Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 13 – Almost there…

After my last appointment for my BioShock tattoo, I swear this has been the longest worked on tattoo that I’ve ever had and probably the biggest, it was that time again. My artist promised me that we would finish this one up this time. We would get the little sister colored in, we would add the chain at the bottom, get the “Would You Kindly?” colored in, and do the rest of the background. I should have know that this was basically impossible, but there was a decent amount of work done to my arm.

So my tattoo artist is going through a change. He quit the shop where he worked at and decided to open up his own shop. I have to say that I’m really proud of him. He’s one of those people that I consider as more than just my artist and he’s also my friend. I’ve been going to him for over two years now and have never been disappointed with anything that he’s done for me. I’m really glad he’s going on this venture and I wish him the best of luck. Back to my appointment though, there were the usual antics of the time of the appointment and then of course I had to take a tour around the new place, watch as he chased down the UPS guy for some supplies, get ready for my appointment, and then finally sit down in the chair. This took about two hours from my original start time which is why this was all we were able to get done.

I am really loving this tattoo. The Little Sister looks ultra creepy, which is exactly what I wanted because Little Sisters are creepy, until you save them or harvest them. I know that when this picture was taken she looked super green, but that was because of all the color mixing. I was a little hesitant about the color at first, but my tattoo artist asked me to trust him. Now that it’s healing, and pealing everywhere (I know it’s gross), her skin is taking on that blushish hue without being too blue. The point is that if she were too blue then it would interfere with the blue butterflies and the water that’s going around her.

That being said I have on more appointment before MegaCon which I usually do before I go on a little bit of a break from my tattooing sessions and it’s to finish this one up. I thought that we would be finished with this whole piece by now and use the next session to work on the back of the same arm and do a whole BioShock background, but that’s not going to happen. Anyway, next time the butterflies need to be colored in, the chain needs to be added, the “Would You Kindly?” needs to be colored, and the background needs to be done. It’s a lot of work and I’m hoping it can be done because I do hate going to MegaCon with a half-assed tattoo. We’ll see how things go and I’ll let you know how my next appointment goes next month.

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 12 – Mr. Bubbles!

This past tattoo appointment was one that was especially needed. Not because I really wanted to get my BioShock tattoo colored in, which I did, but more because I’ve been super stressed out and these tattoo sessions are like my therapy / stress relieving sessions. Since last session we had done an original outline for a new BioShock tattoo on my right arm, you can read about it here, it was time for some color.

While my tattoo artist and I debated on the color of the Big Daddy’s eyes, should they be glowing yellow, should they be a lighter blue, or should they be red. We debated back and forth as my artist started to color in the Big Daddy. We decided to leave the eyes for last as we went back and forth. Then when we still couldn’t agree on the eyes we added a little background. The thing was that I wanted the glowing yellow eyes and my tattoo artist thought the blue would look better. After working on some of the background we came to the mutual decision that the eyes would look better yellow.

As you can see from the picture above, we still aren’t done. The coloring in of the Big Daddy along with the outline around him and some of the outline around the Little Sister took a whopping 6 hours. I’m pretty sure that was the longest that I sat for a tattoo and there was no way that the Little Sister was getting done this session.

My next session is going to be next month and we’ll finish up the Little Sister along with some other minor details before moving on to the reverse side of that arm and creating the city of Rapture behind them. I’ve already discussed where this new sleeve is going because I like to make mashups with things that connect two games. The whole space thing connected my Bordrlands / Mass Effect sleeve and for this sleeve the only thing I could think about that connected both this game and another was a Lighthouse. So there will be the eventual adding of a Lighthouse, but what game do you think it’s going to be for? Feel free to comment and leave your guesses down in the comment section below and I’ll let you know next month how my next session went.

