Hey, friends, welcome to the fireside. We are back with another episode from this past year's Richmond tattoo, an arts fest hosted by our friend Jesse Smith. And today's guest is another familiar face, Russ Abbott, who is a good friend of the show, a good friend of mine. We have had Russ on the show, I don't know, quite a few times now over the years, and it's always a fun conversation.
We talk about a lot of stuff, as always in this episode, we talk a good bit about, tattooing the future of tattooing tattoo technologies, including tattoo smart, his, online business where he sells stamp sets and brushes for Procreate and Clip Studio and Photoshop and all of those things mostly procreate. These days, I believe we talk a good bit about some of his competitors, and, like always, it was a good conversation. I had a good time. I hope that you enjoy it and get something out of it.
And, we'll see you at the end. I didn't want to share what I was going to ask on the front end at all, so found out that the surprise of me. Which is a bummer. But I do want to start with what I just asked. I'm curious. So I've been around Tattoo Smart since the very beginning. In fact, I remember having a conversation with you and you gave me the name Tattoo Smart, and at the time it sounded like brush sets and I didn't fully wrap my mind around what it was going to be.
And I thought, like, yeah, that sounds cool. You know, I thought maybe it was like, you know, like the Abbott color wheel was like a thing that you sold. That was a thing. And then people bought it and then they used it, and then you had to come up with something else, you know, to sell, you know that. So that's, that's kind of what I was thinking at the time. Yeah.
And that's kind of what it was because I was selling the Abbott Color wheel and a few other little things products I created that were for educational purposes for Tattoo Artist on Ink and Dagger and my Tattoo Studios website. So what, you know, any of our clients would go to their website and there would also be these things that Russ does, but and that's didn't make sense to me. So I needed a new place and Tattoo Smart was that place. But of course then it became so much bigger, right.
Like I could yeah, it could be a marketplace where other people who make digital tools could sell them. So that was kind of the the main thing was just going to be all about digital design for tattooing and whatever things we could come up with. You know, as technology progressed, we would be there to to serve that market. Yeah, yeah, that started in 2016, 2016, 2016 is also the year that the Apple Pencil came out for the iPad.
Okay. Yeah. And so there was just, you know, a lucky time to create a platform like that, I don't guess I realize that okay. So you like that. So when you made those those like do they weren't procreate based necessarily because they were for all or not at first at all.
Yeah. I was using a Wacom Cintiq and creator for my designs and so and Clip Studio studio was the software and the, the brushes and clip studio I in a lot of ways are better, especially the repeater brushes or ropes, chains, snake scales, all those. So even back then I was exploring, like, what can we do? Because there Clip studio was made for, Japanese manga. And it's a really, really great set of software. And it already had brushes that did that type of stuff, but they weren't tattoo style.
And so I learned I just watch YouTube tutorials, and I learned how to switch out the artwork in a brush and adjust the settings to make it repeat and do the all the things. And I just started kind of playing with it, you know, it was just, a lot of R&D, you know. Oh, I wonder if I can do this. Oh. You know, and so it's it felt like we were always discovering something that, you know, was is heading towards something, right? Something useful or, I could use or another tattoo artist could use.
Right. So I've always kind of thought that I just misunderstood the whole thing from the start. I was thinking of brushes. I remember, like the Cheyenne needle groupings or things like that. Was the idea of stamp sets and collaborating with artists on your mind at that point or that came later? What was it like drawing tools? Yeah, no, it was like the first set of products that I thought were going to be everyone's favorite. And it turned out that no, here were the digital palettes.
So because I'd already made the Abbott of color wheel, which was during that process, I figured out how to accurately sample the color of tattoo ink and apply it to a color wheel. So the color wheel had 200 and do something colors organized on it. And I was going to use the same technology to create digital palettes of other brands. So the original lineup included fusion, eternally, world famous new a few others. Yeah. And we got all the ink in the studio, which was nice.
We had like all this tattooing to play with, but got all the ink and we sampled every color. And we did all this, you know, got these fancy spreadsheets and took the, the data from the color and turned it into swatch files that would work in Photoshop and work in Clip Studio. And you just kind of import the file, and then you have all of the colors. And I thought that that would be a hit. Sure. You know, turned out it wasn't.
And therefore a lot of people that wanted to, to work in that way, you know, to to paint their tattoo designs with accurate colors. Yeah. And so and sometimes it's just a matter of like being almost like a stepping stone in technology because now you can, you know, now you can like bring in a photograph or an illustration in, like, matte like, like drag and drop of that full color palette, like create a full color palette from a photograph. Right? Which is obviously super cool.
It may not be mapped necessarily to a tattoo pigment, but the color is there. And so probably if something like that had already existed, you would have been less likely to put the effort into creating the color palette, right? I mean, maybe not. Maybe you just really thought people would, I don't know. Yeah. So a lot of times it's just like throwing as many hooks into the water. Yeah, as you can and seeing which one they bite on.
And that was, that was a good example of, you know, something that I like definitely overinvested in that, you know, eventually I just pulled them off the site because they were just kind of taking up space and people didn't seem to be interested. I also didn't want to keep supporting the, cause set new colors coming out from all these companies. So they were getting help needed, right.
That the other projects. Yeah. So yeah, I would imagine otherwise it's difficult to, to put so much time and work into something and go. And then I mean, it's one thing to say, okay, it's not performing the way that I had hoped and make excuses for yourself. But when you finally come to terms with and you're like, I was pulling it down where it's not available anymore, that's like a real recognition of yourself that it's a failure, you know? Yeah. That's it.
