inkmaster premiered in 2012 at the
height of the shows about tattoos craze
the premise of the show is pretty simple
a bunch of tattoo artists compete to see
who's the best overall artists the last
artist standing will be crowned wait for
it the ink master and win a cash prize
while the popular show has made it
through plenty of seasons and two
spin-offs it may not be exactly what it
seems reality TV has a reputation for
not being all that real and it looks
like ink master is no different down to
the wire for an elimination challenge
artists may be given six hours to do
their work
according to redditor quarry match him a
tattooed participant on the show the
time limit is actually pretty
meaningless on the show Judge Dave
Navarro appears to give warnings of how
much time is left but Corey said that's
all done in editing to present a false
sense of urgency sharpies down in his
experience some artists were finished
hours in advance while other artists
even went overtime
redditor tattooed mom similarly claimed
in an AMA that on her season dave
navarro's timed warnings were all filmed
at one time and edited into the show
after the fact human canvas jury a big
part of the elimination process is
choosing a handful of the worst tattoos
that have to go head-to-head before the
judges in many seasons this is in part
accomplished with the help of the human
canvas jury which is made up of the
newly tattooed participants you're here
because the human canvas jury determined
that you had the worst tattoo of the day
Corey matram was on a jury twice and he
explained in his reddit AMA it was all
fake
he says they did discuss as a group what
they all thought of the tattoos but
producers only included the things they
had told the jury to say Corey claims
his jury actually picked an entirely
different tattoo than the one that made
it to air but the show was edited to
make it look otherwise uninvolved judges
the show does a good job of showing how
the judges regularly go from Studio to
studio checking out all the progress but
according to Corey match him
that's totally stage two he claims the
judges are actually barely on set at all
and that they came in for about five
minutes to do the walkthrough on camera
in the end this gets edited to look like
the three judges were in the room the
whole time redditor J dizzle a human
canvas on a different season adds that
some of the judges seem to make things
up on the fly not really sticking to any
or guidelines when it comes to judging
not about the art for a show that's
supposed to be focused on tattoo
artistry there's a lot of time spent on
weird flash challenges that don't
reflect realistic tattoo scenarios the
flash challenge can be anything from ice
sculpting to burning objects with live
electrical wires season three artist
Frank McManus was required to tattoo an
inmate in a prison cell with one meal
and extremely poor lighting with limited
resources and equipment he felt there
was no way he could produce work to the
best of his ability nor could anyone
else as he told pen live the challenges
don't have much to do with what
tattooing really is to make things worse
some challenges are physically daunting
season one artist Heather sin told LA
Weekly that between tattooing pig
corpses in a freezing meat locker and
getting sunburned while working on a car
the show was more like Fear Factor than
anything else she acknowledges that she
was probably too sensitive for the show
but also should have known it was never
really going to be about art all part of
the plan
one of the biggest charges against any
reality shows that it's all plotted out
ahead of time and based on what past
contestants have said ink master is
exactly that during an NBC interview
artist Kyle Dunbar said that one of the
hardest things for him to deal with on
the show was watching the judges play
favorites praising a tattoo with
noticeable flaws from an artist they
liked while simultaneously critiquing
the same flaws from a different artist
Cory match ham noted that many shots are
just flat-out staged and contestants are
instructed beforehand how they need to
act and react for example human canvases
are given headphones but the producers
actually just stick them on long enough
to get a shot on camera because the
headphones are made by a sponsor
apparently the team behind ink master
also tried to make the show seem a
little saltier than it actually was
Heather sin told LA Weekly that a
producer told the contestants that if
they wanted to go to sleep they'd better
start talking about each other on camera
because nothing they were actually
talking about was going to make it to
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