Tattoo Artist Bang Bang Reviews Movie Tattoos, from ‘Moana’ to ‘Black Swan’ | Vanity Fair

Hi, I'm

bang

bang

. I'm a

tattoo

artist

in New York City and today we'll look at how

tattoo

s can identify

movie

characters. Okay Ramblers, let's get to work, this is from dusk to dawn. Yes, I think this

movie

is this tattoo. It created a whole era of

tattoos

, this tattoo has a lot of meaning and you see it, you see movies after this where people have really big tribal

tattoos

and you see a group of people who are tattooed in the '90s and they look like this guy, does it? You know? crawls down the neck this was the image that everyone brought to me when I started tattooing.

I could look at these guys walking down the street and tell you that you got tattooed between 1993 and 1996 or that you identify with the party and it's perfect for this character. present for this time period it is perfect for this story it is perfect for him it is unique it does not remind you of anyone else's tattoos this is quite accurate even the movement, flow and shapes are not cohesive this is not a symmetrical tribal tattoo this It looks like how tattoo

artist

s did tribal in the 90s you know at the time of this scene of this scenario of this character the tattoos are still quite taboo more than today I think it seems very real to me because I know if the tattoos are done in a way very perfect, they can look very sharp and very dark, especially against the skin, but this time for this character I would expect to see more holidays in the tattoo and a holiday is what we call a missing spot or an inconsistent spot. and we call it a vacation because the tattoo artist's psyche took a day off right there, so filling in a very large area with solid, consistent

black

is really difficult.

One thing that can make it look fake is that it looks too well made for this. gangster on the run there are some things in this that are really good for the character don't get this tattoo so this is Moana Maui which is my favorite representation of the tattoos in the movie the tattoos themselves were a character in the movie, his tattoos are his. aware that they are his better half and they talked to him and encouraged him to do the right thing so many times in movies and even in life tattoos are painted in a negative way so Disney includes tattooing a character first of all and then doing it like this That where the voice of reason was gives me chills, think about it.

I love them more. They are also very well made. If you look very closely at that movie, the tattoos have the inconsistencies that would be typical of that style of tattoo, I'm sure. that Disney consulted many tattoo artists and experts to tattoo in that traditional Polynesian style and it's a manual touch that they do it days and days it's like a ritual rite of passage for young men Disney invests tons of research to do things correctly, you can tell Dan in the room, this is amazing and I love this movie. I want to be him when he grows up.

My God, what is Kazan. None of these are really true. That face on his chest is sadly difficult for me to look at but I feel the film succeeds and this is the quality and work you would expect from an Irish street fighter who is 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 so can you tell what's perky about his chest one thing to consider his location on the body it has to fit the image his chest has a lot of shape a lot of definition it changes shape in the middle of a face doesn't help The image of all the tattoos on his shoulders actually look like they were done by the same person at the same time, which is appropriate for that design and his chest looks like just an outline, but someone didn't quite know what they were . doing and whose skill level was lower than the tattoos on his shoulders.

Do you have a lot of different tattoo styles of your tattoo throughout your life? I just think you know they wanted them to not look like the best tattoos in the world again. for the movie, so it has a purpose, successful tattoos, as you know, are supposed to externally present the way someone feels internally good, so there must be a visual representation of that person, the Irish street fighter , since this one looks appropriate, they get a plus in the right way for the character, this is the hangover part: it looks real because it looks like it's going to hurt you, poor bastard.

The Hangover Part 2 is itself famous for its demand for this tattoo. They did not acquire the rights to use this tattoo in this tattoo movie. Artist technically, if I designed this tattoo for Mike Tyson and tattooed it on him Mike Tyson didn't buy this design from me, he bought the tattoo. I still own the design for them to use in a movie without the tattoo artist's permission, he's done. It cost them a lot of money, let me tell you they did a perfect job of making it look swollen and painful and what your tattooed face would look like if you passed out drunk in the bathtub if we are talking specifically about the Mike Tyson tattoo.

I love it, it's a warrior's brand. I want a friend here, even though it's a bad decision. Look, it's perfect. They should know he got the rights. I think this is the place beyond the pines with Ryan Gosling. Yes, it takes someone to really know themselves. or don't give up on getting a face tattoo, any tattoo on the cheek is a bold tattoo. The first thing I notice is that some of the

black

s are not the equivalent of the pigment you see under the skin. The pigments in our tattoos sit under the skin. The black pigments are like As black as can be once it's under the pigment, it's discolored, it lightens up at first glance, some of them looked too dark to be real, so that's something I picked up right away, it looks like it has A lot of traditional American style tattoos, I think.