Yeah. There have been a few of those. Right. So, so that that is even my starting question we haven't even gotten to yet what I've noticed over the last months or year or so is that I'm, you know, half of my Instagram feed is sponsored, are things that they think I might like. It's not even people that I care to see necessarily, but I see all of these, I don't have any names to throw out, but essentially it will be like 25,000 procreate brushes for $9.99. Or maybe their stamp sets as well.
I don't click, I don't go into it to see what they are. Yeah, but I guess I think about you a lot whenever I see that because I'm just like, shit, how do you like, how do you like people are only paying attention for a second, right? And you just have a little square that they're paying to get your point across and like, how do you separate what you're doing? First off, if you're if you're separate, what you're doing from what those are doing would be helpful for people who are paying attention.
And then second, like, how do you separate yourself and grab people's attention so they know in a short period of time they're like, hey, these two, we're not comparing apples and apples right here. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like first off, like, what are those companies? Right. Because they're they're not run by a tattoo artists. Right. You can't like they might say something like for artist by artist or something. But when you when I've really dug in I'm like, I don't know who this is.
And, and also when I see the product that they're putting out, it's very, very obvious. You know, either it's AI generated stuff or it's, stuff that they just stole from the internet and compiled it. And, you know, I actually had one a couple of years ago. I saw one of our product images on there AD. And, this obviously is a problem, right? You know, we pay a lot of money and work very hard to create these products. And, and so I, I went to their website and I found the contact.
I reached out to them and I said, hey, you know, you've got our work on your website, like what's going on? And I think they basically were like, I'm so sorry. We're just teenagers in this other country. And we wanted to have a business. And we hired we paid like $500 to this other group of teenagers and to make our website and like our, our product and this is what they did. Wow. We'll take it down immediately. So sorry I got you. I'm really like, okay. So I think they did.
I a little bit. It's. Yeah, I guess I didn't, but I never saw the ad again. There. Some of these companies are, you know, obviously, outsiders from tattooing, you know, who are looking at let's what's the thing that I can generate some, you know, side hustle money on. Let's see if this works. Let's do this. Let's do that. Right. And so it there's, there's not any of the things that we do. I'm like, you know, I've built relationships in tattooing, right.
Like I go out and I source artwork from people who are experts in the subject matter, in the style that they're working in. And then we work together and they work really hard. We work really hard. We compensate them really well. And, you know, there's an obvious difference in what the experience of working with something that we made is compared to that, you know, the the problem, I guess, that I see is just the way people come along to tattooing.
And, you know, there's so many things that at the beginning of the career that they might think they need to invest in. And if, you know, buying a set of tattoo stamp brushes is on that list, you know how many of those shitty ones that he encountered before, they just kind of go, that's dumb. Yeah, it's not worth it. Like, I shouldn't bother with, you know? But we used to be the only company doing this.
Now there's several others that are run by tattoo artists, you know, putting out quality stuff, and there's a whole bunch of stuff on Etsy so much, you know, and, like, so, like the Google search is flooding, right? Like if you type in procreate tattoo brushes, you know, we used to be the only ones. Now we're just one of many, right. And so that's just the way that the way that it goes. Right. The only, only thing that can happen is that market becomes more watered down with competitors.
So yeah, you know, it's just about like let's use we're still focusing on what we can do and like what we want to do. And you know, trying to trying to help, you know, educate people about why this even a for me, it's always just been about getting to that next future. Like being prepared to help to bring something more interesting to tattooing. It hasn't really been about like, oh, I'm so excited about, you know, flash stamp brushes.
That wasn't even my original intent with the company is just what tattoo artist seem to want to buy. Yeah. You know, so in order to keep the lights on, I'm actually keep doing it. And along the way, you know, I'm really started to enjoy it, you know, like, it's starting to look like this is going to be a giant library of really, really well drawn tattoo flash, that, you know, I've curated the entire time. So it's already got, you know, like when you look at the site like there's so many now.
Yeah. You know, I think there's still room for so many more. And I'm excited to keep working. We do, like one product a month, you know, at most maybe two. Right. So I think the pace has slowed from what it used to be. But you know, it's it's it's still something I'm working on.
You know, you're always thinking I think about like how people interpret things, how they are like trying to like gauge your audience, you know, and, and that is even, you know, the language that they speak and all that kind of thing. So with that in mind that you, that you are doing something completely different than something that's either generated by teenagers in another country or AI or whatever.
Do you have any, any like way that you are trying to, grab attention, separate yourself in whether through social media, through your email campaigns, through your like just how you interact with people. Is there any way to to separate yourself in a, in a flash, or do you have to depend just on kind of the original grassroots, boots on the ground effort of like, well, these people, know tattoo smart I'm going to keep putting out great stuff and keep hoping that they'll share it.
Not physically share the files with their friends, but share the, but share the word with their friends. So like, I yeah, this is it like that. This is like, these are legit, you know, tattooers that are making these things and you know. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I mean, you know, there there was always the, you know, like the bootlegger guy, like, come into your shop to sell your flash and you're like, you knew it wasn't, you know, actually made by that person because you know him. Yeah, yeah.
And, but you know, that that ethos in that ethic, you know, is still in the minds of a lot of people who have been tattooing a long time. But I don't think it's really that prevalent, you know, in the new generation and, newer generations. Right. But yeah, you know, I, you know, how we got to talking about that? It was like one little piece of what you asked me, but the, the the fact is like, yeah, you can you can share our product.
