A guy has taken the ‘scary clown’ concept to a whole new level as his terrifying full back tattoo appears to come to life when he moves.
Hendrik Schönenberg had to spend 20 hours under a tattoo gun before his huge piece of artwork was complete, and the impressive result makes it easy to understand why it took so long.
The horrifically lifelike, gory tattoo is enough to give even the bravest of people a taste of coulrophobia – a fear of clowns.
Check out the freaky way it moves:
It took four tattoo artists, Torsten Malm, Adrian Ciercoles, Moriel Seror and Kätlin Malm, to come up with the intricate design, which covers the entirety of Hendrik’s back.
The image had been commissioned by the customer, who wanted a horror clown piece, but the designers were given artistic freedom to come up with the exact tattoo.
I think it’s safe to say they nailed the ‘horror clown’ requirement.
By stretching his back muscles and rolling his shoulders, the satisfied customer is able to make the clown leer and grimace as though he’s being distorted by a carnival mirror.
Tattoo artist Torsten spoke about the design, explaining:
The four of us have been friends for a while and thought it would be a great experience to work on a bigger project altogether.
He gave us a lot of artistic freedom to design it ourselves. We had a lot of fun coming up with the design together and trying to make it as terrifying as possible for him.
Moriel, who also worked on the tattoo, added that the terrifying piece thankfully wasn’t a reflection of Hendrik’s personality, saying:
He made it very easy to work with him so we enjoyed the process a lot. That means a lot to us as artists because long hours can easily get very tiring for us as well.
He was amazed and very grateful for it. He did an amazing job in getting through those two days. It isn’t easy when four artists work on you at the same time.
Actually, despite what the horror picture might suggest, we thought he was one of the kindest people in the world.
Footage of the creepy artwork coming to life was shared on Facebook, where it racked up more than 240,000 shares and likes and more than 12 million views.
Tattooist Kätlin spoke about how some people were horrified by the artwork, but she explained that meant they’d achieved their goal.
She said:
People are mainly baffled that you can actually possibly do a tattoo like this.
A lot of people were scared and disgusted by it too – but that’s exactly the reaction that you would expect for a creepy clown tattoo. It told us we’d done our job.
I think we were pleased that you couldn’t tell which part was done by what artist. It looks like a complete piece made by one artist. We couldn’t be happier with the end result.
While there’s no denying it’s an impressive piece, the clown definitely isn’t the type of character you’d want turning up to a child’s birthday party!
Terrifying.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.