Shouldercap tattoo in Samoan Maori patterns

Hi,

I have been quite busy the last few months with a lot of different projects, with little time to write posts on my blog.
But to show you some new projects I've been working on; here's a new tattoo for my shoulder galleries. It's a mixed design with Maori elements and Samoan pattern. The images below show the design process in different steps. First I make a basic outline for the shoulder as a template. Then I use my pencil to sketch some flowing koru shapes. Normally I do the whole piece with pencil first and start tracing it when I'm finished.
Today I was a bit impatient, and decided to trace parts of the tribal shapes. You see some Polynesian turtle patterns and Samoan spearheads and stylized fish.

Here you see half of the design traced with a black felt tip marker:

And a few pictures of the finished shoulder tattoo design

I also made a youtube movie of this Shoulder tattoo 156:

The tattoo is available for purchase on my website here.

Tomorrow I will be back with another design process!

Regards, Mark

from: Joey L. 

to: tiangotlost@gmail.com 

date: Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 3:22 PM 

subject: Lost in translation 

Can you please translate. 

Not another “gibberish tattoo”!

Obviously it’s supposed to be JOEY from the handy-dandy cheat sheet to the bogus gibberish font.

from: Alan Siegrist
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 11:52 PM
subject: Woman tree

Hi Tian, Hope you are still enjoying Austria.

Have you seen this tattoo?

The character is actually the Japanese katakana ホ (ho) not 木 (ki, tree). The mistaken use of ‘ho’ is quite unfortunate considering the woman as both subject and canvas. And yes, the hip-hop slang meaning of ‘ho’ (whore) is known in Japan and written with the same character.


http://www.ratemyink.com/?action=ssp&pid=103667

Back in 2005, I saw a photo in Flickr titled "Cindy, a beautiful canvas."

Fast forward to 2012, Dr. Victor Mair met the young lady in person:

So I asked Cindy what she thought the tattooed symbols running down her neck and spine meant. She replied:

The bottom two were supposed to be success… then respect.

Oh well. Works either way. It is what it is. You can put whatever name you want.

Queen OF The World is what I prefer.

I followed up by asking Cindy what she thought the second, very unusual, symbol meant. She said, "Oh, that's just a cross for Jesus."

Tentatively, this is what I had to work with:

1. mǔ 母 ("mother")

2. zǐ 子 ("child"), or perhaps some kind of cross

3. wù 物 ("thing, object")

4. guì 贵 ("precious; expensive")

With considerable effort, I could get that to mean "Mother and child are precious things." But I was not satisfied with this interpretation, both because of my uncertainty over the second symbol and because it required me to accept a strained interpretation of the final two characters.

(Continue reading at Language Log)

Pencil sketch of a Mauri-style shoulder tatou

Hi,

I get a lot of requests for custom tattoo designs, unfortunately it's impossible to do them all, but here's a nice tatoo project I'm working on at the moment.

My customer asked me to do a tattoo sketch for the shoulder and up to the back/neck. He wanted to see some original eagle designs with claws and wings in a tribal style. The big central curve at consists of two tribal claws of the eagle and at the bottom of the tattoo I made some realistic feathers that would flow onto his biceps and upper arm.

Here's the first pencil sketch I did:

The feathers needed some adjustments to run on the biceps correctly. I also made them more abstract to go better with the overall design:

I'm waiting for my customers response, so I can finish the pencil drawing and start on the final high quality piece.

If you're interested in my designs, you can follow me on twitter, facebook or check out my channel at youtube, simply hit the buttons at the upper right of this page.

Any questions? Please send me a message!

Mark

Create a Maori knife design for CNCone cutting

Hi!

This time a different project, no tattoos, but a design for a knife. It's not a normal knife for cutting your meat, but more a kind of artistic/decorative design. The final piece will be cut by a friend, who is using CNCOne at work. He needs a special kind of file format, a .dxf file.

This means that I need to use Adobe Illustrator to export the linedrawing of the knife, so he can import it into CNCone, a CAD/CAM software program, used to instruct a carving machine to make objects from all kinds of metal, wood and plastics.

For more information on CNCone, you can visit a blog called CNCzone.com

Well, first I started of with a pencil sketch and scanned it. Placed the file in Adobe Illustrator and used the pen tool to trace the image. Here's a picture of the first knife I designed:

Then I used the 3d filter to add some depth:

The file was exported as a .dxf file so my friend could use it CNCone, but there was a problem with the design, especially the inner parts. 

The spindle that carves out the metal is round with a minimim diameter of 4 mm, so it can not carve all the sharp edges of the design. The outer shape was not a problem fortunately.