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 11 – Another Day, Another Arm

It’s crazy to think that this is my 11th blog about getting video game based tattoo’s, but I’m kind of addicted to them at this point and I’m always looking for something new to represent the games that I have some sort of an attachment to. After my last tattoo, which you can read about no where because I didn’t write about it. I’ll give you a quick recap of my last session below. Before that though, I did blog about that tattoo and you can read about that one here. I had to miss my following appointment because of being sick. Pro tip people, never get tattooed while you’re sick. It’s not good. I did stop by though and give my tattoo artist some Christmas gifts, which is where this new direction came from.

So, before this current tattoo, I went to my tattoo artist in November and we basically argued about where we were going with my left arm. I wanted a Moxxi pin up picture, he wanted something else and didn’t like a Moxxi pin up picture because it would take away from Miranda. Anyway, we settled on Mordin and then that was what he tattooed on me. Below are some picture from that session.

After hearing that my tattoo artist, who is a casual gamer, has never played BioShock I was well shocked. I picked him up the BioShock collection for the PS4 and gave it to him as a Christmas gift. He was surprised that I actually remembered that he never played this game and thanked me. The only thing I asked of him though was for some original BioShock artwork to tattoo on me. Since all of my other tattoo’s have been from in game images, I gave him a lot of creative reign and when it was time for my next appointment he came in with this.

Obviously I couldn’t say no because it was stunning and he worked extremely hard on it, but there was no room for a tattoo of this size on my left arm so we decided to start on my right arm and basically go back and forth to complete two whole sleeves. There is a bunch of detail in this tattoo and the outline alone took 3 hours to complete with another hour for shading. There are so many things that I love about this tattoo. I love how the Big Daddy is standing in back of the little sister who is holding a little plush toy of a Big Daddy. I love the butterflies that are on the Little Sister and I love the fact that we were able to add “Would You Kindly?” into the tattoo. My tattoo artist has the whole color scheme already worked out for this tattoo and I’m super excited to see this one finished. The finishing touch will be on the very bottom of my wrist with a wrap around chain.

My next appointment is next month and I’m super excited about it. I can’t wait until this is finished and if I haven’t told you how great my tattoo artist is before, I’m going to tell you again and urge you to follow him on Instagram. I’ll let you know how everything works out next month and show off the final product.

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 10 – I Settle for Nothing but the Best

For me tattoo season is in full swing because this is the time when my tattoo artist is the least busiest and I can basically make my appointment whenever. This is great for me and great for him because he gets to fill up his schedule. Anyway, this month was time for the big shoulder piece as my Borderlands / Mass Effect mash up sleeve is about 60% complete.

I have a bunch of favorite Mass Effect characters, there’s of course FemShep which is already on my lower arm, Liara, who made her appearance just above my elbow, and now Miranda that gets the top spot as my huge shoulder piece. There are more Mass Effect characters to come, but this was the one that just had to be the center because it’s a badass picture.

So it was decided that this tattoo would get a Sin City type of treatment in my first full black tattoo making it stand out from the rest of the colors on my sleeve. It brings attention to the tattoo itself and makes it just pop. The session lasted from 12:30 pm to exactly 6 pm and it’s not even fully done.

It looks done, but of course my tattoo artist wants to add some details to it, some white highlights, some background and he would have done it that very day if there weren’t a mother / daughter combo waiting for him to finish up with me. Anyway, the highlights and some background will come with my next appointment which just happens to be next month.

Because my tattoo artist thinks I don’t give him enough love… If you follow this blog, and read about my tattoo stories, please do me a solid and check out my tattoo artist on Instagram. His tag is gentry_draws. Not only is he a really great artist who does a bunch of different tattoo’s ranging from your typical tattoo’s, to his own original work, and to the excellent stuff he does on my sleeve, but he’s also a really great guy. Head over to Instagram and check him out so that he can stop complaining that I don’t actually mention him anywhere.

