Watch This Tattoo Come to Life

By taking advantage of some stop-motion animation, a talented tattoo artist, and 11 very helpful friends photographer Evan Hawkins was able to turn a series of tattoos into what may be the first human flip book. Drawing his inspiration from a Eadweard Muybridge’s Sallie Gardner at a Gallop—24 photographs that were taken in rapid succession and shown on a zoopraxiscope are often credited as the first silent film—Hawkins had 11 of his friends get single frames of the horse running tattooed onto them. Once his friends had been inked by Matt Hoyme Hawkins photographed the tattoos and animated them.

After successfully creating Horse in Motion Hawkins has chosen to go all out for his next project; instead of using only 11 friends as he did with Horse in Motion the photographer hopes to recruit 1,000 people to get tattooed for a massive work of art. If you are interested in participating contact information can be found at this link.