It's cool that when people design tattoos for these movie characters they stay on theme, it wouldn't make much sense for him to have something super rendered and something super simple, really side by side, this person looks like. He has a style that they like, they know that they identify with and that they have stuck with, so he has a boxer, a rigid looking boxer that is traditional, you know what you think, like Sailor Jerry tattoos, that's viable For this style, it's from the 1920s, on the Bowery sailors. and getting tattoos, so there's still a huge aesthetic and market for that now.

One thing I think could be improved in the design of this tattoo is his back tattoo. It's not very clear that it's a boat for me. I see the little cloud. cute I see the horizon line when I look at a tattoo I want to know what it is in an instant if my brain has to spend some time trying to decipher that image I feel like it's time wasted on your first impression these tattoos don't particularly flatter your body. I feel like maybe the bird on his chest, you know, is the closest. There is no clear path of thought from one tattoo to another.

It's like what fills this place. I'll approach that leader in the hand of him, I'm pretty sure. that he is Frankenstein, I think that doesn't speak to the time period in which they say he got tattooed. Micro realism wasn't really something people got tattooed in the '90s so I think that tattoo would have been a lot bigger, I think sometimes movie studios don't consult tattoo artists, a lot of these things are done by makeup artists. and they might miss some minor details, like the fact that in the early '90s they just didn't do tattoos this small with a lot of detail, so I think they got it right.

His neck made it very big and open, something quite common in the 90s. Spider web on the elbows as a symbol of I went to prison in 1993. This is the girl with the dragon tattoo. I'm a little embarrassed to say I did. I don't see this movie. I think I'm the only person in the world who hasn't seen that movie, but speaking of the work, I like it because its shape adapts very well to her body. They nailed the S-shaped curve into the design when you're. learning about flow and movement 101 is the S curve and any type of movement in that direction creates flow in something that is still your tattoos when they are on your body until your body starts moving we have a lot of these curves and angles in our The color of your body is the same angle as your ribcage it is the same angle as your hips it is the same angle as the muscular structures of your arm and that is why they all lead to the center of you, the place where it is located is unique and I thus touched certain curves and angles of his back, it is very clear that these dragons someone studied that day in our class, so I like when tattoos move parts of the body and make your gaze surround a person so that they be interested in its shape, how that shape of the design adapts to the body the curves are feminine and that is how we identify them it is a medieval dragon its movement and flow is not rigid you know still stagnant and muscular and presented in movement it feels more feminine but i wouldn't inherently call it a feminine tattoo there's a lot going on i can't fully read the anatomy of everything in the picture it has these little t-rex claws there are some interesting anatomy choices for the design it looks realistic it doesn't look like a really good tattoo the Most tattoos aren't really good, so this is a souvenir.

The first thing I notice is that many of them are upside down, so they are clearly a message to himself. The presentation of tattoos is for the viewer, the audience, the people watching you, if you have them. a t-shirt and it's all written backwards so you can read it, people would think you're sure it's backwards. I've never seen it in a movie, so it's really unique in this, the upper part of his thigh. They don'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 the tattoo sits on the skin.

It's like a marker on a paper towel. In reality, it has only been for ten years when they are very well. The first ones made are pretty sharp and yet there aren't many artists who can be digitally sharp. These look in some cases digitally sharp. This is the red dragon. What I love about this tattoo is that you know this guy is evil throughout the movie. I know it's almost a revelation of his spirit in this tattoo. It's pretty well done. In close up you can see that they put a lot of effort into making it really good.

They certainly could have added more contrast in the midtones to make that shading show through. Accurate and realistic, he is the demon as it is decorated on his body again. I'm not always a fan of tattoos that can turn the bad guy, but he's apparently a quiet, misunderstood person, at least at a glance throughout this movie, so what are the indications for him? her reveal of him is true, it takes this exact same scene without a tattoo and this is just the naked guy posing in the front. It was leaked that the tattoo does a lot in the scene to say how pure and raw this man is.

Oh yes, this is it. Blade Blades is a badass. I like Blades tattoos. It's like the only tribal tattoo I agree with. I can't remember many characters before that, not even famous people, celebrities, anything that had tattoos on their heads, so this is my first memory of someone with a well-executed tattoo. tattoo on his head that wasn't like a fighter, it talked about the character, I mean even his hairstyle was like a vampire slayer, I mean this is the tribal wave, this is symmetrical tribal, I prefer this symmetrical tribal to the trip type organic that we have.