Now for next month, I have to say that after getting the highlights and some background done on my Miranda tattoo, I seriously have no idea which character will be next. There are a few more musts for my sleeve before we can start on the actual background that will cover in the blank spots. Those must characters include Garrus, Mordin, Moxxi, and Tiny Tina. I’m really at a loss of what to do next, so next month will be a complete surprise. I have to say that I’m kind of leaning towards Moxxi since it’ll be another rather large piece, but so will Garrus. So…yeah, I have no idea. Want to give me a suggestion? Do so in the comments section below and I’ll let you know what was added to my sleeve next month.

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 9 – Butt Stallion Says Hello

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I got my first tattoo which was Athena and now I’m onto my 9th session with my 7th tattoo to fill in my mash up of Borderlands and Mass Effect themed sleeve. I still have a long way to go, but sleeves take a while and it’s not like they can be done overnight or in one sitting no matter how well you sit. Anyway, last month was Claptrap, and you can read about my session for that here and this month was yet another Borderlands character.

For this month’s addition to my sleeve, it’s the one and only Butt Stallion. Handsome Jack’s diamond pony. There were some main points for me that had to be done when it came to this tattoo, which made my artist really have to work and see where this was going to go. While he didn’t want to do the whole horse, which was fine by me, the one thing that I wanted was for the whole purple mane to be included. This made it a little more difficult for him, not to mention the fact that I wanted Butt Stallion to have a rainbow around it, but not just any standard rainbow a water color / splashy type rainbow. I know, I know, I was very difficult this time, but as always my tattoo artist was able to oblige and was able to get it done. There were some compromises along the way, like we didn’t get to my elbow because he wanted something else there and not the rainbow and the shading on Butt Stallion was done a little darker so that it would hold up to the test of time a little better.

The final product though was amazing. It was hard this time around because I had to lay on my stomach the whole time and really had no idea what the hell he was doing as we watched some Game of Thrones, talked about what we thought was going to happen in Game of Thrones, and talked about some gaming. Every once in a while he would tell me where he was at as I laid there for three whole hours. This is no easy task as when he usually tattoo’s me I’m able to watch and see which directions he’s going in. This is where the trust part comes in because you really have to trust your artist. I trust mine and it paid off completely.

Getting Noticed Thank you Gearbox for taking notice of my tattoo and sending me a message via Twitter about it. I was wondering why my feed all of a sudden just blew up and it was because of this response that I got from them. This is always cool when a company gives you some kind of notice for getting a character of their creation inked on your body.

With my next appointment already scheduled, the layout on my arm has changed just a bit. Much to my tattoo artist’s disappointment, we won’t be doing a Mass Effect alien next month, but Miranda. Now this isn’t set in stone and it may change because while he wants to make this huge shoulder piece out of her, there are still some more characters that I want to add onto my sleeve. We’ll see how things go next month and as always, I’ll let you know how everything worked out.

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 8 – Check Me Out I’m Dancin’, I’m Dancin’

It’s been what feels like forever since the last time I visited my tattoo artist and as I counted down the weeks and then the days I became even more eager as it gave me a chance to continue to work on my sleeve. I have to say thought that I was thinking about abandoning my sleeve to get some work done on my leg when my tattoo artist posted an abandoned tattoo that he had drawn up and said he would give it to the first person that claimed it. Luck wasn’t on my side as he did this when I was at work and I had to sneak off to message him that I wanted it only to find out that I was 30 minutes late and someone else claimed it. Anyway, onto my sleeve.

This month felt like a Claptrap month since I had a space in my already existing Athena tattoo where her shield wasn’t completely filled in and I figured Claptrap’s wheel would fit nicely in that area. Turns out I was right and would. Now onto the debate of which Claptrap to use. There are so many different versions of Claptrap, but we went with a simple one for a few reasons. One was because I didn’t want it to take up too much space. I’m all for huge tattoo’s, I have a bunch of them on my sleeve already, but there are a lot more characters that I want to be able to squeeze in on my Borderlands / Mass Effect themed sleeve. The second was because it was in an area that interfered with another area which my tattoo artist called “prime real-estate.” After a little debate on whether or not we were keeping an arm, my tattoo artist finally got down to work.