We can airdrop it straight out of procreate to all your friends. You know, we we know it happens. You know, we hope it happens in, like, a 1 to 1 kind of thing where, you know, instead of, like, you know, everyone, you know, gathering 100 people at a convention, you're just like, you're dropping it out there, but because, I mean, like, look, I mean, obviously, you know, I'm working very hard. My team is working very hard.
The artists that we're working with are working very hard to put something out there, and we hope that people are gonna value it. And, you know, it'll make sense for them to pay what we're asking. We actually do have a, ten day money back, 100% satisfaction guarantee. Right.
Like, yeah, I don't think a lot of people know that, but you can purchase something from us, and if you don't like it, you can just let us know you don't like it and you can't give it back to us because you've already got it right. And you can still give it to 100 of our friends. And we'll give you your money right? So yeah, that's my answer to it.
It's like if if you bought something from us and you thought it was so terrible that you wanted to cause damage to us by putting it out there and having that next person put it out there again? Share, Share, Share, Share, Share, If that's the way that you feel about what we gave you or what we what we sold to you, then, you know, I, I guess we did a bad job. You know, that's kind of a risk I gotta take. But, yeah, you can come back and you can get your money back. It's it's.
Can I do a few times a week? You know, it's not it's not hundreds. Not maybe this can be the reason, right? Like all of a sudden, you know, tattoo smarts gonna be ruined, you know. Yeah. But look, you can do that. And, sometimes people do. And when they do, it's an opportunity for us to say, you know, curious, like, what was it? You know, what was it that how did we not meet your expectations?
And a lot of times it's just it wasn't what I thought it was, you know, like, based on what you were able to show me before I bought it, like, it didn't really didn't really tick the right boxes. We can learn from that. Sure. And learn from that conversation. Yeah. And I guess at some point you have to like, for your own peace of mind. You have to either find a way to fight that sharing kind of thing tooth and nail, and figure out a way to stop it. Or the far other extreme is what you’ve done.
If you just like come to terms with like not only do we know you can take it, but it's like you can take it and we'll just pay you back if you're that like it's kind of the way to say, like if you're that big of a shithead, we'll just give it back to you and you can just live with yourself. It's kind of unheard of. I don't know if any of our competitors do it. I've never heard you say that. You've done that. No, I don't know. Yeah, we've been doing it for, like, a year now.
Yeah, it says it, you know, it says it in multiple places where you purchase and it says it like even in the email saying exactly. Yeah. You know, we have, you know, support at tattoo smart.com. You know, my, my coworker Sara is in that inbox every day, unless it's the weekend, and she's the one that has to figure out, like, how to get your money back or how to help you fix your password or whatever it ever is going on. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's human support.
It's not, you know, some data center in some other country. You know, it's like it's a small, small company. Right. And it and I think it's a lot of fun. Yeah. And I think it was a when you and you hit on it that you know, you put a lot of time and effort in and your team.
But then also the artist that creates the stuff if you are an artist, which I guess if you're buying brush sets or stamps that you are, you know, just just the idea that you're taking advantage of an artist who took the time to create the, you know, the stamp set, and then go, yeah, it truly is that I mean, it's it would be very similar to, you know, like making copies on The flash that they sold you and, you know, give them to all your friends.
It's it's probably worse than that because it takes the time and effort to make a copy like AirDrop is amazing, but there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, it's a feature that procreate built in well into their app, and until procreate decides to unbuild that feature. Yeah. You know, that's just what it is, right? You mentioned a minute ago the kind of the you've you started Tattoo Smart with the idea and and the color wheel.
Everything with the idea of that just continue to evolve as a creator of things for the tattoo world, at least mostly for the tattoo world, I guess.
So what I think that that's, my, my coach Dan, says like, when people have complaints about people, you know, biting stuff off of them, we've got the same thing with Fire Side, you know, for years, that where people are either, like, physically copying, downloading, re uploading and monetizing our videos, which was happening from some Russian outfit a while back, was pretty crazy, getting a lot of views like marketing it and stuff like that. Getting paid.
And then, like, man, like, you know, I was like, can we hire you? Sometimes that might be the right idea. Right? But, but my coach, Dan says, like, you know, no one can copy. The next thing you know, they can always get a copy of the current day when no one can copy the next thing. So we're always focused on the next thing, and that's the way that you kind of keep your vibe straight when it comes to that type of thing. So. Yeah. So what what is that been lately for you?
The next thing for Tattoo Smart, it's been the, the, 3D models that work in procreate. Yeah. So we have this whole line. They're called model humans. They're 3D body parts. They're, you know, there's entire people. There's like eight different characters. They all have names. Yeah. And, they're all different body types. All right, so there's four different females for different males. You've got an athletic build, an obese build, a thin build.
And somewhere in the middle and then we also recently put out kind of a giant pack of just alternatives or alternatives for sleeves and, arm sleeves, like sleeves, torso. So just kind of like we didn't, we didn't really want to like, overdo it because we want to do every single body type with all of these options was just a unbelievably huge investment in every way. So but I did see opportunities to improve, or to give more options.
People were asking for more options for where the seam is cut on the sleeve, for example. Yeah, like for example, on the arm sleeves where the seam is cut, like where if you unwrap a human arm, like where is the seam. Because with all 3D models, the best way to work on them is actually working on the flattened out part. Or, you know, not.
