- Hey I'm Bang Bang, I'm a tattoo artist in New York City,
and today we're going to look at
how tattoos can identify characters in film.
- Okay, ramblers, let's get rambling.
- This is from Dusk Til Dawn,
Yeah!
I think this movie, this tattoo
really created a whole era of tattooing.
This tattoo has a lot of significance.
You see movies come after this
where people have really large tribal tattoos
and you see a bunch of people who are tattooed in the 90s
that look like this guy.
You know, it creeps up the neck
this was the image everybody brought me
when I first started tattooing.
I could glance at these guys walking down the street
and tell you got tattooed between 1993 and 1996
or you were late to the party.
And it's perfect for this character,
it's perfect for this time period,
it's perfect for this story,
it's perfect for him.
It's unique, it doesn't remind you of anyone else's tattoos.
This one's pretty, pretty accurate.
Even the motion and flow and shapes,
they're kind of not cohesive.
This is not a symmetrical tribal tattoo.
This looks like how tattoo artists made tribal in the 90s.
You know at the time of this scene, of this setting,
of this character,
tattoos are still pretty taboo, more than they are today.
I think it looks very real to me
because I know if tattoos are done very perfectly
they can look very sharp and very dark,
especially contrasted next to skin.
But this time for this character,
I would expect to see more "holidays" in the tattoo.
And a "holiday" is what we call, like, a spot missing
or an inconsistent spot.
And we call it a "holiday"
'cause it's like a tattoo artist took a day off right there.
So actually filling in a really large area in solid black
and consistent is really difficult.
Some of what may make it look fake
is that it looks too well done for this gangster on the run.
There's some things about this that are really good,
for the character.
Don't go get this tattoo.
- A boat, the gods have given me a [screams]
So this is Moana.
Maui which is my favorite representation of tattoos in film.
The tattoos themselves were a character in the film.
His tattoos are his conscious.
They're his better half.
And they spoke to him,
and encouraged him to do the right thing.
So often in film and even in life
tattoos are painted in a negative light.
For Disney to include tattooing on a character first of all.
And then to do so where it was the voice of reason.
I'm getting chills thinking about it.
I love Moana.
They're also made very well.
So if you look really close at that film,
the tattoos have the inconsistencies that would be typical
of that style of tattooing.
I'm certain that Disney consulted many tattoo artists
and experts of tattooing in that style.
Traditional Polynesian, and it's hand poked.
They do it days on end.
It's like a rite of passage, a ritual for young men.
Disney puts tons of research into doing things correctly.
You can tell.
- So Mickey, you going down in the 4th.
- [Bang Bang] This is Snatch, and I love this movie.
I want to be him when I grow up.
Oh my god what the is on his chest?
[laughs]
None of these are real right?
That face on his chest is woefully difficult
for me to stare at.
But I feel like the film succeeds and this is,
the quality and work
you'd expect on some Irish street fighter, right.
Who's trying to get his mother a caravan.
I can't tell what all of them are.
I don't know if that's good or bad.
I can tell what the Mary is on his chest.
One thing to consider is
placement on the body has to fit the image.
His chest has a lot of shape to it and a lot of definition,
it changing shape in the middle of a face is,
it doesn't help the image at all.
The tattoos on his shoulders
actually look like they're made by the same person
in the same moment, which is appropriate for that design.
And his chest looks like it's just an outline
by somebody who didn't quite know what they were doing.
And whose skill level was lower
than the tattoos on his shoulders.
You have a bunch of different styles of tattoos.
if you're tattooed throughout your life.
I just think that, you know, they wanted them to not look
like the best tattoos in the world.
Again, it's for film so it's purposeful.
Successful tattoos are supposed to, like, you know
externally present the way somebody feels internally, right.
So they should be a visual representation of that person.
Irish street fighter, like, this looks appropriate.
They get an A+ on fitting form to the character.
[groaning sound]
- [Bang Bang] This is The Hangover Part 2.
[laughs]
It looks real!
'Cause it looks like it hurts.
Yeah, poor bastard.
- This is a real tattoo!
- The Hangover Part 2 is famous in itself
for its lawsuit for this tattoo.
They did not acquire the rights to use this tattoo
in this film from the tattoo artist.
Technically, if I designed this tattoo for Mike Tyson,
and I tattooed it on him,
Mike Tyson did not buy this design from me.
He bought the tattoo.
I still own the design.
For them to use that design in film
without the tattoo artist's permission,
it wound up costing them a lot of money.