The whole session took about two hours to complete, I’m sure it would have been sooner if we weren’t busy chatting and watching X-Men. I was really happy with the end results and everything about it is kind of perfect. It’s in a good area, it doesn’t take up too much room, and it’s a version of everyone’s favorite annoying little robot. Another awesome tattoo to add to my already existing sleeve of awesomeness.

This is prime season to get some stuff done and my tattoo artist is really hard to schedule, but I was able to make an appointment next month to get some more work done. One more Borderlands tattoo before I move onto another Mass Effect character. So far the Borderlands characters are overtaking the Mass Effect ones and we can’t have that. It’ll be a little difficult next month as we work around my elbow, which will probably hurt like a bitch. Anyway, we’ve already decided to go with a wrap around of my favorite diamond pony, Butt Stallion with a water color rainbow to go on my elbow and under my already existing Liara tattoo. I’ll let you know how everything works out next month.

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 7 – Cancellations, Fixings, and Finishing a Cover Up

Since I’ve been working on my Mass Effect / Borderlands sleeve, which has been well over a year now, I’ve been documenting things a long the way. The last time that I visited my tattoo artist was way back in December. Since then there have been a lot of things going on. My first appointment had to be cancelled because I had the flu. The second appointment got mixed up and my tattoo artist forgot to schedule me. Third time is a charm though right? Nope, my third appointment was cancelled because this time my tattoo artist was sick. It seemed like I had no luck and I desperately needed to get some things done before MegaCon. You can’t go to a convention and show off your tattoo’s when they aren’t looking at their best.

My last tattoo that I got in December was of the lovely Liara and unfortunately there was a lot of cracking and some other problems that happen when you get tattoo’s. Needless to say it did not heal well and ended up having to be almost completely re-done. This kind of sucked and I practically cringed thinking that I had to go to MegaCon with a messed up tattoo. My artist was nice enough to change his schedule around a little in order to get me in and get my mess fixed up.

What was supposed to be a quick fix on Liara turned into about an hour and a half of work, but that wasn’t it. I also wanted my messed up paragon sign covered up for good so that I didn’t have it sticking out of my already existing FemShep tattoo. My artist and myself have been going back and forth on what we were going to cover it up with. It was a really horrible tattoo and it was hard to find something to cover it up with but we were finally able to cover it up and being the PlayStation fan girl that I am why not go with some PlayStation buttons. So that was exactly what we did. It’s a simple X, Square, Triangle, and O with some paint splatter behind it. Not only did it cover up my bad tattoo, but it also added much color into my sleeve.

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The whole session took about 4 hours to fully complete, but it was well worth it as I’ll be going into MegaCon with some nice looking ink to show off. My next session though won’t be until July because of MegaCon, my tattoo artist taking a much needed vacation, and the fact that he’s overly booked as it is. I was already pretty lucky to get my July appointment. Anyway, next time we’ll be adding Claptrap to my ever growing sleeve and once it’s done I’ll let you know how it came out.

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 6 – Moving Up

I can’t believe that there’s been 6 parts to this blog series this year. Thinking back on it, I got a lot of ink this year. Of course it’s fun, if not a little bit painful at times, but it’s been something that I’ve wanted done for a while now I just was never able to find the right artist for it. I was either brushed off as someone who wasn’t series about getting a full sleeve or unfortunately met some pretty pretentious artists who just turned me the wrong way. Anyway, I had my latest session this month and even though I was supposed to finish up the lower half of my sleeve, I’ve come to learn that things don’t always work out that way.

Finally having a laid out plan for where I wanted to go moving up, my artist suggested that we start working our way up and then go back and fill in the rest of the sleeve once everything was done in order to have a more cohesive sleeve that looks like it all fits together. So how are we going to do that? We’re going to make it look like a movie poster of sorts. There will be a bunch of various different Mass Effect / Borderlands characters running up and down my entire arm with one character getting the spotlight. I know which character will be getting the spotlight, but I’ll let that be a surprise to you guys.