You can sketch on the model and you can kind of get your layout, and then you flatten it out into two more, and then you can see your sketch on a flattened out version of an arm and so on. The original model humans, the seam for the arm runs straight down the middle of the inner arm. So it's the down here. And unfortunately, you know, that wasn't what everyone wanted. Sometimes people wanted to really easily put their artwork on the inner arm, so we needed to make variations.
And, you know, in the advanced, they're called model humans, advanced 3D body, for instance, what the the newest sets are. And that's the one that has like a whole lot of options for different sleeves and legs. And that's pretty much the one I would recommend anyone get to start with. Yeah. If you're just getting into model humans, I don't know if you have any idea, like what the purpose of them is or why anyone would. Yeah, I, I have an idea. I've never used them myself.
I have your earlier versions, the photo classes that what they were called. So protoplasm was the images, images of, 3D models. Yeah. You can use as stamps and those are still really popular. Yeah, I love those. I still use them for, for layout. If I don't have great photos of the client or if I'm presenting an idea that I if the clients out of town or something like that, you know, like online is great for that kind of stuff. I really like them.
And and like you're saying, I assume somewhat to model humans. There are enough variations of body types where I can like, I usually will like try to get an idea, like, let's say I did a zoom conversation for our consultation, but I don't have I haven't met them in person just based on their appearance. I'll try to get an idea of what their body type is, and then I'll back off the body type whenever I choose it. So that's like a little more attractive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So that brings up a funny thing. So, you know, we had to go through this whole process of thinking about this, like how do we how do we represent, you know, a giant range of possible human body types in a range. So we we started with three, you know, it was like the kind of workout physique, you know, the kind of like, thin person in the obese person. Right. And then we were like, was it for I can't remember. I think it was I think it was four to start.
And then we just added Norman Normal, which makes it maybe it's a total of ten model. There is result. Okay. So Norman Norman were name because they are the normal body type thing right. There's like a little potbelly you know, like Norm's arms are kind of kind of not that muscular, right? You know, he's just, like, kind of every man, and then, but if you look at, you know, what are people actually buying? Right.
Your, your two most fit women and your muscle guy, Ryan, really are the most popular choices. And why do you do these? Yeah, ones are the least popular. Yeah. And and I'm thinking about like. Right. I mean that tracks right like to humanity. But the, the thing about it is like you just pointed out, like if we're going to look at our client and then select the 3D model that we think is the closest to them, put our art on, put our design on it, and then show it back to them.
What's that gonna feel like for anyone who's like, oh, right, that's the one you picked. So it's like, yes, you know, and it could be like like people have all kinds of hangups about their bodies, right? Like what? What is the guy you picked to represent? Your client was too skinny, right? And he's like, oh, man, he thinks I'm skinny.
Yeah. So I, I don't know, like maybe, maybe it just makes sense to only put our designs on the most athletic, like, you know, steroid jacked guy and like, yeah, I guess like, yeah. And I guess it's a use case thing because, like, if I'm designing, if I'm doing want to do designs and I'm like trying to sell back pieces or bodysuits or whatever big tattoos that like, fit the body nicely. I probably want to put them on the best looking figure. So it's like, hey, this could be you, you know?
But if you're using it like I like, I am where I just don't, you know, you ask someone who's out of town, who's flying, have you get tattooed to send you photos. And it's like selfies in the mirror with a glare of their leg and you're like, I'll just figure it out, you know? And then I'm using it as a tool rather than that. They're both used as tools, but you know what I mean? I'm using it as a tool for myself to like, all right, this is close to them,
and I want it to be flattering enough, but, you know, when they get it back. So. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all those all those thoughts were going through our minds as we were working through this process and like, how do we make this actually useful? The 3D models are mostly just useful for people who were doing full sleeves, full leg sleeves, full back pieces for torsos.
Yeah, that's where I really think like this workflow makes a lot of sense because it's obviously, you know, difficult when you're laying out a full sleeve on a flat piece of paper and we've all figured out ways to do it. We've all got a process, but with something like this, I'm able to really, really mess around with how the elements fit on the arm or the legs, and I come up with some, I hope you know, more
interesting compositions, because I have this tool here. And the second part to that is where you can just do like basic sketching on this. If you want, you can draw directly on the 3D model, and then you can flatten it out into 2D, and you can export that 2D as your base layer. You base sketch in a regular procreate file. Okay. And you can just make it as detailed and fully developed and rendered as you want. And then you can take that back to the 3D model and map it back on to the body part.
And I think that's the workflow that most people miss. They try to do all the rendering directly on the model or, you know, some kind of kind of way that just doesn't work as well. It's a little bit uncomfortable.
So yeah, you know, that's why I'm actually teaching a workshop here at the, the Richmond Convention in Paradise next week because it's I've found that, you know, we try to make videos about how to do this, and I tried to show people in as many ways as we can, like how to think about it. But yeah, it's just a lot of people need a hands on kind of like step by step kind of do it yourself workshop. So I'm, I'm hoping that people will attend that.
And, you know, maybe I'll get a little bit better at teaching other people how to apply this tool. Yeah. I think saying things out loud in front of people, too, is like the best way to learn if you're saying it right, if it's if it's getting across, you know, like it's one thing to make a video, make it super polished and give instructions, you know, on your website before or do it when they download or whatever.
But when you say things to a group of people and you're looking at their faces, you can tell I didn't land on any of them. You're like, all right, I'm saying that wrong. Yeah. For sure. It's really helpful.
I think one thing about that, that workflow that you just went through that so that could be so useful to so many people, especially people who are just getting into large scale tattooing, is, you know, how well you always can tell, you know, the difference between what I think is a really well designed, sleeve, for example, as opposed to a beginner sleeve. It's just like, look at the tricep in the back of the arm and see where stuff comes together and see if people just end up with a lot.