Let me say though, they did a perfect job
of making it look swollen and painful.
And what your face tattoo would look like
if you passed out in the bathtub drunk.
If we're speaking specifically about Mike Tyson's tattoo
I love it.
It's a warrior mark.
On homie over here though, it's a bad decision.
It's perfect, they just should have, you know
gotten the rights to do it I think.
[Bang Bang] This is The Place Beyond the Pines.
With Ryan Gosling.
Yeah, takes somebody really who either knows themself
or doesn't give a
to get face tattoo.
Any cheek tattoo's a bold tattoo.
First thing that I notice is some of the blacks
they're not the equivalent of what pigment
looks under skin.
Our tattoo pigments sit under your skin's pigments.
Black as it can be, once it's under your pigment,
it's washed out, it's lightened.
At first glance, some of them looked too dark to be real.
So that's one thing that I catch right away.
It looks like he has a bunch of
Americana traditional style tattoos.
I think it's great when people,
when they're designing tattoos for these movie characters,
that it stays in theme.
It wouldn't make a ton of sense for him to have something
super highly rendered, and something super simple
really next to each other.
It seems like this person has a style they like, they know,
they identify with, and they've stuck with, so,
and he has a boxer, a stiff looking boxer that's traditional
you know, what you think of, like, Sailor Jerry tattoos.
That's the vibe of this style, it's 1920s on the bowery,
sailors coming off and getting tattoos
and so there's still a big aesthetic
and market for that now.
One thing I think could be improved on design stuff
on this tattoo is his back tattoo.
It's not super clear that it's a ship to me.
I see the little cloud poof, it's cute.
I get the horizon line.
When I look at a tattoo, I want to know it is in a snap.
If my brain has to spend some time
trying to figure out the image,
I feel like that's time wasted on your first impression.
These tattoos don't particularly compliment his body.
I feel like maybe the bird on his chest is, you know,
the closest one.
There's not a clear thought path from one tattoo to another.
It's like "what fills that spot? I'll perch that later."
On his hand, I'm pretty sure that it's Frankenstein.
I think that that does not speak
to the time period they're saying he got tattooed.
Micro-realism wasn't really a thing
people were getting tattooed in the 90s,
so I think that tattoo would've been a lot bigger.
I think sometimes film studios don't consult tattoo artists.
They, a lot of this stuff's done by makeup artists.
They might miss some minor details,
like the fact that early mid 90s,
they just weren't doing tattoos this small with high detail,
so, and if they got that correct on his neck,
doing it really big and open, that was a pretty common thing
in the 90s.
Spider on an elbow, it's like a symbol
of "I went to jail in the 1993."
[Bang Bang] This is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
I'm a little embarrassed to say I didn't see this movie.
I think I'm the only person on Earth
that didn't see this movie.
But, speaking to the work,
I like that it's form fit, it fits her body really well.
They nailed the "S curve".
In design, when you're learning about flow and motion,
101 is the "S curve", right.
And everything kind of moving in that direction
creates flow in something that's still.
Your tattoo is still when it's on your body
until your body starts to move.
We have many of these curves and angles on our body,
your collar is the same angle as your ribcage,
is the same angle as your hips,
is the same angle as the muscle structures in your arm,
and it's like all kind of lean in to the center of you.
The spot that it's in is unique.
And it like that it hit certain curves and angles
of her back.
It's very clear this dragon's,
somebody studied that day of art class.
See I like when tattoos move body parts,
and bring your eye around a person
so they make you interested in their form
and how that form of the design fits the body.
Curves are feminine, and that's, you know
how we identify them.
It's a medieval dragon.
The motion and flow of it, it's not stiff, you know
still, stagnant and muscular, and presented.
It in motion feels more feminine.
But I wouldn't inherently call it a feminine tattoo.
There's a lot going on that I can't completely
read the anatomy of everything in the image.
It's got these little t-rex claw, rah.
There's some interesting anatomy choices to the design.
It looks realistic,
it doesn't look like a really good tattoo.
Most tattoos aren't really good, so.
[Bang Bang] This is Memento.
First thing I notice is many of them are upside down.
So they're clearly a message to himself.
The presentation of tattoos, it's for the viewer.
The audience, the people who are looking at you.
If you had a t-shirt on and it was all written upside down,
so you could read it,
people will think your shirt's upside down.
I haven't seen that in film hardly ever.
So it's really unique to this.
The top of his thigh doesn't look very real.