So I had to adjust the knife design, back to the drawing table....

I made another sketch, and used some other patterns inside the knife/blade. You can see that only half the patterns are drawn, it's simply a matter of mirroring the design and voilá!

Exported the linedrawing and to test the .dxf file I opened it in Rhinoceros 3D. 

To show you the full process from sketch to a ready-to-carve file I recorded a video:

When the final design is carved by a CNC machine, I will post some pictures or a small video.

Any questions? Just let me know.

Kind regards, Mark Storm

Shoulder tattoo design in Maori style

Hi,

Recently I created two new tattoo designs for my webshop. The first tattoo is a Kirituhi Maori style shoulder design. All my tattoos are hand-drawn on A3 paper with a B2 pencil. First I sketch the basic shape of the shoulder and upper arm and then add some koru (fern) curves that flow nicely through the design. Once I'm satisfied with the overall look, I start filling in the patterns between the korus with triangles, lines, spearheads and other repetitive shapes. Below are a few pictures of the tattoo design in progress

For my Youtube channel I created a special video, so you can see the total design from start to finish:

The final high resolution is available on my website, but can also be purchased here on my blog. Once I receive your payment, you will get 2 high quality .jpg files. The first one is the full design including gradients, the second is the linedrawing or stencil for your tattoo artist, so he can easily transfer the outlines of the design to your skin with thermal paper.

Shoulder tattoo 150

Size: 30 x 30 cm (12 x 12 inches)

Price: 41,65 euro (57 USD)

If you have a question regarding this tattoo or other designs, just let me know or visit www.storm3d.com for all high resolution tattoos.

Kind regards, Mark Storm
info@storm3d.com

Samoan shoulder tattoo design tattooed

Hi!

Recently I designed a few new shoulder tattoos in Samoan style with some Maori koru shapes:

  

The designs are inspired on the Samoan tatoos like the Sonny Bill Williams shoulder tatoo. The drawings have really detailed patterns and repetitive shapes, mostly in a symmetrical design. 

These designs are covering the shoulder part and part of the upper arm, to just above the elbow.

Yesterday I received a photo from a tattoo artist (Nate Gamble, Australia) who had done the right design shown above on one of his clients. He was really pleased with the result and just bought a new design, this time the second tattoo above.

Here's the photo of the tattooed design:

Shoulder tattoo 141 tattooed by Nate Gamble, Australia

I have seen a lot of my tattoos done by different tattoo artists, but this one is a really nice and clean piece I must say.

Any questions? Just let me know!

Kind regards, Mark Storm

info@storm3d.com

from: dulce
to: "tiangotlost@gmail.com"
date: Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 12:19 PM
subject: a question/ tatoo

dear sir

today I met this man, who came to fix my car.
when I saw his arm, tattoed , I did ask him the meaning of the word and he said: this is the name of his son, called: João Victor (something like John Victor in English)

Is he right? I don´t think so....

best regards

dulce



It is completely gibberish, not even correct with the gibberish font.

Slightly off topic here.

Image above was posted in CheckoutMyInk.com. The tattoo is Korean Hangul (Korean alphabet), but upside-side down, of course.

Who or what is "Park Noh Sik"?

Maori fern tattoo with koru swirls

Hi,

A few months ago I created a Maori fern tattoo design for a customer from New-Zealand, also named Aotearoa. The koru is the spiral shape of  a silver fern frond and it is a symbol of growth, strenght and peace. This symbol is used in a lot of Maori art, carving and tattoos.

My Kiwi customer from the Pacific Ocean asked me to design a tattoo to cover the full side of his body, from armpit to just above the hip. First I created a sketch with pencil for the rough outline of the fern. Then I added some repetitive leaves and koru shapes on the bottom. To add some more depth and 3d to the fern and arrow shapes, I added shadings to the leaves. The high resolution tattoo is optimized and the linedrawing or stencil is created for the customer. This linedrawing is used to transfer the outlines of this koru tatoo to the body.

Yesterday I received this photo of the final tattoo on the side of the customers body. It looks great!

If you are interested in a custom maori inspired tattoo or a silver fern design, please let me know and maybe I can help you out with a unique piece.

Kind regards, Mark Storm

info@storm3d.com

www.storm3d.com

Shoulder sleeve tatou in Maori Kirituhi style

Hi,

It has been quite a while since my last post, but I have been really busy with all kind of projects, from logo design to t-shirts and other custom projects.