Like, a lot of times it's, you know, you're designing a few main elements that sit on the areas that you think about first, and then you get to a point where you have it, oh, shit. And I'm like, you're like, I'm just going to like, but when this into that and you'll end up with this kind of like area of a tattoo where there's just nothing cool to look at, you know, and I think that I fought with that a long time to.
So, I mean, I thought was that a long time to and I make a point now to think to think about like, no matter what angle of view or experiences this tattoo, I want there to be something that grabs that attention that, that, you know. Yeah. And so that that workflow where you're drawing it flat, but then you wrap it back on, you're like, oh shit. Like that actually doesn't sit well. I thought it would. I need to scoot that.
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. I think it's a switching from 3D to 2D a lot during this sketch process is nice because, you know, there's this sort of distortion that happens when you take a flat image and you wrap it around a cylindrical body part. Right. And it's really hard to predict when you're only drawing flat. So once you get into working in this way, you've kind of already problem solved. A lot of things that you would have had to do when the client got there in person.
After you printed out this giant stencil and taped all the pieces together, and you think you got it, and you got a stencil and you're like, holy shit! Like, yeah, that didn't work out. Like I thought it would. This helps fix that. Yeah. Yeah. Well what I okay. So that's, that's, the thing that you're working right now in procreate.
before we leave that subject, we've talked over the years, I know, and I've, was thinking about it when I, when I was working on a product that was called Digital Skin with Shaun Belina and with another person that it was like a projection mapping type of thing of, actually mapping the physical client's body. And I don't know if we ever talked about that without the Huntsville and went into one of these. Yeah. It's essentially like, a little sphere that they would like photograph
you in the round. And then they could like it was they were printing you. They were like making a 3D model of one of those made myself like, oh, six years ago at that exact experience. Oh, cool. Yeah. So I when I as they were doing that, I was like, oh I wonder if we could like, you know, like essentially do the model humans but with the, with the human that you're tattooing.
Yeah. You could and so we're standing in a, a cylinder of cameras, I don't know, there's like 100 cameras and they're all connected to a very, very expensive computer. All of them take a picture at one time, and then that computer in the software turn all of those photos into a 3D model. And so that's how that works. That's called, well, a version of it's called Photo Grammatry Yeah, it might be true. Someone out there is going to be like, no, that's not photo grammatry.
I'm pretty sure that's what it's called, like stitching a bunch of photos. Now there's apps that do that. You know, there's apps that you can walk around anything, a person in a scene and take a bunch of pictures, and then they'll shoot them up to the cloud and will send you that model and yes, you could use that to get a 3D model of the client. The issue that I've found with it is that it's not to scale. Right. It's it's just a model. It doesn't know how big or small it is.
And, that may or may not be a problem, but I think the ultimate solution, the one that I feel like I'm waiting for, is the one where we can just pull out our smartphone and it's got everything it needs to create a scaled model of our client without a lot of extra work. Right. So someone has to build an app or an interface that knows this is for tattoo design. This is a human. We're going to eventually be designing a tattoo on them. And so it needs to be exported in this very specific way.
And right now all of those things are possible. And I think that people who have been doing it on just one call, Thomas Sinnamond out of, Seattle, has been he's a tattoo artist and he's been scanning people, and he ended up figuring out how to do it with, like, a handheld scanning device. It's very expensive, 20, $30,000 or something. He's invested in this process and he actually teaches workshops on it.
So there's anyone listening to this who wants to learn how they can right now, with that amount of investment, you the process where they can scan their clients he's doing is really impressive. Because, you know, of course, what I'm waiting for is it to become easier, accessible, right. Like, if you look at, the adoption of digital design is tattooing, right? Like, I was doing it before the iPad Apple Pencil came out and it was a bigger investment. You got to learn more complicated software.
You had to just kind of take a leap and spend a few thousand dollars to buy all this gear. And then the iPad came along, and then once. All right. And that's when the shift happens. Even still, you know, we're still at a place where there's still a few tattoo artists out there that don't work digitally, which but we've seen a massive shift.
And so I guess it's possible there's some future state where the tattooing process always starts with capturing, where you scan a client you're working on into some kind of 3D space, right? So always be people don't want that. But that's a beautiful thing. Well, look yeah we're seeing it already like, yeah I think we're going to expect more in the future. And well what I mean is we're seeing visualizations of what a product or service will be like before we buy. Right?
I always use the example of rugs.com. You can go to rugs.com. You can upload a picture of your living room with your sofa or coffee table and all of your things, and very quickly put that out on their website into that space in perspective. And it looks like it belongs there. That experience makes you more confident that that's the right rug for you, right? You know, and they're doing that now with eyeglasses. You can buy glasses online. You can see them on your face and move your head.
They move. You know that's all possible. And at a certain point in the future, we're doing that with every new clothing article we buy. We're getting, you know, pants and shirts that fit us because we scan ourself really quickly with a map. And I was able to figure out what the right size was for us. So of course, customers in the future are going to expect to see what is this tattoo going to look like on the right.
And there's going to be some tattoo artist that realized that that opportunity and wanted to want to take it on and give them that are some people like me that want to do that now. And we are doing it now, you know, through all kinds of other ways. But I'm not currently. I'm not like Thomas Sinnamond. I haven't gone out and invested in this 3D scanner. So I just use like surrogates or I use Tattoo Smarts model humans. And we have a bunch of different body types.
