Otte Timar

It was in 1998, when I first got in touch with tattooing, although I have been drawing for quite a while before on paper.  Luckily, I found a great master for myself, Norbi Beke (Poppy and Puppies), who kindly allowed me to learn the secrets of tattooing by close observation.

As I remember, only after a year or so was I ready to finally start working with a machine in my hands. I started my career in the summer of 1999, and to my luck, the number of “donors” increased quite quickly.

I spent the summer of 2000 in Balatonfüred in studio Manitou, where I received my first, unforgettable psycho training from my boss, Maci. In 2001 I worked partly on my own in Tihany, where I opened Red Lion Tattoo. The studio has since resurrected and was reborn as an intellectual institution.

From October 2001 I traveled to Germany frequently to practice tattooing. In the beginning, I mostly spent my days in the eastern parts of Germany (Leipzig, Dresden, Zwickau).

Then a few years later, in summer of 2003, the ocean of life washed me ashore in Trogir, Croatia. This is where the second Red Lion Tattoo was opened. I spent four funny and exciting summers with my friend, Zotykó, who was also beside me when experiencing the ups and downs of the life.

Then later, one day I again found myself on the cold and humid Germany. Initially I worked as a guest tattoo artist, then a year later I opened my own studio, which became the third Red Lion Tattoo. 2005 was a year full of success. Before starting this new year though, I was honored with two international awards in the Berlin Expo (Black White – 2nd prize, Best of Crazy – 3rd prize) The new German studio opened its doors with very good reputation; many German magazines published my works. The German Tattoo Spirit introduced me to the European tattoo-fans in six pages, while the Spanish Tattoo Arte popularized me on fifteen pages. This great year was crowned with the Expo in Berlin, where I heard my name twice again during the announcement of the results (Best of Realistic – 1st prize, Best of Small – 2nd prize). Since then I’ve been to many meetings and expos, which resulted in even more awards for me.

Over the time I spent with the Germans, I realized that Germany is just not my place. For this reason, exactly a year after the opening celebration, we had the closing party at my Kassel-based studio… The only thing I regret leaving behind is the wall painting of my friend, Dani Hegybíró, which he created to decorate my studio. Unfortunately I had no C4 at hand, which could have helped me to take this awesome creation with me; therefore the beautiful Queen in the Holy Crown is looking at the Albanians, who have transformed the ex-tattoo studio into a travel agency. Luckily they had enough sense of beauty not to paint a two-headed eagle over the original painting…

Before we closed our studio, my mood started to be similar to the weather in Germany, and I spent a lot of time surfing the Internet. This is how I found one of my greatest ideals, Guy Aitchinson. Guy is great, not only personality-wise, but also with regards to tattooing, so he did not hesitate too much, helped me to get out of my depression. (Thank you, Guy!) Thanks to his help, a twelve page long article was published about me in Tattoo Flash magazine, which sells in about 1,5 million issues. As a result, I started to get offers from all over the world, and of course congratulations as well, so thank you very much!

The traffic in my inbox increased tenfold, but over the following few months, the daily 150 emails decreased to the normal 10. The success-boom was over, but I hope that my published works in the magazine at least caused a few happy moments for some of you…

Special thanks to the guy in Bangkok, who put one of my works out in his shop-window as his own work! I’m sure he never thought that I would walk there one day…J I was so impressed, that I could not resist going into his shop and congratulating him personally. I am not sure he understood why I did that or why it would be good for me.

Fulfilling a few requests, I continued searching for the Red Lion. I traveled to Spain, I flipped Hernandez out in Madrid, and then I suffered from sleep-lack in Valencia for a month due to Las Fallas. It’s absolutely amazing when fireworks blown right in front of your windows wake you up at 5 in the morning.

It was still in 2006, when I decided to move to Switzerland and sty with Rock and Tea in World’s End Tattoo. I experienced what it feels like to live in a squat, and I found out that my boss, Rock – as the Satanist Church’s high priest – does not eat people, and is a friend of H.R. Giger. We planned to pop into his house together, but he was not in the mood for it. The usual Saturday night sacrifice of the goat must have made him exhausted… : )

These people have too much time and energy to waste – I thought in myself. If they only had to work in Hungary for minimum wage and rent a flat from that money I’m sure they’d choose to do different things… What I found this time extraordinarily amazing, was PainStation2. I’ll post some pictures of this under section “On the way…” This is a game that does not give you minus points; instead it gives you real punishment in the form of minor electric shocks, hits, or burns. It’s not dreadfully harmful, but you definitely feel when you’re punished! The game itself is very similar to one of the first generation video games called “Tennis”. It has a few more functions, but it’s more or less the same as “Tennis”. It’s not worth playing with it for hours – especially when you take tequila shots to make you numb -, as the punishments hurt very much the next day. The only very good thing in this game is that you can finally play with someone, who you really hate, and you both enjoy it.

During my travels I got to know quite a lot of people, and many of them turned into my friends. I would definitely like to highlight one of them now.  Schumitz, the owner of Hardcore Ink Tattoo in Kassel, my long-time rival, with whom we fought our business fight with the mentality of Hunor and Magor instead of the “normal” Cain and Abel style. As a result, we became real brothers instead of enemies.

In 2009, the spirit of Red Lion again resurrected, and we started to work in a team. We attended expos and meetings as Red Lion Circus, and as we traveled across Europe, we tried to help overloaded studios. Thanks to my woman’s self-sacrificing organizing work and to a few Hungarian Titans, we formed into a great team fit for action. We were attacking Europe with our unified forces, “…and Europe was frightened by our adventurous campaign”.( :

For now, we’ll keep searching on, I opened my own studio in Budapest in 2010.The New World is among my plans with a hope in my heart that I will once find the treasure of the alchemists, the Red Lion, that is myself…

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