Here's my latest design in Maori style, a shoulder sleeve for my galleries, where it is available for purchase.
This series of pictures shows the process from the first pencil sketch to the traced design:

The final traced drawing, before the scanning and optimizing process:

Some nice  depth of field photos:

Upper part of the Maori tattoo, partially traced with a marker

a nice overview of the total tattoo

The completed design with flowing maori koru curves

If you're interested in ordering the high resolution design and stencil/linedrawing of this tattoo, simply hit the 'buy now' button below and you will be forwarded to the Paypal website, so you can order with creditcard or Paypal account:

Size: 30 x 26 cm (11,5 x 10 inches)

Product code: Shoulder tattoo 155

Price: 41,65 euro (57 USD)

Any questions? Just let me know.

Kind regards, Mark Storm
info@storm3d.com
www.storm3d.com

In recent issue of GQ magazine (US edition), I came across this ad for The Art of Shaving:



The Chinese translation of "The Ambassador of Smooth" as 平稳大使 is contextually incorrect.

平稳 refers to stability, not related to physical surface condition, which shaving is about. Nor the American English slang usage of "smooth" in terms of finesse.

平稳大使 would be better suited as ad slogan for a physical therapy clinic, than hawking male grooming products.

from: Elsa M.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 10:41 PM
subject: Hanzismatter-worthy shirt

I actually laughed out loud when I saw the Chinese on this shirt. Thought I would share. Some smart alec designer had finally had enough.




Presumably the intended sentence is:

這是傳統中文的寫法

which means "this is traditional Chinese way of writing",

with missing "文" & "的".

From BME's gallery, 雪 has one extra horizontal stroke under the radical, 雨.

Also, 雪片花 (snow piece flower) is redundant, 雪花 (snow flake) would suffice. 

Dr. Victor Mair at Language Log has a nice piece on how Google Translate became the de facto tool for anyone wants to communicate in a foreign language.  Even though in some cases, translation it provided are incorrect. 

This young man holding the sign at "Occupy Wall Street", probably wanted "No More Corruption".  However, Google Translate gave him "There isn't any more corruption."

By the way, why is he holding a sign written in Chinese?! 

Has this naive young man ever done business in China?

How about 關係, 後門, and 紅包?

from: Fedor M. 

to: tiangotlost@gmail.com 

date: Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 8:23 AM 

subject: hanzi smatter in DFW 

This is a sign for a Chinese restaurant in Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The characters are upside down and seem to say "blue bamboo". 

蓝竹 does mean "blue bamboo" and it is displayed upside down.  

According to Yelp, its food is terrible and only has one star.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-bamboo-xpress-dallas

from: Laura R.
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 1:14 AM
subject: "Chinese" trash can

Hello and thank you for your awesome blog!

We recently visited the "Phantasialand" amusement park close to Cologne in Germany.

This is what the trash cans in the "Chinatown" section look like. It says "garbage" in German, and while I instantly recognized the second character as being upside down (have been studying Japanese for a while now), I'm not sure whether the first one is a correct character at all or if there is any meaning to this combination.

There were loads of upside down or gibberish characters in the "Chinese" ghost train ride, too ^^;

Thanks in advance!

Laura



Not only the second character 圾 is upside down, the first character 垃 is missing a stroke.

Steve Caires of Engrish.com sent me this today:





http://www.kirainet.com/english/hemorrhoids-%E7%97%94/



From Hector Garcia's A Geek in Japan:



"At first glance, it seems like a kid with a supercool sweater with a Japanese character. The problem is that the character 痔 means “hemorrhoid” in Japanese. Probably the designer confused the character 侍, which means “samurai” and is pronounced “ji”, with the character 痔 that means “hemorrhoid” and is also pronounced “ji”… Both characters are graphically very similar but the meaning is totally different!"

Samoan Maori shoulder tattoo design

Hi,



Here's the 3rd design of my latest sketches in a Samoan inspired tattoo set. This design has some influences from the Maori style, but is mainly filled with Samoan patterns.



I started with a pencil and roughly sketched the outer lines, then traced some tribal patterns:













































For these symmetrical Samoan designs it's always a bit of a surprise how the final design will look. I only draw half the design and then mirror it in Photoshop. This seems easy, but it quity tricky to design the patterns in such a way that it doesn't have an obvious vertical line in the center.



Here's a picture of half the design finished:











































You can order the finished high resolution design right now, by simply clicking the "Buy now" button. Once I receive your payment, you'll receive an e-mail with a high resolution image + a linedrawing/stencil for your tattoo artist.

Samoan inspired shoulder sleeve design 3

Size: 30 x 24 cm (12 x 9 inches)

Product code: Samoan 103

Price: 41,65 euro (57 USD)

Any questions? Just let me know.



Kind regards, Mark Storm

info@storm3d.com

www.storm3d.com