We can adjust the skin tone or closely match the client, and we put the design onto a 3D model of the client when it's something that they need or something that it's either something I need, like I want it for my own design process, and then I'll just share it with them. Yeah, hopefully they'll be delighted. And in some cases there's clients out there who like you value see. Sure. Yeah, yeah.
It's funny that and most likely that that process will come, you know, a tattooing will probably adopt it from larger industries. Those technologies, like with clothing and glasses, we're already already seeing that they'll solve the bigger problems of what is it like as far as I know? Like there's there's not anyone who's more interested in seeing this come to tattooing than me. Right.
And I've been interested in this idea of since probably 2014 and 2015, when I kept thinking, oh, we're right around the corner. We're going to have that soon, and I want to be the one to make it happen.
Yeah. You know, I want to usher in that future that I imagine and, you know, all this time, all those attempts that I've made to try to figure out, is it possible now, you know, and and seeing how it is possible also, the system has made me realize that, like, you know, the way it'll probably come off the back of innovation in fashion. Fashion in medical. Right?
Because, you know, you're you're trying to make, or, you know, obviously, I mean, any other like, giant pillar of industry will solve the problem. So many of the problems around this enough to where the tattoo use case will become obvious. Yeah. It'll just be like, oh, okay. We just have to like, you know, take this and tweak it. Just tiny. Yeah, yeah. There's a great, I'll forget what it's called, but but, Peter Diamandes is a thing that he calls like the Five D's or the Seven d’s.
I don't know what they are, but it's about how the technology moves and the D's. I might be wrong on the order, but it's like, first, they are deceptive. Like, that doesn't really mean anything. It's not going to make any difference. Then it becomes disruptive. And then eventually it becomes, demonitized So you're saying that it's Thomas Sinnamond is spending 20 grand, and eventually you'll be able to do with your iPhone.
So think about like, the cost of taking photographs when you first started tattooing versus the cost of taking photographs today, you know, and then, so that's a disruptive, disruptive, but, the, demonetized and democratized because what's demonetized basically becomes accessible to everyone. I might be missing another one, but here's a great explanation for how that works. And he can show you dozens and dozens of technologies that follow those days really specifically.
So it's fun to, like, see where things might be in the realm. You know, when you identify a technology like in so many things that we thought we were going just about to have, right. Like, over the last couple of years, it's been, what do you call it, like VR. Right? Like meta investing so heavily in VR, you know, now Apple's got their thing.
It's it's kind of a flop, you know, like all these really, really smart people at all these really amazing companies come back that think now's the time to go and invest in this thing. And then it doesn't work. For now. They're like, okay, well over on it, maybe it's going to be another five years and it's going to be another time. Yeah. And or maybe never. But you know, it's really hard to imagine never. But it's. Yeah, tattooing is going to change. You know.
No, it just is, of course it is, right. Like that. People who get tattoos in the future are going to interact with my tattooing in a totally different way. And, you and I will probably think it's dumb. That's just what keeps happening, right? Like there was a you and I 50 years ago. And I think what we do now is done like, sorry, but they were innovators in their own time. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, I think that's true. I think it is fun to kind of see where it's at least for your own.
Like, peace of mind to be able to think about. Well, this is frustrating to me. Like, for example, Digital Skin was something I don't know that I've talked about a lot on here, but the idea, that we invested a lot of time, into was, was projection mapping, slash AR stenciling. So essentially if you had layers in Photoshop, you had a photo layer and a line layer and the shading layer, you could cycle through layers with voice commands.
So you can say like, show me that you I say, you're doing a portrait, send me the photo, drop into 40% opacity. Show me the line overlay. Okay, I got it. You know, like then you're doing all that live on the skin and you can see all of the individual pieces of the puzzle that I was thinking of exist independent of each other, you know? So all of those things are true. They happen. They just don't happen on the skin while you're stretching the skin.
So there were enough pieces that didn't work right. For example, there's some issue with geometry where there were three points. And I started thinking about it because I saw a, a router, a handheld router that was essentially a C and C, like you could make it a C and C by laying this grid tape over the piece of wood using a program. And it would follow, you know, follow the grid. And I was like, we could probably do that with tattoo stencils in some way.
We could project the grid project the the image within the grid. And when I stretch the skin, it'll know the distance between the grid pieces and it'll adapt the stencil that just turned out not to be true right now. So even though it's frustrating now, it's still going to happen. Yeah, 100%.
Yeah. Eventually. Like when Apple Vision Pro I went there, you know, tried it on an Apple and I ended up buying it just to find out like what the experience was like to think about whether or not I could like actually tattoo while looking through it. Answer is no, I don't think so. Yeah. It was it was quite heavy. It was just I'm not taking you back. You get 30 days to try it out so anyone can go. If you want to buy yourself an Apple Vision Pro, you can experience it.
But you know, the at the time, I was thinking, I gotta do this, it's R&D. I gotta find out if this is something that, you know, could help realize that future. It probably can once, once they're on their third, fourth, fifth generation. And they fixed a lot of those problems.
But, you know, or maybe, you know, whatever Meta’s is coming out with next or whatever, you know, someone else is gonna do, like, you know, that that endless kind of like cycle of innovation, it's always going to keep happening. So it's going to get smarter, lighter, faster, better. Yeah. Cheaper. Right. All those things were popping in.
