Coelacanth Is Watching You…
The coelacanth is one ugly prehistoric fish. The cool thing about it is that it's post-historic, too! (Or at least, um, regular historic…)
From what I can tell, all of the collectors pictured below have three things in common: they like fish, they feel some connection to the concept of "survival", and they are nerdy enough to get a big tattoo of a living fossil.
This beauty adorns Mary McCarthy (no artist info available). Photo from The Love Lab, which seems to be a fish science website. How awesome is it that they have a "tattoos" section?
Arne Kuilman's piece (by Jan-Paul of Admiraal Tattoo in Amsterdam) is a nice balance of realistic and stylized. He's got some great shots in various stages of tattooage, as well as some cool source images in his flickr photostream. Lots of info about coelacanths in his captions, too. I didn't know, for instance, that the coelacanth's typical "headstand" is about 30 degrees.
Flickr member kittenhiccups says the real story behind her coelacanth (no artist info available) has to do with "evolution, beauty, horror, life, death, defying expectations, surviving
against all odds, my own phobias, and a bunch of symbolic stuff that
means more to me than I can say," but if you ask, the answer you're more likely to get
is, "I just think they're cool, I guess."
Hans Rueffert (contestant on the first season of The Next Food Network Star!) chronicles his tattoo experience on his blog. His coelacanth tells the story of his victorious battle with stomach cancer (extra nerd points because the numbers within the scales spell out "cancer" numerically). Tattoo by Deano, no shop or location info listed; based on original artwork by Richard Kirk.
I never pass up an opportunity to plug the geek-licious tattoos on Carl Zimmer's Sciece Tattoo Emporium, and this coelacanth tattoo (by Craig Cooley, currently tattooing at Stingray Body Art in Boston, MA) on Vicki Rosenswieg's abdomen is certainly plug-worthy. Here's an in-progress shot, as well.
Rusty Piton's "mysterious coelacanth", by Alex Higgens at the Tattoo Factory in Chicago, IL.
Flickr member pczoide gave me the idea for this post by adding his Japanese koi-inspired coelacanth to my Dinosaur Tattoos pool. More shots of this tattoo in progress and after later sessions in his "Finding Nemo" set. I can't wait to see this one completed; I think it will be my favorite one! Tattoo by Davi Duarte at Estúdio Muito Além de Tatuagem in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
Ink Nerds I Have Known: Ezra
High Roller by Heather O'Shaughnessey
My good pal Ezra’s awesomely nerdy flaming 8- and 12-sided dice (showing “7” and “11,” no less) were inked by Heather O’Shaughnessey at Trader Bob’s Tattoo Shop in St. Louis, MO (she’s also responsible for my Red Squares).
This tattoo inspired me to do a post with as many images of D&D dice as I could find, but it turns out I’m not the first in the blogosphere to have that idea. Here are a couple of really great collections, with surprisingly little overlap:
- “Aaawwwww YEAH! D20 Tattoos!” by Reis O’Brien on Geek Orthodox.
- “Roll a d20 for awesome tattoos” by Alice on Fun Vampires (nice favicon!).
So flaming D&D dice are not as uncommon as I would have thought. The tattoos with slogans (a la “High Roller”) are the best, however, including “Roll 4 Damage, Bitch,” “That’s How I Roll,” and “Leave No Die Behind.” (Evidently there’s a lot of love for 12-siders out in the tattooed gamer community… Who knew?)
Here are a couple more that Reis and Alice (both of whom sport D20 tattoos) somehow missed:
The first, found in BMEzine’s “Dice” keyword gallery, gets bonus tattoo points for working on two levels: nerdy gamer tattoo and cosmic art piece, but loses nerd points for disguising a nerdy gamer tattoo as a cosmic art piece. Cere‘s tattoo was done by John Clue at Super 88 Tattoo in Massapequa, NY.
The second (below), found in Devil Dinosaur’s Geek Tattoos flickr group, gets bonus nerd points for including the non-standard 30-sided die; double-TRIPLE bonus nerd points for including three 6-sided dice (for rolling ability scores the old-fashioned way) and two 10-siders (percentile dice, for generating numbers from 1 to 100)! No information about artist or collector, except that the latter attended Ohayocon ’08.
Extra-mondo nerd points to anyone who spots what’s wrong with this picture….
Long time, no post…
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while; I’ve been using my allotted blogging time to work on an Ink Nerd redesign. It’s actually in such an early stage that I shouldn’t even mention it yet, but what the the hell! Maybe I’ll post a couple of mockups and see what you guys think before I actually build out the CSS…
In the meantime, here’s flickr member djmark1972, a true ink nerd:
I first saw Mark’s tattooed digits on knuckletattoos.com, and decided to stalk him on flickr. Not only is he an ink nerd, he’s a punk rock coffee nerd! Truly a man after my own heart… Sorry, no information (yet) about the tattoo artist. Tattoo by JJ at Iron Cross Tattoo in Santa Barbara, CA.
Speaking of knuckletattoos.com, have you guys ever played around with their knuckle tattoo gun? It’s fun:
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