We met with Cartoon at the Milanese celebrations of Air Force 25th. Here is what he told us.

What was it that initially got you doing tattoos?

I’ve just been drawing my whole life. And tattooing was something I grew into, I had to wait for the doors to open up for me to learn the professional way. I was doing it homemade style on the homies, but I knew that there was a difference and that I had a choice, to do it with professional machines.

How long have you been tattooing?

More than 10 years. I’ve been a professional artist for over 20 years. Let’s put it this way, the majority of people outside of Southern California know me for tattoos, but the people in L.A. knew me since I was 16, doing lowrider murals. I was the youngest illustrator for Hustler magazine. I was already doing interviews and being known before I picked up a tattoo machine. I came to tattoo in my mid 20’s.

What distinguishes your work from other artists?

think what makes me different and original is that I draw each and every customer a custom original tattoo, I don’t do anything twice.

There are no patterns in the shop, as far as walking up and picking number 9. Even if you want something already done, I’ll change it up. I specialize in black and grey, I don’t use any colors. One bottle of black and some water, that’s it. I don’t go out of my style, that’s me, that’s what I do. I wouldn’t do nothing on anyone that I wouldn’t wear. Personally I respect color tattoos, but I wouldn’t put any on me. That’s because of how I grew up, that’s our style.

You seem to be working on a lot more than just tattoos, what else are you involved with?

Well, I’m building a 1963 candy tangerine ice cream truck, with the plasma screen in it, 20 speakers, 10 TVs. And I’m designing my own shoes right now, with Nike. I have a limited edition skateboard, Stussy.

Rumour has it that soon Mr.Cartoon will become the first tattoo artist to make a movie. The title will be Ink - The Movie, and a short trailer is already available online. Can you tell us something more about this project? Is it a documentary on your life?

You know, at first it was meant to be a documentary, considering that Estevan [Oriol, his partner] has been following me with a camera for 15 years. Now we have a lot of footage, and we’re gonna work on that to make the real movie.

We took some of those images to make a trailer and build up a little hype. We managed to secure a deal with Brian Grazer, who produced stuff like 8 Mile and A Beautiful Mind. Big movies. Then, we had to decide whether we wanted to make a documentary or a classic Hollywood movie. If we had chosen the documentary, we already knew it was gonna be an elite thing. So we decided to think big and produce something that could have a wider distribution and a larger audience. Making a movie is a great thing, but it’s a very, very slow process. We’ll start shooting soon, but it’ll take a while for us to finish it. I think it won’t be released before 2009.

Aside from the movie, is it true that, among your projects, there’s also a comic book?

Yeah, it’s gonna be a graphic novel, a nice hardcover book. We have aleady presented a few art-toys inspired by the comic book, the Lost Angeles Toys [produced by Super Rad Toys (www.myspace.com/superradtoys), they cost about 130$], presenting the main character of the story, which is set between Tokyo and L.A. I’m afraid this is all I can say about it for the moment.