- I'm Ray, this is Mike G.
- What's up guys.
- We work here at Body Electric Tattoo.
- And today we're gonna be checking out tattoos
in video games to see if the designers
did their job making tattoos look realistic
within the virtual world.
I mean, that's similar to a lot of things
I've seen in the real world,
You know. - Definitely.
- The flow that they use for the tribal looks good,
going over the shoulder, coming down onto the forearm,
letting certain muscle groups kind of pop through,
like the bicep, all of that's pretty true
to what we would do on the body.
- I'd say early to mid-90's all the way through
to like the 2000's people were just like
asking for tribal, all the time.
- Which is maybe something they're trying to do
with the character to show like, his age,
it looks like he's like a little bit older.
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- I've seen some tattoos done like this
and it's a cool style.
That whole cyber meets art deco
kind of a vibe, tribal 2.0 or 10.0,
or however you want to put it.
It flows well for being just a portion of her arm,
and being sort of squeezed in,
it's got a little bit of jaggedness here and there,
which again, adds to the realism of the whole thing.
- I like that they kept it like towards the front
of her arm, - Yeah.
- There's not really much in the back,
it shows intent with her character.
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I think they did a good job of keeping it more minimal,
which makes it look older.
I think the flow is interesting,
I like that they bring the design from the stomach
up across the chest and like around the arm.
- The closest I've actually done is Scottish inspiration,
like that Scottish war paint.
And I did do some tattoos in blue, not in red,
that were more like a streak of color.
The chest and then the arms, you know
so it was just sort of like this drift.
It's the most real world, - Definitely.
- I think, of all the video game tattoos I've seen.
More like what people would actually walk in and get.
- It's like black and gray,
looks realistic, the gradations in the black look good.
It looks real on the character.
People are always getting tattooed
like as they go through some like,
- Emotional, traumatic I mean, - Yeah, emotional,
life-changing experience.
- A lot of people use tattooing as a therapy, almost.
- It looks like he got pieces that were meaningful to him,
like over the course of his life,
probably through his travels.
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- This is another 90's based tattoo,
because I remember so many people were like
oh man I wanna get a bar code and go to the store
and see if I can scan it, you know.
- If someone came in and had like no other tattoos
and wanted me to tattoo like a barcode
on the back of the head, I would question it.
- I don't think he chose that,
I think this was something he was forced to get.
It's more utilitarian than a choice.
It's a bunch of really concentric straight lines,
being so close, you know, over time,
they're going to bleed into one big blob, so,
probably one of the toughest things to do.
These are great.
- Yeah, nicely done. The flow on the body looks good,
all fun subject matter to tattoo,
like I would want to do these tattoos.
- They did some research for sure.
The eagle's great, the dragon's great, the snake,
all of it.
- Looks like there's probably some sort of
cultural elements within the tattoos.
- Religious even?
- Yeah, which is coming through,
which makes it more like contemporary.
- The execution, the placement, the shading,
the rendering, all of it, really works.
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- This just looks bad,
this is like a poor design.
Face tattoos I don't mind
but this one is just a really bad design.
As the two pieces come on to the cheek
and then lead into the portion that goes over the eyebrow,
it just looks too stiff. If I was to do this tattoo,
I'd probably try to like flow it around the eye a bit more,
rather than cutting it in towards the eye.
- You wanna again, - Probably have it go,
- go with the flow. - more like this.
- Yeah, - Have it go, like that.
They try to flow with the muscle shape a little bit,
but it just looks too stiff so,
I think maybe more of like a curl shaped tribal,
rather than something's that more of
like a spike coming out.
- Yeah like the top part would even work,
if you took the two bottom pieces off
that would even be fine. - Um hmm.
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- Jack's tattoos are great, I like these.
- This is like, this is trash polka hell.
Trash polka is that style where you see
a lot of black and red, sort of thrown together
with a lot of drips and dots.
Different elements just mashed together.
- I think this tattoo would take about 50 or 60 hours,
I mean to complete - Sure.
something like this detailed, which is cool,
it looks like she had gotten tattoos,
and then decided later on to add more to them,
but it also all flows together.
The torso looks good, like they held true to scale,
for the torso they didn't try to do too much with that.
If I was to see Jack from Mass Effect in the streets,
I would think that she had the best tattoos.
- They are pretty cool.
- I'm just kind of curious, why this kid has tattoos.
- It looks almost like they created this like
bled together, - Yeah that looks blown out.
Sort of like blown out.
- That's a term that we use within the industry
for something that like, when the ink spreads a little bit,
they did a good job capturing tattoos
that looked like they were - Yeah, they're not perfect,
and they spread over time.
- Probably not done with a machine
- They definitely look hand-poked.
- Which I think looks cool.
- This just looks like a really well-executed
Japanese style.
- The fact that there's gradations on the arm looks solid,
the way they brought the tattoo into the chest panel,
the dragon's like climbing over the shoulder
and like they have the claw here on the outside of the arm.
The flow looks solid, it looks
like even with the dragon wrapping around the elbow,
rather than going right over it,
is something that I would probably do as a tattoo artist.
I studied Japanese, put a lot solid black
in their environments, and then from there,
left the subject matter either in a lighter tone,
or you know maybe more skin that comes through,
so to create that contrast.
So they did that with this piece,
where it's like the dragon is popping out
off of the background.
It's something that's kind of timeless
and the Japanese have a huge influence
into American tattooing.
You still see this everyday I would say.
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I think most people wish that their tattoos could glow.
- Yeah, a lot of people want glowing tattoos.
I wouldn't put anything that glows under your skin.
So this tattoo utilizes a little bit of more
of a natural marking that you would see on an animal,
like a tiger or a giraffe but then it goes into
more of like a Tron circuitry kind of a thing,
mixed with more of a spiritual sort of element.
- Yeah, it's very minimal, just kind of left open
to interpretation, which some people like.
- If I were to get a tattoo inspired
by any of these characters, Faith,
I think from Mirror's Edge.
- I think most likely I'd get
Wei Shen's tattoos from Sleeping Dogs.
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