I saw Clooney's arm and from dusk till dawn it complements all of these shapes it feels like armor it fits your muscle structure it fits your anatomy if it's a shape it fits your symmetry I think it would have made it a little less busy on your neck as your face gets a lot of sun, so your neck is darker. Denser tattoos in smaller shapes leave less room for the eye to breathe and over time it will be very difficult to separate the ink from the skin and you won't see all of those shapes. as he gets older the front of him looks a lot better, a lot more room to breathe if it were my input he would have more down on his chest, just a couple of harder angles that look more towards the center, you want to direct the view towards the central eddies. they're not aggressive like the angles are aggressive it's a little lost in the sense that it has angles and swirls it's like pick one bro I'm not going to talk don't play this is one time where the warriors I mean I can tell right away These are false due to the consistency of the pigment around the fingers and knuckles.

As I look at the guys in the car, it doesn't seem that realistic to me just because of the consistency of the pigment on their knuckles and hands every time someone gets their hands tattooed. As he gets closer to those knuckles, you can see the pigment starting to fade. I like what they're doing to set the scene where this person becomes proper, so here's this guy in the Middle East, heavily tattooed people who are bigger than him but with more presence. that they or more intimidating than him, are visually representing this character's scenario in this movie very well with the lack of tattoos on him.

When you get a tattoo, the sun is breaking down your pigment throughout your life, especially on your face, specifically speaking of the type on the right.their tattoos on the face of a darker part of any of their tattoos, so a little strange, these tattoos, you know, when inserted into someone's face, the level of precision is much lower than electric tattoo machines or modern tattoo machines, your face tattoos look real. to me because they look like they are intentionally done with inconsistency on their forehead, you can see inconsistencies in the line thickness, even the spacing, there are some errors there that I would expect to see on a tattoo of this scale done by On the other hand, there are also inconsistencies around his nose, you can see the way it's done, it looks like it has those mistakes right, it's not completely completed, there's some ink that's very typical of the space where the guys in the car also see a little bit of that stuff .dark to be in someone's face, then there's the string type.

You can also see that where his arm rubs against her clothes, her clothes, the pigments rubbing off must have taken hours to put on and come off very quickly. I just asked a question about this receipt this is stranger than fiction it's wind bars and clouds and wind bars are a Japanese background technique that fills space, well you can move it in any direction you want; It looks to me like an American version of a Japanese style cherry blossom tattoo. really stagnant flowers placed everywhere with petals everywhere, wind bars and clouds that really fill the space and you can move them in any direction to complement the tattoo.

This is a full half sleeve just for background, so we use flowers and You can use wind bars, but what is the theme, there is no singular theme, so when you study Renaissance painting, they talk about the Trinity, bring everything towards the center , each of these flowers is the same, it is a direct shot of a cherry blossom, there are none of them, there are no leaves, you have petals everywhere, there are no different angles of them, cherry blossoms are something difficult to do to draw and make beautiful and make flow and I like cherry blossoms and I like wind bars I usually like them to back up an image, I thought this would have been made after 2003 4 5 something like that, what year was 2006?

Yes, that is a surprise in that period. That was the skill level of the tattoo artists and that was the level of interest of the clients, and I think for The Movie it's a success. Someone showed me this photo and said: Do you think this is a real tattoo or a fake tattoo? I would say it's absolutely real, this is Black Swan and I like our tattoo, it's actually two flowers on one stem, no. It makes a lot of anatomical sense, but it's hard to see here, but each of those leaves has its own shape and depth, although the shapes are symmetrical, they're not perfectly symmetrical, so each leaf on each side is a little unique to itself. same. so it's not like someone drew half and folded it in half and then here's your symmetrical seal on the top of the back.

I like the contrast of the flower part with the leaves many times, that is something that people miss and tattoos can vary depending on whether it is flat. everything is done in the same tone, these flowers are kept very light and all the leaves are kept very dark, making it very easy to discern. I think there's a good chance they've talked to a tattoo artist about it and a good one from what I can tell. Look at this technique in contrast, something that takes many years for tattoo artists to understand how to isolate something really light like a white flower, how to put noise on it essentially to make it stand out, how to make sure that all that background, in this case the leaves have contrast sharpness of the flower so you can read it, you will always capture that contrast.

I like the position while she moves her body. That image will move and say flow and movement more than if you didn't have a tattoo this is a tattoo that would age well because of the contrast between flowers and leaves probably makeup artists traditionally wouldn't have as much education about tattoos to be able to just create it and if you do They have, I want to talk to that person. They have a career in tattooing ahead of them, yes this is wild and this is the tattoo you don't want. I mean, it makes sense. I feel like I've seen this tattoo hundreds of times like Jersey Shore butterflies are cool.

