One of the things that we specialize in is creating tattoos for film and television.

It's sort of started back on a film called Pearl Harbor, we decided to create tattoos that looked like scratches and bruises and wounds and so on that film, we created burns and scratches that could be applied to the actors every single day that looked the same.

And from there, the company progressed into doing more graphical work that you've seen in Triple X Prison Break bullet, Train and Aquaman.

We've specialized in coming up with methods of covering people's bodies with tattoos.

I never knew fake tattoos would be a job.

So when I was originally contacted to do this, I was floored by the fact that you could make a living doing it.

I have no tattoos, but I'm a huge fan of the tattoo culture, so being able to emulate that in any way is something that I'm really excited about doing.

We usually start with backstory, The script can explain a little bit about the character what they are presently, but not necessarily give you a back story from where they came from and who they are tattoos are a process.

They're usually gathered over time.

They're adding to them constantly different experiences in life, dictate the type of tattoo, different places you got them will dictate what the tattoos look like because it's not just about drawing a design, it's about supporting that character and explaining to the audience in a very brief moment who this person is.

You want to work in broad strokes with what we're creating because it's that mass of imagery that's really going to read most on camera.

It's not so much these finite details that are never really the shot.

And a lot of times we don't have as much time as people do in their lifetime to think about what kind of tattoo they want.

We're doing what people will take years to decide on and we're trying to put that into two weeks if we're lucky if we're lucky.

So the next phase really would be the design process.

We'll start with sketches, we'll start with inspiration boards.

We start with photographs of the actor.

We'll do some broad stroke imagery.

And that also gives us an idea on how we're going to chop up this tattoo in the long run because we're always thinking that he's got to apply it when it comes down to it.

Yeah, so it's like you've got to make this functional.

You know, the best way we've described it over the years is it's taking a flat two D.

Image and wrapping it around a basketball.

Like how do you do that if you're a muscular fella or a woman and you've got a lot of bumps in your arms.

It's gonna make it difficult for that paper to start to hug that we like soft people, soft, shapeless human beings are the best wonderful and once we finalize that we can decide on how this is going to be applied on a daily basis.

We usually start that with getting the actor in and doing what we call a pattern cast, which is a three dimensional wrap of the actor.

So we can create our two dimensional imagery from that knowing that it'll wrap back around that individual's body.

Of course with technology, we've been doing a lot more scanning of actors behind us is Aquaman, this is Jason Momoa as body and that becomes a lot easier for us to work with because we have the actor at our availability at all times.

Exactly.

And we were able to dial it in and really take the time to get it to work.

The way it should work if it's applied any different than the way I've designed it.

That will change where it lands on the body.

So you always have to put in some kind of negative space that allows for that little gap that may change when it's applied.

Let's say you have some smoke that's rising or flames or there's space in between those flames or in between those smokes where the skin is going to come through, we call that negative space and those are great places where we can cut without actually interfering with the image.

You know, the other thing that we talked about internally that we don't normally share is the fact that ac actors adjust in size and weight before a film starts.

So by the time we get them weeks, maybe even months prior to shooting, they're still going through either special diets, exercise routines or they're gaining weight.

This makes adjustments to our designs that we've already started, that we have to now compensate for usually very last minute.

It does make it for a difficulty at four in the morning when you're, yeah, after we are done designing the tattoos, we've created groups of aging tones that we can apply to the tattoo.

So if a director says this tattoo should feel 30 years old, we have presets in the software that we can apply to that artwork that then gives it an aged quality.

Things like the ink looks like it's bleeding a little bit more into the skin scarring during the process of the tattooing.

Love that because tattooing now is so dense and it's almost impossible to get out of your skin.

But if you think of sailor jerry era tattoo ink, that stuff broke down and changed color.

My uncle had a panther that was just a blob after a while.

So they take on their own life in that skin.

And depending on where you got the tattoo, you know, if you're in prison, your ink maybe a different color completely, you're not going to have just, and they're using tools that aren't as professional, they're literally using pen tips and electric razors to get the needles to go in and I've always told Dick, it's like, I'm really good at doing those designs because I'm not as clean of an illustrator as Dick.

So it's like if it needs to look like a bad tattoo, I got this one, I'll make it look blurry After we treat the tattoos, then we go to a printing process with a special kind of ink that allows it to be water resistant, waterproof adhesives that we use our medical grade, that allows it to hold very well to the skin.

Sometimes these tattoos when they're applied can last days depending on the chemistry of the actor's skin, the type of environment they're in.