Yeah. Followed probably if I these you can kind of imagine like what the ideal version of it would be is like, I would never have to stencil anything right on the skin. I would just look at the skin and I would see whatever stencil I needed to see, and it would always track and it would never get glitchy and never, you know, I wouldn't start the outline. I then it would move somewhere else, like it would just be perfect. But and and if I wanted like you said, voice command.
Let me see it colored in again. All right, take the color back away. So now it's like, run a simulation of what happens. If I had read that. Yeah, in the hair. You know, it's like, okay, here. Yeah, right in the hair. And I guess I can probably do that. Yeah. I'm sure even if you, Covid disrupted us, or disrupted my project, we just have never gotten back on our feet. But, just the leaps and I, from 2019 to today, I believe, because.
So I, I pitched this idea because I'm always thinking about tattooers. It was a tattooers tool to me as we looked at raising money for it, people were like, it needs to be for the end user. So what about, you were saying a visualization tool? What if someone could cycle through geometric designs with their forearm projecting onto their arm, test different colors? Maybe I could look at their skin tone and give them a color palette recommendation.
They can social share right there on the spot and say, hey, should I get it here or here? Should I get it? I'm at the studio. I'm I'm in the consultation room. Like, should I get it in red or blue? And their friends can thumb it up or thumbs it down. So that was their idea on how it would work first and then evolved to my idea.
Yeah. I think you got to if you really want to make something viable for the market for that much investment, and it's got to appeal to a much wider audience and people who are doing tattoos for a living. Yeah. You know, and so the next step is like people who get tattoos, you know, much, much more people, right? You know, like, of course we think about that with tattoo smart. Like, just like we created all this artwork, you know, and it's currently our customers.
The tattoo artist is our version where it makes sense, the customer becomes the client. Right? Right. And but of course, we know as artists like, I know a lot of people who tattoo just heard what you were saying a few minutes ago. And I'm kind of cringing when I was thinking about, like, creating this, like endless amount of indecision in your clients, right? Yeah, yeah, because that's probably what would happen. Right?
Like if you give people these tools to like, you know, even AI does this right. And you just like kind of sit there and like keep typing in words. Instantly, seemingly amazing pictures show up. You could never pick like you could never feel settle. If this is the one. Right. And I definitely think that's only going to become more of an issue in the future with this whole visualization. It's like we're giving people all these tools to, yeah, you know, be able to see a million options.
How are they ever going to pick one? Right? Yeah, actually comes back probably to just needing to have someone or some kind of guide say, no, this is the best one, right. And give them some certainty about. Yeah, I think most clients don't even want even any of that who just want the artist to to be confident. Yeah. That's, you know, one of the, one of the big sayings that I hear a lot now is the, would be it's like the question is, you know, what? Will AI replace me? Will AI take my job?
And it's like, the answer is, you know, AI probably won't take your job, but as someone who knows how to use AI better than you will definitely take your job, you know? And so that's the type of relationship there. It's like an artist who knows how to you.
Like, I'm not a fan of like asking Midjourney to make my tattoo designs, but I'm certainly more than comfortable asking Midjourney to give me dozens of pieces of reference that I can, like, plop down on my screen and use to draw from and still, like, translate it to my own, you know, voice. I think that's actually a much more effective way for me to design than just in screenshotting a bunch of Pinterest and Google images, for sure, you know? Yeah.
And so that's know that's the difference in like, AI isn't going to do that, but AI is going to help me to do it. So. Well. Yeah. It means how do you give the human a tool that helps them do one part of their process a little more efficiently or a little faster? If that human is passionate and as an artist, they're going to use up all of that free time to push some other part further, I think. Yeah. You know, in theory.
So like the argument that this tool or that tool is just going to make everybody lazy isn't true. It's going to let some people continue to be lazy because they already are lazy. And if there's a person who's not lazy, they're going to take that extra level up and push even further. So we all get to see potentially a more interesting version of tattooing because of that tool, whatever the tool. Yeah, right. And that's the same, you know, argument I make for digital designers.
Right? Right, right. Yeah. You're going to sacrifice some, you know, huge amounts of time that you otherwise would have spent to do something. You might not feel so good about it because it wasn't that hard to do. Right. And there's definitely something to that. Yeah. If you want to be artist, are just proud of the effort that they make. And quite frankly, the the audience likes their art better when they see that it's hard. Sure. You know, you just show someone a painting these days.
It could look like AI might have done it. And that takes away the power unless you show how hard it was. Yeah. So like artists nowadays that are doing things the hard way, they're doing things with physical media are going to benefit a lot from documenting how hard it was. Right. And making that documentation of the process a piece of the presentation of the art. Because otherwise people, you know, especially if they're looking at it online, they're not going to see the brushstrokes or not.
You see the effort. Yeah, we're seeing that so much more work lately as as social media has moved to video and things like that. And we're seeing so much of people's processes, I think that's I hadn't thought about why, but I think that's a great reason why. It's like, hey, if you just saw the end result, it could have been anything. You know, it could have gotten there in ten minutes, you know? No, a lot of the value comes from how difficult it was to make it.
So. Yeah. What craft is still alive? Yeah. Yeah. Impressed by it. Still same here. You, on on a slightly different topic. And, I know we're going to get food in a few minutes, so I'll find a wrap up point, but the, you've gone back to chat. You went quite a few years, so that would do it. Almost no tattooing at all, right? I was tattooing one day a week or never slowed down some of that. Sometimes I would travel and so it might be 2 or 3 weeks in between. Yeah. A one day a week session. Right.
You know, I just got so busy between running my studio and what everything was going on with Tattoo Smart a few years back, it's really it reached, sort of the pinnacle. You know, it was a company with six employees and and a bunch of different, like, subcontractors, designers, 3D modelers and all these different things.