I really like butterflies, ultimately they're a bunch of insects, which I think is fun design-wise and seems to match this character. I saw this person standing still and I looked at the tattoo she would have. I go, yeah, that's what I guess I feel like they've nailed it in there, it's pretty common for tattoo artists to use flash references and those are the kind of images that hang on the wall of a tattoo shop to say, "Oh "I'm going to get a lot of butterflies." So the TED Talks will go through all the butterflies on the wall and trace each one of them to fit and that's exactly what it looks like, there are weird overlaps that feel like a tattoo where they look like they're barely crossing each other and they all they do, unlike there being a bunch of butterflies in a bushing that made noise and made them drift away, there would be a lot more flow, beauty and cohesion.

This is not something. I would do it with anyone, but something I would expect to see from someone who isn't very educated about tattoos controls this divergent film. When I first saw it, I couldn't tell what it was right away and thought it was too dark. to be a real tattoo, I still can't say what it is, I'm sure it was on purpose: the top bird and the bottom bird of the same bird, two different sizes, which is typical of a lazy tattoo artist making a flock of birds and you will do it. I see a lot of the same ones just in different sizes maybe they got that part right you know, alone, no, they don't call me birds, it looks like I'm going to clean them and this is the night of the hunter I'm in charge of this test who gets my green light no one had tattoos in 1955 especially now in their hands the tools and precision of the 50's are not the same precision tools of today the fact that you can read it is What's impressive it looks like it was made without a template, someone took her hand and loved and started writing from the cinematic perspective of where her hands are placed, literally making love really easy for her to read and then look at her other hand.

Again, it's outside of Hangul, so it's not as visual. This is doing a lot for this scene. This scenario. I think people don't realize how many tattoos enter the culture and kind of crush the taboo a little bit and normalize it for people. movie and even though he's a villain, he's normalizing a taboo art form, why would you want to kill someone? I'll show you why, so this is the illustrated man, if you show them to me I guess they're real, so they did a good job and how dull those colors are really speaks to the raw form of the pigments that tattoo artists they used to use in the type of area it was made in.

This is really what you can expect from getting a colored tattoo. A tattoo of very muted tones. bold and solidly for 1969 it's great, I mean the title, it's about his tattoos, aren't they incredibly impressive tattoos, the bar had been set on very well done sailor style tattoos, traditional tattoos at the time, it's hard for me to point out a genre. This kind of looks like an old couch, you know, those designs were a little ornamental, weird men, weird tattoos, yeah, that's my guy, no, yeah, 'cause I got it when I was in third grade, my body grew, this It's not what would happen if you had a tattoo when you were young and they grew like you, but it's funny that tattoos grow with you.

If you got a tattoo in the center of your bicep and gained a lot of weight, your tattoos won't grow as much as they will migrate towards you. forward because your skin stretches from behind your arm through your stretch marks so it will migrate forward and I won't be in the center anymore it's a lot like if you took newspaper and putty and then you know, it doubles in size but not just up or it's like everything grows a little bit and it would probably migrate further up your back because a lot of growth happens because the skin stretches on your lower back and then it's a high movement area over time, those pigments.

It would change a lot, wouldn't it? It wouldn't be as dark or sharp at all, but it's funny the butterfly, Pepe, I love you, yes this is Pepe, I'll do it, I definitely did a good job, it looks like a professional tattoo. 18 years old I'm sure not, I hope it's not because of him. This would be very impressive for 1973. I feel like the colors were really limited. I haven't seen a '70s tattoo with vibrant purple colors. Difficult to make through shaggy hair. chest purple butterfly on his chest, so this is Aqua Man, there are a couple of things like when you take angles that don't fit the body, like these angles that move across his chest, they're really straight lines, they kill some of the shape of his arms. of his muscular structure of his chest here but then they accentuate it by really reinforcing the shape of his chest here so you know they're like two things fighting each other a little bit there the abrupt ending and the abrupt beginning there are things that if they were a real tattoo that we would look and say it was unsuccessful tattooing darkness under a man's chest makes his chest look more like breasts so it adds a shadow under the chest so we normally don't accentuate that part of men we don't. is.

I'm going to spark a tattoo trend maybe nor should I be. I'm not a big fan of companies that simply imitate what tattoo artists are experts at. I would prefer to have tattoo artists do this personally if you went through so much trouble to get to the precision. of flattening a three-dimensional figure of his body that the precision of the work could have been better, the movie made money, right. I think the movie has done a great job of normalizing tattoos for the people who are getting these tattoos to identify this character in his past and his experience and his style, all of those things together are what we judge when we see people with tattoos in normal life.

I hope you learned something. I hope you learned something from this and I hope you are as passionate about tattoos as I am. Would you have asked him to see his therapist? This guy is clearly crazy. Find him and kill him in the chest.