LIVE AT 2:30 MT 2-hour wildfire evacuation notice issued for some Fort McMurray neighbourhoods
A wildfire evacuation alert for some Fort McMurray residents has been updated to a two-hour evacuation notice.
Fernando Franco de Oliveira is nearly unrecognizable from how he appeared a decade ago.
In those ten years, the Brazilian tattoo artist has covered nearly every part of his body in ink and undergone surgery to give himself horns, a forked tongue, pointed orc ears and even going as far as to cut off his nose.
De Oliveira, who owns a tattoo studio in the southern Brazil city of Tatui 150 kilomtres west of Sao Paulo, says he’s been primarily inspired by skull imagery and “The Lord of The Rings.”
“In a way, I'm like the main attraction of my own studio,” he told CTVNews.ca in a video interview, adding that clients love his appearance and passersby often stop to snap selfies with him.
“About 70 per cent of people who see me on the street, they want to take photos with me and they find me interesting,” he said.
While he draws stares from strangers, de Oliveira says friends and family aren’t shocked by his appearance anymore.
“Most of my friends are already used to my appearance,” de Oliveira said, adding that his family members took some time to get used to his transformation. “When I first started tattooing myself and doing all these modifications, it was a big shock to them.”
In 2006, he started covering himself, head-to-feet, with tattoos of dragons, clowns, bulldogs and other creatures.
His ink is so extensive that he was recognized in 2014 as the most tattooed person in the country by RankBrasil -- a Brazilian organization similar to the Guinness Book of World Records, but which only registers and ratifies records and other oddities in the Latin American country.
De Oliveira calls the eight years he spent getting the tattoos “by far the most painful experience I've gone through.”
But as he inked more and more of his body, he began altering his appearance in other ways too.
De Oliveira began by stretching out his ear lobes; then injecting ink into his eyes turning them black; adding horns to his head; replacing his teeth with vampire dentures; and even splitting his tongue in half.
He eventually covered his facial tattoos by dying his skin blue and had his ears re-shaped to resemble those of an orc – a race of monstrous humanoids who represent the corrupted versions of elves and men in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”.
“But I would have to say that the most life-impacting, impacting modification I've done was with my nose,” he said, explaining he had it surgically removed in March and it’s taken several months to heal.
“It's still very painful because when I take a shower a lot of water goes into my nose.”
As for enduring the pain of people’s judgment, de Oliveira tries not to let it bother him. Many people think he’s either a Satanist or Satan himself, he said, “because I come across as a someone terrifying.”
“But the truth is, I'm not. I have God in my heart.”
And de Oliveira says his transformation isn’t complete, as he still hopes to narrow his jaw line and get rid of excess skin to more resemble a skull, and also attach more horns to his head.
“Everybody -- most people in the world -- they're all alike. They're the same. And I wanted to be different. I want to stick out.”
A wildfire evacuation alert for some Fort McMurray residents has been updated to a two-hour evacuation notice.
Canadian LifeLabs customers who filed an application for a class-action settlement began receiving their payments this week, though at a much lower amount than initially expected.
Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world's most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history's most honoured short story writers, has died at age 92.
Wildfires have led Environment Canada to issue air quality advisories for parts of B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, as forecasters warn the smoke could drift farther east.
Saskatchewan RCMP have revealed that a historic sexual assault investigation has led to the discovery of alleged crimes against children dating back to 2005.
An American accused of sexually assaulting a Pennsylvania college student in 2013 and later sending her a Facebook message that said, 'So I raped you,' has been detained in France after a three-year search.
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
Ontario Provincial Police are responding to a fatal collision involving two vehicles on Highway 417 in Ottawa's west end on Tuesday morning.
The Israeli flag is flying at Ottawa City Hall today to mark the country's national day, with plans to hold a private ceremony to mark Israel's Independence Day. There is a significant police presence at City Hall, including security barriers outside the main doors.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.