Like if you're working 20 days in a row, but you're in the winter in new york, they're gonna be different than if you're in 100 and 10 degrees in florida, what kind of wardrobe they're going to be wearing?

Are they going to be having suits of armor versus t shirts and jeans or no clothing at all.

Location of the tattoo is also something to consider because if you're putting a neck tattoo on her hand tattoos, those are high traffic is what we like to call them and they're going to break down faster.

It's one of the most common questions I get from other makeup artists when they, when they call and say the tattoos are falling off the hands constantly.

I'm replacing them twice a day when you got to tell the actor stop putting their hands in their pocket, stop, you know, putting on jackets five times a day, right to stop using your hands.

The neck is a tricky one because people are usually in callers, the oils work differently here, kind of like your T zone on your face.

So those are like you said high traffic areas that need a little bit more attention as opposed to something flat on the back or the arm.

We've had situations where the tattoo is so elaborate and it takes so long to apply that we kind of take extra special care with that actor because production of course doesn't want to go through another three or four hour application.

The next morning shows like Prison Break Blind spot where they're fully covered in tattoos.

You know, these types of tattoo applications can take a very long time.

We take extra special care and sealing them and protecting them so the actor can go home and sleep in them, still shower, come back the next day and get right back into work removal is another big aspect of what we do.

It's something you got to be really, really careful with.

You can really hurt somebody if you don't do it properly and because the tattoos hold so well.

Yeah, and by the end of the day, of course, the actor just wants to go home.

It's been 14 hours already and so it's common human nature to want to rub and scrub and and think that somehow that exfoliation is going to get it done faster and the truth of it is, is we essentially soak them, you let it sit for about five minutes and then it all just sort of falls off.

One of the big challenges for both productions finances as well as our job is to create tattoos for stunt people and it's not just stunt people emulating the actors fake tattoos.

It's sometimes emulating the actor's real tattoos to be put onto stunt people for example, in bullet train brad Pitts tattoos in that film are all his own.

And so we had to recreate all his tat to go on to the stunt double as opposed to somebody like tangerine or white death where we just had to create duplicates of those tattoos that fit the stunt actor and another place that we use duplicating tattoos a lot are in commercials, something that you think is Lebron James, but it's not when you just see an arm coming into frame or like you said, Lebron James and you just need that shot of the lower half of the body.

This is really where it plays into with the stunt tattoos and the recreating also come into the idea that we've done shirts and things like that.

So this all started back on a show years and years ago, it was a film called torque and I remember the producer coming to me and talking to me about the cost of all these tattoo applications for the actors for the stunt people.

And that's kind of where the idea came from.

Well what if we could take a mesh type material and then slipped over the body to look inherently like their own skin and the tattoos, you go From a to our application to a 32nd application, it's magic.

In fact, I got an example right here.

So this is an aquaman tattoo, it's much more tan than I am, but you can see when it, when it goes on, it just represents the tattoo in the skin tone.

And as we progressed over the years, we ended up doing 250 of these suits on John Carter from Mars an instant army of tattooed Martians and same with Mad Max Fury Road all the way.

Yes, as an example, we have a lot of tattoos over here on the wall, we have blind spot, we have some tattoos from Westworld and then these red designs, those are actually scarification tattoos for Fury Road.

So these would go on to the actor's body layers of makeup and white mud would then kind of go over that and you would have this believable three dimensional scarification look for a lot of the background where they didn't have to put prosthetics on every day.

Part of the idea of wounds differently than graphic designs is you have to treat the tattoo more like make up one of the tricks with wound tattoos is to understand how color translates onto skin through transparency.

So there are certain wounds that look better on different skin types.

It becomes a whole trick in itself.

It's an illusion.

It's magic trick essentially.

Well, what I also like about them is that you can get a wound tattoo to look raised using negative space, it creates the highlight so the scab could look like it's, it's butting up against something and we can show you some examples of the tattoos.

There's some scabs.

So these are, these are some of my favorites, the pimples, right?

Yeah, if you got to do acne, you know, you get some little highlights in the middle there, some of the skin irritation, even with scab, this is a little bit fresher of a scab.

Another great thing that we can always do is we can create aging with these wounds so we'll create a scab that's more fresh and then we'll start to diminish that scab and make it look more brown and yellow as it starts to heal.

Always kind of fun and fascinating.

It's so funny that you mentioned not being tattooed because that's probably one of the questions that I get asked all the time.

Well, how many tattoos do you have?

I'm like zero.