Death Before Dishonor Featurette

Death Before Dishonor I'm going to say is my most intricate piece that we've put out so far. It was the last design I sketched up and approved for this new collection, but it was the first one I began to finalize out of the 4. As this piece came into being it showed that Akumu Ink could have a new mature look, I was pushing the look away from what we had previously been doing so far. It also helped that I had been drinking absinthe and watching Japanese horror movies night after night, and listening to deathcore music with the blinds shut day after day. Really closing myself off and doing nothing but focusing on these designs and making sure every detail came out exactly as I wanted it to.

In the past our designs were created after I came home from work or on weekends, but this time around I had devoted all my time to making these something I would be proud of and making Akumu a look that wasn't seen done by other brands.

Inspiration for Death Before Dishonor: I knew I wanted to come up with a Geisha version of Marie-Antoinette. You can even see the cut around her neck from where she was decapitated by guillotine. I had this idea to have her looking at herself in a mirror. I was watching these awesome documentaries about Aleister Crowley and Nikola Tesla which got me thinking of using something crazy like symbols as the contours of the mirror. The symbols I ended up using were those of the planets in our solar system. They had a very demonic look to them, that of a ouija board.

Hope you all like the look of Death Before Dishonor. Feel free to leave your comments or thoughts as to how you perceive the design :)