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Paradise Tattoo Gathering in Rocky Mountains a done deal!
7/28/10
Well, the contracts have been sent, and the ink is drying. In 2012 we will be headed to Keystone Resort in the Colorado Rockies from September 13th-16th for a Rocky Mountain sized Paradise Tattoo Gathering! It is an amazing resort so we get to keep the feel of the show, and the focus on education will remain constant, of course. Many resturants, great views, an amazing convention hall, fun! Check out their website, and their live webcam, and this video to get an idea of where were headed. Hope to see you there!
Also, thanks to all the tattooers who have been stopping by Off the Map Tattoo to say hi and meet everyone recently. In the last few weeks there have been more visitors than normal stoping by, and if we are available we are happy to show you around and chat and maybe have a tasty beverage. Its truely an honor, so dont be shy, stop on by!
Paradise Tattoo Gathering DVDS for sale soon!
7/21/10
Got great word about the Paradise Tattoo Gathering 2009 DVD, should have a near final version this Saturday, and get copies on sale soon after! Below is the preview video. Included on the DVD are 3 full discussion panels, over 3 hours worth of great discussions from some of the tattoo industries finest! Also some interviews, and a gallery of tattoos that is great! We're thinking of a price tag of $49.99, but might sell em for $39.99 if anyone wants to pre-order one...Email me if you are...
In other news,Paradise Artist Retreat signups keep coming in, going to be an amazing event! If your an artist sign up before its too late! We will be filming all weekend for a few documentaries, very exciting. Also made some quick upgrades to the tattoo forums, making the whole system much more efficient. More upgrades to the tattoo forums are on the way. If you caught the last update and were interested in the vintage tattoo machines, they are already sold, but rest assured theres more vintage tattoo flash and machines on the way! Lastly, Im thinking of writing a few essays/videos on tattoo collecting, and am looking to interview as many as I can... If you are a tattoo artist or collector, head on over to the tattoo collector forum thread I started and lets pick your brain!
Tattoo kiosks, retreats, tattoo videos, and a new gogue site in progress
7/14/10
Welp, the tattoo kiosk is getting wrapped up this month! The last bits of the design are being hammered out, then the last technical crunches and by nest month we will be delivering a @#$^%ing bad ass new 27" touchscreen kiosk that updates every day, blasts out big smooth videos, oh boyo, I know how much work it will being doing the next one for our studio, ack!
Here is a tattoo artist interview video from our new series TattooNOWTV. This is an interview with Lou Jacque recorded back in 2007. Next up is a dragon back tattoo from start to finish with Dana Helmuth. Hopefully we will get in the swing of uploading a new tattoo video every two weeks. We have an archive of 20 some odd interviews as well as recording new artists and tattoos as the guest tattooers keep coming through Off the Map Tattoo. The Paradise Artist Retreat is in full swing, if you are a tattoo artist, aspiring tattooer, or just an artist looking for inspiration and workshops, September is coming right up! We are selling artist passes every day so dont snooze much longer, come on out and create art! In 2011 news we got the poster art from jeff gogue and holy shit!!!! I'll post a photo of it later this week. lastly, in gathering news, we will be heading to the rocky mountains in 2012. The details and contracts are being hammered out. It will be quite exciting bringing the show to the rockies, the people there are, well, everyones going to get along tremendously.
Brian, the new guy at TattooNOW, is kicking ass and selling websites and getting details taken care of. The crew is just about as solid as you can get, with just about enough people to take care of everything. Brian and I are getting together a whole new seminar for Hell City in Pheonix AZ, this time done the right way with him doing the talking and me doing some clicking. The slideshow will be a great improvement!
In other news, the vintage tattoo flash website will have some new vintage tattoo flash as the collection allows, but Im very excited to be getting in some vintage tattoo machines too. Working an a redesign for Jeff Gogue, and Im very excited with the new look, just need to hammer through the programming. It was fun hanging out with Manos at his guest spot at the shop, he had stopped by here years ago during his apprenticeship, its great to see artists reaction to how the studio has evolved. Ok, heading downstairs to help with the video interviews, Im gonna try to update more frequently with keyword rich news to get more traffic. If you have a tattoo website with us, you should be too!
kiosks, tattoo videos, stats, and retreats!