Some of the smaller things don't look like real tattoos
because of how dark they are, how dense they are
and tattoos settle in skin.
Kind of like a sharpie on a paper towel,
except it takes 10 years.
Really only when they're very first made
are they quite that sharp
and even still there aren't that many artists
that can be digitally sharp,
these look in some cases digitally sharp.
- Oh my good god, Jesus.
- [Bang Bang] This is Red Dragon.
What I love about this tattoo is
you know this guy's evil throughout the film, you just know,
it's almost a reveal of his spirit in this tattoo.
It's done pretty well.
That close up, you can see that they put a lot of effort
into making it really good.
Certainly they could've added more contrast and mid-tones
to make that shading look accurate and realistic.
He is the demon, as he's decorated on his body.
Again, I don't always love that tattoos can
kind of make the bad guy
but seemingly he's a quiet and misunderstood person.
At least at a glance throughout this film.
And so, what are his tells?
It's his reveal of him, his true self.
Take this exact same scene without a tattoo
and this is just a naked guy posing and frolicking.
The tattoo does so much in this scene
to say just how pure and raw evil this man is.
[Bang Bang] Oh yeah.
This is Blade.
Blade's a bad ass.
I like Blade's tattoos.
The only tribal tattoo I'm okay with.
I can't remember many characters before that
or even famous people, celebrities, anything,
that had head tattoos.
So this is my first memory of someone
with a well executed head tattoo,
that wasn't, like, a wrestler.
It spoke to the character,
I mean even his hairstyle was like
this guy's a vampire slayer.
I mean, this is that tribal wave.
It's a symmetrical tribal.
What I'd prefer, this symmetrical tribal
over the kind of, like, organic tribal
that we saw on Clooney's arm in Dusk Til Dawn.
It's complimenting all these shapes.
It feels like armor.
It fits his muscle structure, it fits his anatomy,
it fits his shape, it fits his symmetry.
I think I would've made it a little less busy in his neck.
Neck, like your face, gets a lot of sun.
So your neck is darker.
More dense tattooing, and smaller shapes
leaves less room for the eye to breathe,
and in time, that'll just be really hard
to separate ink from skin.
And you won't see all those shapes as he ages.
The front of him looks much better.
There's so much more room to breathe.
If it were mine input I would've angled it
more down to his chest.
Just a couple more hard angles
that face more towards the middle,
you want to lead the eye towards the center.
Swirls aren't aggressive, angles are aggressive.
It's a little bit lost in that it has angles and swirls.
It's like, pick one bro.
I'm not going to talk on Blade.
[laughs]
- Nick hick eh?
- [Bang Bang] This is Once Were Warriors.
I mean I can tell right away that these are fake
because of the consistency of pigment around the fingers
and knuckles.
I'm looking at the guys in the car,
it doesn't look as realistic to me just because
the consistency of the pigment on his knuckles and hands.
Any time someone gets their hands tattooed,
as it gets closer to those knuckles you can see
that pigment starts to fade.
I like what they're doing to set the scene
of this person becoming, right?
So here's this guy in the middle
of these heavily tattooed people who are bigger than him
who have more presence than him,
who are more intimidating than him.
They're visually representing this character's stage
in this movie really well with his lack of tattoos.
When you get tattooed the sun is breaking down your pigment
your entire life, especially on your face.
Specifically speaking, the guy on the right,
his face tattoos are the darkest portion
of any of his tattoos.
So, so little bit of a miss there.
These tattoos, you know, being tapped into somebody's face,
the level of precision's much lower than
electric tattoo machines, modern tattoo machines.
His face tattoos look real to me,
because they're, it looks like they're purposely done
with inconsistency.
Up on his forehead you can see
inconsistencies in line weight, thickness, even spacing,
there's some errors in there,
that I would expect to see on a tattoo of this scale
made by hand.
There's also inconsistencies around his nose, you can see.
The way that it's done looks like it has those errors
where it's not fully filled in, there's some ink fall-out,
that's really typical of this space.
Where the guy's in the car,
those things just look a bit too dark
to be on someone's face.
Then there's chain link guy.
You can also see that where his arm
is rubbing against his outfit, his clothes, his,
the pigment's rubbing off.
Must've taken hours to put this on
and it comes off real quick.
- Aruba!
- Can I just ask a quick question about this receipt?
- [Bang Bang] This is Stranger Than Fiction
it's wind bars and clouds,
and wind bars are a Japanese technique of background.
It fills space well and you can move it
in any direction you want to.
