Putting images of things you like on your skin is not a new thing; people get tattoos of all manner of insignia they adore, be they movie, TV, music, sports, or whatever, all the time. (We even have a weekly column about it.) But when someone’s devotion to a particular artistic endeavor causes them to want to give over an entire limb, spend thousands of dollars and hours under the needle, and make sure those images are as perfect and immaculate as possible, that’s when we really have to applaud.
Jean-Pierre Saint-Tran from Grand Blanc, Michigan, wins our Super Fan Award (which is not a real award) for having a sleeve of art from the films of Studio Ghibli co-founder and master animator Hayao Miyazaki carefully and meticulously tattooed on his arm. It evidently took four months to find the right artist, eventually leading Saint-Tran to choose Andy Kurth, and the pair of them worked on the design for a further two months before the final one was chosen.
It was then 32 hours in the chair actually doing the tattooing over a year and a half and cost an estimated $2,500, not including tips. That is what we can conservatively call a “commitment,” and it certainly paid off.
The final tattoo features the submarine from Ponyo, the bath house, No Face, and soot sprites from Spirited Away, tree spirits from Princess Mononoke, Kiki and Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service, Totoro and friends from My Neighbor Totoro, the titular Howl’s Moving Castle, and the other titular Castle in the Sky. Miyazaki-san only made 11 feature films and Saint-Tran and Kurth managed to represent seven of them; that’s quite the feat.
Check out a more close-up look in the gallery below.
What would you give a whole limb to represent? Have you done so already? Let us know and share a picture in the comments below!
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