6/28/10
Hey folks, keeping busy as usual. We are in the final stages of building a kick ass touchscreen kiosk for Adam at Graceland Tattoo. We are developing a 27 inch touchscreen encased in a rustic tree by our friends at custom rustic furniture.com. After putting the computer into the kiosk shell last weekend I almost peed myself for the first time in a long time, man, I forgot how @#$%ing awesome these things are. Very jealous, I dont want to give it to Adam! But, its his fair and square, we'll have to get one together for Off the Map tattoo this fall. Ive also been working on two or three video projects. Most important is a DVD from last years Paradise Tattoo Gathering that we should have for sale at Hell City in Arizona, and online soon after. Its a collection of four complete discussion panels, a bunch of interviews with many of the amazing tattooers working the show, the tattoo of the day contests, and a collection of other various tattoos shot over the weekend. Here is the preview that we have been plugging on TattooNOW:
Stay tuned for some other fun tattoo video projects soon. My nightmare has been the stats, and if you are a website client know that I am working on the perfect solution for stats, and we might see another server upgrade in the future (less headache, more fun!). Lastly, the Paradise Artist Retreat is filling up quickly with great artists from all over the world! Remember, enrollment is open this year, so if you want a chance to work alongside some of the greatest visionaries of the tattoo world, dont miss your chance!
On personal note, after years of planning and lasering I got an amazing eskimo girl and penguin from Topny Ciavarro over a bunch of stuff Jack Morton lasered. Its amazing what you can do thesedays, it might hurt getting the ink burned out from the inside, but your coverup options can open up drastically. Thanks to Tony for the tattoo and jack for lasering the shit out of that bad tattoo!
Rocky Mountain Tattoo Convention 2012
6/18/10
Hey folks, just getting back from visiting some Rocky Mountain resorts with Durb from Hell City. In 2012 we will be taking the Paradise Tattoo Gathering into the Rocky mountains, holy shit, fun fun fun! The resorts are wonderful, and the buzz is starting all over again! We are quite excited to hammer out the Artist Retreat at Jiminy Peak this September (which is open to all artists and promises to be an exciting event in and of itself!), another Tattoo Gathering at Jiminy Peak in 2011, and then doing it up Rocky Mountain sized the same weekend in september 2012(no, the world wont be ending though it may be a little oilier). While it might seem a tad nuts to try to grow the show 2,000 miles from where I live, if you have ever been to the mountians there, you will know the people are my type of people. Man, are they excited to be hosting all the talented tattoo artists from the gathering. Nearly everyone we met went there to go skiing or snowboarding, and couldnt leave. Its amazing there, and while we may not be moving there anytime soon, its exciting to think Ill be returning there a few times to prepare for the tattoo convention. In any event, Im heading back home to work my butt off getting artists out to the artist retreat this september, hope to see you there!
when doing tricky things, always look forward...
3/30/10
Motor City Tattoo Expo in the future!
1/24/10
Welp, my winter hibernation is over, once again Im venturing outside of the Massachusetts tattoo scene and headed to Detroit's Motor City Tattoo Expo, always a very fun tattoo convention. TattooNOW is offering a 30 day free trial artist membership, so if your a tattoo artist get in touch and we can get you set up right at the convention! Flash galleries have been sucking up a lot of my time this week, I have a sample live at Kelly Doty's tattoo gallery on her new site. Tried to get it up on Ben's too, but alas, it wasnt going to happen before posting this news. Im pretty excited, not only have we kept the search engine friendliness, but the galleries really are slick, and you can view them full screen! We will be offering $50-$100 flash image gallery upgrades to our website clients soon. We are also using these galleries in the touch-screen kiosk we are building for Graceland Tattoo. The tattoos look nice and big and the interface is real slick. Posted a Veritas Irons Tattoo Machine interview on Tattoo Machines NOW... More and more artists are joining the tattoo machine forum there, check it out... Had fun at the last Off the Map tattoo appreciation party at hugos, and looking forward to the painting day with Nathan Kostechko is coming to Massachusetts on the 31st... Lots of artists are coming up for it, hope to see you there! What else, we are working on an Off the Map Tattoo video today, one that has no dates so we can keep it up forever! Luca Natalini is going to be here tomorrow slamming out the bad ass tattoos! Traffic keeps growing too, Off the Map Tattoo is attracting nearly 6,000 unique visitors a day now! Oh, I also got tattoo inspiration set up, so we are posting the tattoo of the day every day on TattooNOW. fun fun fun! ok, more soon, thanks again, dont forget to buy some websites, tattoos, and tickets to the paradise artist retreat!
Kiosks, Tattoo Machines NOW, Clients sites, and Del Mccoury...
1/17/10
Well, Tattoo Machines NOW keep growing, tattoo artists and tattoo machine builders keep joining the new tattoo machine forum we are hosting. I'll keep tweaking the site, its becoming our ecommerce/community guinea pig, we will see how the traffic grows! Staying up late working pretty hard on a touchscreen kiosk for Graceland Tattoo in New York. Its very exciting to be working on "real" programming again. Tattoo websites are cool, and they get lots of traffic and new work for artists, but the kiosks have full screen video capabilities, full soundtracks, a large uncompressed photos, fun fun fun!!! I cut my teeth programming fun kiosks for big corperations, its awesome doing one for tattoo clients again. Back in the day Darkside Tattoo and Joe Capobianco had them, but they are a ton of work, so we dont have one for Off the Map and the others got to old... but will soon after we deliver Gracelands I hope! Im also thankful to the new programmers in training, we have at least 3 new tattoo websites going live this week... The next guest tattooer at Off the Map Tattoo is Nathan Kostechko, a massachusetts favorite. Jan 31st at 5PM we are hosting a painting night so if yer an artist come up and check it out, and bring along materials if you want to participate! Lastly, I know this guy has been around for a long long time, but I just discovered Del... Love em!