Looks to me like an American's take
on a Japanese style of tattooing.
Cherry blossoms, really stagnant flowers
kind of placed all over the place,
with petals all over the place.
Wind bars and clouds really fill space
and you can move them in any direction
to compliment the tattoo.
This is a whole half sleeve of just background.
So we use flowers, and we can use wind bars, but, like
what's the subject matter?
There is no singular subject matter.
So when you study Renaissance painting,
they talk about the trinity, right,
bringing everything towards the center.
Each one of these flowers is the same,
it's a straight on shot of a cherry blossom.
None of them are missing leaves,
yet there's petals everywhere.
There's no different angles of them.
Cherry blossoms are a hard thing to do, to draw,
and make beautiful and make flow.
And I like cherry blossoms, and I like wind bars.
I just typically like them to support an image.
I thought this would've been made after 2003, 4, 5.
Something like that.
What year was it?
- [Producer] 2006
- 2006, yeah it's a shocker.
At that time period, like,
that was tattoo artists' skill level
and that was clients' interest level, and so, like,
I think, for film, this is successful.
If somebody showed me this picture and said,
"Do you think this is a real tattoo or fake tattoo?"
I'd say it's absolutely real.
- I overslept.
[laughs] oops.
Well hey at least you had a good time, right?
- This is Black Swan.
And I like her tattoo.
Two flowers, actually.
Out of one stem.
Doesn't make a lot of anatomical sense but like, it's dope.
It's hard to see here but
each one of those leaves has its own shape and depth.
Although the shapes are symmetrical,
it's not perfectly symmetrical,
so each leaf on either side is a little bit unique to itself
So it's not like somebody drew half of it, folded it in half
and then here's your symmetrical upper back tramp stamp,
right.
I like the contrast of the flower portion to the leaves.
A lot of times, that's something people miss is.
And tattoos become very flat,
because everything's done in the same tone.
This flower's kept really light
and all the leaves are kept really dark,
so it's really easy to discern what it is.
I think there's a really good chance
they spoke to a tattoo artist about it.
And a good one, because of what I can see in the contrast.
This technique's something that takes
tattoo artists many years to understand.
How to isolate something really light like a white flower
and how to put noise around it essentially so that
that stands out, how to make sure all of that background,
and in this case the leaves
have sharp contrasts from the flowers
so that you can read it.
You always catch that contrast.
I like the position of it,
as she moves her body, that image is going to move,
and it's going to say flow and motion
more than if she didn't have a tattoo.
This is a tattoo that would age well.
Because of the contrast between flower and leaves.
Probably makeup artists traditionally wouldn't have
that much education on tattoos
to be able to just whip that up.
And if they do, I want to talk to that person.
Because they've got a career in tattooing ahead of them.
[Bang Bang] Yeah this is is Savages
and this is the tattoo you don't want.
I mean it makes sense, I feel like I've seen this tattoo
a hundred times on, like, the Jersey Shore.
Butterflies are great.
I really like butterflies.
Ultimately it's a bunch of bugs which I think is funny.
As far as design, it looks like it matches this character.
If I saw this person at a still,
and I looked at the tattoo they'd have I'd go,
"yeah, that's about what I expect."
So, I feel like they nailed it there.
It's pretty common for tattoo artists
that are using flash reference,
and that's the kind of pictures that are hanging
on a tattoo shop wall,
to say like, "oh I want to get a bunch of butterflies."
Well great, so the tattoo artist is going to go over
and rip down all the butterflies off the wall,
and trace each one of them to just make them fit together.
And that's exactly what this looks like.
It's weird overlaps, so that it feels like one tattoo,
where they kind of barely intersect with the other,
and they all kind of do it, as opposed to,
there were a bunch of butterflies on a bush
and you went whoosh and got them to all move away.
There'd be a lot more flow and beauty and cohesion.
This isn't something I would make on somebody but
it's something I'd expect to see
from somebody who doesn't have a lot of tattoo education.
- You don't fit into a category, they can't control you
- I don't get it
[Bang Bang] This movie's Divergent
when I first saw it, I couldn't tell what it was immediately
and I thought it was too dark to be a real tattoo.
I still can't tell what it is.
I'm sure it was purposeful.
Top bird and bottom bird are the same bird.
Two different sizes.
That is a typical lazy tattoo artist thing to do.
Flock of birds, and you'll see many of the same one
just at different sizes.
Maybe they got that part right.
You know just on their own, they don't say birds to me.
