Tokyo-based Ubiquitous Entertainment has developed iShodo, a calligraphy application for the iPhone (the user interface is completely in English).
Japanese calligraphy in particular takes years and years to master and is widely considered as a form of art. I wrote “CrunchGear” in Japanese on my own iPhone using iShodo and you can see the result in the picture below (believe me, my handwriting is bad – even in Japanese).
The app should be especially interesting for all students of Japanese (and Chinese) who want to practice writing all those complicated letters on Hanshi, “virtually original” Japanese paper.
Users can choose between pens/brushes in three different sizes and thin or condensed ink. It’s possible to save your works of art as pictures in a gallery (examples) or to send them directly to a Twitter account, which is a cool idea.
iShodo is available for $0.99 in the App Store.
The video below shows iShodo in action.