Vintage Tattoo Flash, Flash for Kiosks, Kelly doty website Launch, and tattoo machine interview with joe cap.
1/10/10
Worked on vintage tattoo flash.com a bit. Some real serious bites on some real nice pieces of vintage tattoo flash. I wish I had the extra dough to grab a few of the original Sailor Jerry flash sheets myself, I have a feeling they wont last much longer. We have a bunch of new programmers getting up to speed at TattooNOW to handle the workload, so the programming bottle neck is opening up a bit thanks to the new folks working hard. We still have about 10 to 15 websites in production at any given time, thanks everyone! This is giving me some time to research some new flash galleries and Im ready to interface it with the touch screen kiosks. Im moving the touchscreen to the office to play with this week, wo hoo! I also opened up the TattooNOW powered website list sidebar, so now will announce the latest website launched, as well as link to the entire TattooNOW network on the sidebar of every page on TattooNOW! Well, on the first 400 pages of every gallery for now, until I fix a bug... but thats a lot of new links to a lot of great websites that is easily accessible... I hope it encourages some of our website clients to update some more! I do wonder how it could have possibly taken this long to get that there, but lets just say we will get to everything on our checklist...
We also launched our new Off the Map Tattoo's resident artist website, www.KellydotyTattoo.com and Im very happy with it. She has been picking up half sleeves and back pieces, so be on the lookout for some real nice tattoos from her in the future. Im very excited to have posted up Joe Capobianco's tattoo machine interview on Tattoo Machines NOW. Yesterday we designed a website for Oleg, and man its awesome! Still fighting with the banner ad engine, but the tattoo shop is picking up nicely. thanks for all the folks who trust Off the Map Tattoo with their skins! Ok, back to the lists and lists...
Paradise Artist Retreat, Websites, Vintage Flash, Upgrades, Oh boyo!
12/8/09
Well, I have this blog so Im gonna use it! We are finalizing plans for the Paradise Artist Retreat as we speak. Just about to sign the contract for the third weekend of September 2010. No tattooing, we're shooting for 200 artists expanding their vision and skills! Artwork, posters, and T-Shirts coming soon! Thanks to the artists chipping in to help take over some of the responsibilities!
Im am also buried under a mountain of new tattoo websites, as well as upgrades to older websites and the server. Good news is we are testing a WYSIWYG news/blog engine so artists can easily add links and extra images to their news/blog items. We should have some more heavies blogging regularly!
We have some new blood at Off the Map Tattoo and the positive energy from the new artists and the focus and hard work of the new front room folks is awesome too. Just gotta get past December and we will be golden!
Tattoo Jam, cant wait!!
7/18/09
Last year I had the pleasure of attending and working the 1st Tattoo Jam, and I am very excited to be returning again this year with Marc Blanchard, an Off the Map Tattoo part timer. If you are a tattooer looking for a high traffic website on the other side of the pond, we can help! I will be answering any tattoo/geek questions people have at the Off the Map/TattooNOW/TattooGathering booth.
While I am happy to be an American, where I have had the opportunity to make a little heaven for myself, traveling overseas has always been something I love doing... great for the brain perspective. Cant recommend traveling enough. Its exciting to be building tattoo relationships on the other side of the pond, and this will be the third convention in the UK so I can look forward to catching up with "old" friends and meeting some new ones I hope. On the way back I will be stopping off at the Roc City Tattoo Expo. I just found out about it last week, and the line is pretty awesome! So, We will be stopping off dropping off TattooNOW and Paradise Tattoo Gathering propaganda on Friday.
In other news, the Paradise Tattoo Gathering is less than 2 months away so Im staying up late checking things off the 14 pages of checklists. This year is shaping up very nice, with the seminars booking up steadily. Sorry to say, Im very cranky. But I tell ya, all the badgering on the TattooNOW forums about how I should learn to tattoo cant hold a candle to how much putting this convention on makes me want to switch gears and learn to paint, but alas, until the three businesses are all stable at the same time - not an option. So for now I learn vicariously through the tattooers who are coming and taking part in making the event a success. Ok, back to the booklet design, and the signs, and the worker list (if you want to volunteer, contact us!), and the ... website sales... ack!
a personal website
7/13/09
Why would I have one? To post thoughts, links, and other things I find of interest. After doing nearly a hundred websites for other people, here is mine. I hope you enjoy.