inappropriate hanzi!

By the way, the T-shirt would be cuter and better if it was grammatically correct, like:

私、変態なんです。[I ... am a pervert.]

私、変態かも…[I might be a pervert...]

As it is, it sounds more like Tarzan-speak: "me - pervert." You kind of expect "you - Jane" next.