These look like, I wanna wipe it off.
- L-O-V-E.
[Bang Bang] This is the Night of the Hunter
I'm all about it.
This tattoo gets the green light from me.
Nobody had tattoos in 1955 especially not on their hands.
The tools and precision of the 50s
are not the same tools and precision of today.
The fact that you can read it is what's impressive.
It looks like it was done without a stencil.
Somebody grabbed his hand and "L-O-V-E"
and just started to write.
From the cinematic perspective of where is hands are placed
quite literally putting "love" really easy for her to read.
And then look at his other hand.
It's set back, it's off angle so she's not,
so, visually, this is doing a lot for this scene,
this setting.
I think people don't realize
just how much tattoos come into culture and kind of like
squash the taboo a little bit.
And normalize it to people via film and so
even though he's a villain it's normalizing a taboo art form
- Why would you want to kill anybody?
- I'll show you why.
- Oh my god.
- [Bang Bang] So this is The Illustrated Man.
If you showed it to me I would guess they were real.
So they did a good job and how muted those colors are
speaks to really the raw form of pigments
that tattoo artists used to use
in that kind of the era that it was made.
This is a really what you could expect
out of getting a color tattoo.
Very dull muted tones tattooed boldly and solidly.
For 1969, it's cool.
I mean the title, it's all about his tattoos.
Not incredibly impressive tattoos, the bar had been set
at really well made sailor style tattoos,
traditional tattooing by that time.
It's tough for me to kind of put my finger
on a genre of this.
So it kind of looks like an old couch.
Those designs, a little ornamental.
Weird man.
Weird tattoos, yeah, I don't know.
[Bang Bang] This is That's My Boy.
[laughs]
What the!
Oh no!
- Yes because I got it when I was in third grade!
My body grew.
- This is not what would happen if you got a tattoo
when you're young and it grew as you did.
But it's hilarious.
Tattoos
grow with you.
If you got a tattoo at the center of your bicep,
and you gained a bunch of weight,
your tattoo's not going to grow as much
as it's going to migrate forward
because your skin stretches from the back of your arm.
It's where you get stretch marks, right.
So it's going to migrate forward,
it'll no longer be in the center.
It's very much like if you took newspaper and silly putty
and then you know, doubled in size.
But not just upwards or, it's kind of the whole thing
would grow a bit and probably would migrate further
up on your back because a lot of growth happens
from skin stretching at the bottom of your back.
And then it's a high motion area, just
over time those pigments would change a lot.
It wouldn't be this dark or sharp at all but
hilarious.
- A butterfly.
You're Papillon aren't you?
- Yeah.
- [Bang Bang] This is Papillon.
Makeup definitely did a good job.
This looks like a professional tattoo
that's about 18 years old.
I'm sure it's not, I hope it's not for his sake.
This would be very impressive for 1973 I feel like.
Colors were really limited,
I have not seen a tattoo from the 70s
with a vibrant purple color.
It's tough to do through hair.
He's got a hairy chest.
Purple butterfly on his chest.
All right.
- Permission to come aboard.
- [Bang Bang] So this is Aquaman.
There's a couple things like,
when you take angles that don't fit the body,
like these angles that move across his chest.
Really straight lines.
It kills some of his shape,
of his arms, of his muscle structure of his chest here.
But then they accent it by really reinforcing
the shape of his chest here, so, you know,
it's like two things fighting each other a little bit there.
The abrupt end and the abrupt start,
they're things that if they were a real tattoo,
that we would look at and say that that was unsuccessful.
Tattooing darkness under a man's chest
makes his chest look more like breasts.
Because it adds a shadow under chest.
So typically we don't accent that portion of men.
This is not going to spark a tattoo trend.
Maybe nor should it.
I'm not a huge fan of companies that go off
just mimicking what tattoo artists are experts in.
I would prefer that tattoo artists did this, personally.
If you went through that much trouble
to get to the precision of flattening out
a 3D figure of his body,
that the precision of the work could've been better.
Movie made money, right?
I think film has done a great job
in normalizing tattoos for people.
They're making these tattoos
to identify this character, and their past,
and their experience, and their style.
All those things wrapped together are what we judge
when we see people with tattoos in regular life.
I hope you learned something,
I hope you've taken something away from this.
And I hope you're as passionate about tattoos as I am.
I would've asked him to consult his therapist.
This guy is clearly crazy.
"Find him, kill him," across his chest.
Like, if you come to my store
and ask me to tattoo that on you I'm turning you in.