{"id":116,"date":"2009-04-21T22:52:54","date_gmt":"2009-04-22T03:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/?p=116"},"modified":"2009-04-21T22:52:58","modified_gmt":"2009-04-22T03:52:58","slug":"small-world-big-strokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/concept-art\/small-world-big-strokes","title":{"rendered":"Small world, big strokes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Scorpion Rider&#8217;s tattoo would only be onscreen for a few seconds, making it difficult to justify lavishing a lot of time on its design. But somehow its fleeting appearance only made me more determined to get it right. <\/p>\n<p>The tattoo is key to the character&#8217;s introduction, appearing even before his face does. But getting it right\u2014really doing it justice\u2014was well beyond my abilities. I wanted more than just a cool, menacing tattoo of a scorpion. Anyone can make one of those. For this project, what I really wanted to create was an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Islamic_calligraphy#Calligrams\">Arabic calligram<\/a>, an ancient form of Islamic calligraphy in which a word or phrase is fashioned into the shape of an animal. Modern practitioners of the genre include the French-Iraqi <a href=\"http:\/\/pagesperso-orange.fr\/hassan.massoudy\/galerie.htm\">Hassan Massoudy<\/a> and Chinese <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hajinoordeen.com\/gallery.html\">Haji Noor Deen<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But of course, I can&#8217;t speak a word of Arabic, nor do I know any thing about calligraphy. The best we were going to be able to do was fake it, using existing calligrams to craft a tattoo that <em>looked<\/em> kinda like an Arabic word shaped like a scorpion.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s when Dhar Jabouri stepped in. Some of you may have spotted his comments in some of the earlier entries on this blog. Dhar and I have known each other for years, from back when we were frequent posters on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hash.com\/2007web\/\">Hash Animation:Master<\/a> forums. When I asked Dhar if he was familiar with Hassan Massoudy&#8217;s work, this is what he responded:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yeah, I\u2019m familiar with Masoudy&#8217;s work. BTW, I\u2019m from Iraq as well :o) I think maybe you&#8217;d like this Muslim Chinese calligrapher Haji Noor Deen Minguang Jiang. I know him very well, I translate for him when he tours the US. He only speaks Chinese and Arabic, so I translate for him from Arabic to English and we have developed quite a rapport. His mix of Chinese and Islamic ancient calligraphy makes for a distinctive and unique style. I am usually his pupil as well as interpreter whenever he visits northern California.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And that&#8217;s when I decided that this was going to be the greatest tattoo ever made.<\/p>\n<p>Since that conversation, I, Dhar, and designer David Ward have been collaborating on a true Islamic-style calligram\u2014an authentic, dramatic tattoo that lives up to the character of the Scorpion Rider and the world of <em>The Ottoman<\/em>. Opportunities like this don&#8217;t come along very often, and believe me, we&#8217;re making the most of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Scorpion Rider&#8217;s tattoo would only be onscreen for a few seconds, making it difficult to justify lavishing a lot of time on its design. But somehow its fleeting appearance only made me more determined to get it right. The tattoo is key to the character&#8217;s introduction, appearing even before his face does. But getting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concept-art","category-the-team"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-ottoman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}