And I was basically out there trying to figure out how to become the CEO of, of a small tech publishing company, you know, and I was doing a lot of personal development and really thinking like, okay, it doesn't really make sense for me to it makes sense for me to tattoo, like the research and development side of it, to stay connected to tattooing, to be able to think of the new ideas. But it didn't make a lot of sense for me to be a tattoo a full time. And it wasn't in my back was hurting.
Yeah. Every time I was sitting down to tattoo, I was having to with my shoulder blades between my shoulder blades. It was just miserable sometimes. Yeah, I need to go fix that. And. And you've done a lot. You're a much better physical condition than you were in your tattooing before. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I lost a bunch of weight and started going to the gym first. I started just like two days a week with a personal trainer, and these days I'm doing five days a week and I'm like, actually, right.
Strength training. I'm, you know. Yeah, try and try not to hurt myself, but also just trying to, you know, undo a lot of years of not taking care of my body. Yeah. Trying to make sure that I at 45. I'm building up muscle to and like as I grow older, I start naturally losing muscle. I think after you hit like 70 years old or something, you start losing weight, you know, 5% of muscle every decade or something.
So it's you're, you know, if you build it up during this time in your life, you have more to lose. So you can be 80 and still be able to walk up stairs. Yeah. You know. Yeah. You know, to lift a suitcase, you know, in the overhead bin on the airplane. I still enjoy that time, right? Yeah. Right. Right. Well, what has what, if anything, like leaving not not necessarily leaving tattooing, tattooing one day a week as opposed to coming back. And like, you've made an effort.
I've seen it where you're like, hey, I want to start some projects, you know, I want to do some new, interesting, fun things. So so you're having to first kind of identify like what's interesting and fun. What do people expect out of me based on what they saw ten years ago or however long? And what do I how much of that do I want to carry forward? How has it impacted the shop, I guess, and the other artists with you being there more, is that have been a net positive or would you even know that?
Okay, I think so. I mean, you know, to answer that question, I have a shop with 15 resident artists and a lot of them have been and started working there during the period where they were told from the very beginning, Russ is only here every once in a while, you know, there were once before that were more impacted by me cutting back right. There's always going to be the I mean, it's not the same as it used to be conversations. And and I was really conscious of that at the time when I was in.
It's basically creating a problem in the culture in my shop because I needed to be there less. And it was a problem for people that, you know, felt that me being there was part of the reason that they wanted to be there. And and so as new team members came on, we just tried to be like really honest about what they could expect of me.
And I show them all the time the effort that I'm putting in from my home, where I'm working on our website, I'm working on our marketing, I'm working on our brand You know, we're we have an active, WhatsApp group where we're all communicating. Right? Right. I have meetings with them. You know, every few months I take each of them out to breakfast or lunch and we just check in, because even though the times I am tattooing, I'm tattooing. Right.
So there's not a lot of like back and forth time, so. Right. So what about you as far as the work that you're trying to do, I'm assuming you don't want to just like jump right back into 3D geometry and like, you know, and and work on a lot of the time you do want to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So yeah, 45 years old I feel like, you know, ten more years is all I have to do. Some body suits.
And so my dream is that some people out there with no tattoos, wherever you are, people with no tattoos or a few things that need to be covered up or reworked or whatever, well, I love what I'm doing and just want me to come create an entire body suit of cohesive tattoos. I've had a few opportunities to do it along the way, you know that didn't need that. You know, no tattoos criteria. That's like really rare. That's rare. You know, that that would be a dream. But the kind of work I do. Yeah.
And full color sometimes I do black and gray work, too, but the kind of work I do, it, it takes a long time, you know, a lot of times it's really super intricate. I wear a magnifying glasses and I. I put some of the patterns in, but I also try to keep other parts of it really simple so that we can be more efficient. We're talking about, I mean, ultimately, like I think my work is architectural and ornamental.
So I mean, it can span centuries of ornamental design the way that that you mentioned different cultures, decorated buildings and applying that to the human form. So, yeah, you know, I use the scroll work a lot because it just helps navigate, areas of the body that aren't good for linear designs.
So, you know, one of the, the main themes that you'll see, especially in my recent work, I just did this like sleeve, in that client's getting a second leg in the same style, and it's just ornamental scrollwork. And then the pattern that's happening is from Kumiko, It's a Japanese woodworking. If you've ever seen in Japan, they, really carefully cut pieces of wood into strips, and then they arrange them into an isometric grid. So they're like cutting out notches and clicking them together.
Right. And they create wooden panels or screens and they can change the color of the wood. And so it's not just that isometric grid that's like the base grid. And then within each of those triangles on the grid there's a different pattern. And so I'm using the patterns to create these geometric patterns. And, and I'm just applying color to it in a way that looks cool. Yeah. And do have stamp set for those patterns that you're having to do. I don't I don't have a stamp set for them yet.
I do have my own private digital tool that I use to to make the design a little bit easier, but I haven't made it into, into a product. I mean, in fact, I don't think anybody really cares. Like, I'm like, what? one of three people who would even use it, so... (garbled inaudible sounds from the stage) the loud content mic guy is starting, I don't know if they can still hear us, but I think that's that's probably a good sign to shut it down.
But yeah, we need to talk about something else that is be in paradise next week together. So maybe we can, take it back up if we want to take it back. Oh, it's great talking to. Yeah. You too. Thank you guys for watching what we do. We'll see you next time.