Anyway, the first character to add to my upper sleeve was one of my favorite Mass Effect characters. She just happens to be my FemShep’s favorite blue lady and a staple point in the Mass Effect series. If you haven’t guessed by now, it’s the very lovely Liara. The picture that I had chosen for Liara was exactly what my artist was looking for and had no need for him to go searching in for something better. It’s based off of one of my favorite pictures of her and he did a great job of transferring it over and also making it original.

Trying to cut down each character to one session, my artist took four hours working on this piece on my arm. During this time we watched a full movie on Netflix along with a bunch of random Family Guy episodes. By the time it was all done, with the white highlights added in and some other highlights that were a little unexpected, I was pleasantly surprised that he did a terrific job of bringing my favorite blue lady to life.

As always, I’m amazed by the amount of work that my artist does and the way that he’s willing to work with me. And I’m of course thrilled with my new tattoo, even if I do have to cover them up at work. Unfortunately, this will be the last session for just a little while as I take some time to recover and then think about the next character I want to add to my sleeve. I already have my characters picked out, but I’ll have to choose the next one that’ll be added to the sleeve. Which character will it be? You’ll have to wait and find out!

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 5 – A New Character

It’s been a while since I wrote one of these blogs, but the last time I went in for a session all that was really done was some background and then some touching up here and there to my current tattoo’s for my sleeve. I really didn’t feel like it was worthy of a blog by itself since it was just some scenery and stuff, but I did get some work done that added to my sleeve. Before we get into what happened this time, take a look at the added galaxy scenery and some more detail to FemShep.

I know that I’ve been keeping it a secret for a while what I was going to do as filler for the rest of my arm now that my two main characters were basically done, but the day has finally come for me to reveal my plans. On the back of my arm, near my elbow, my tattoo artist, who is great by the way, and I had decided to do a dying reaper to go with FemShep. This had been the plan for a while, but when it finally came down to it we decided to scrap this because I just basically thought it would look way to dark. Reapers are basically black and with the already existing galaxy background, I didn’t want something as dark to go in that area making the reaper not be able to stand out on it’s own.

Going in a new direction at the last minute, I wanted something that would blend into the Borderlands / Mass Effect mashup I have going and decided what would be better than a Borderlands psycho popping out over Femshep’s shoulder. My tattoo artist loved this idea and love the design of the Borderlands psycho and just ran with it. After a pretty long three hour session, this was the end result.

I can’t tell you enough how happy I am with the choice of adding this to the existing sleeve. I think it brightens up the sleeve as a whole and just looks pretty damn cool. It also gives the sleeve a more collage type feel to it and is just an awesome addition. As always the thanks goes to my awesome tattoo artist who is always willing to listen to my crazy ideas and then basically runs with them.

The bottom half of my sleeve is coming to an end though as we only have a few more spots to fill in with ink before moving upwards. My next appointment isn’t until December and as always I have it marked on my calendar and looking forward to it. To finish up, the plan is to cover up my crappy tattoo with the earth underneath FemShep completely and underneath Athea. There will be some more galaxy added to the empty spaces on the top and then some highlights along the rest of the tattoo to make it pop a little bit more. I’ll be able to give you a full 360 view of what the sleeve looks like after my last session.

Video Game Tattoo Chronicles – Part 4 – Saying Goodbye to Commander Shepard

It feels like forever since I first started on my FemShep tattoo. My first session for her was in June where my tattoo artist did the outline of her along with the shading that needed to be done. I have been waiting a very long time to go back in and see him in order to get this tattoo done. I’ve been patient though and trying not to go through tattoo withdrawal as I looked forward to what would be done and how the end product would look. In the meantime though, while I’ve been waiting ever so patiently, I have been replaying the whole Mass Effect series. But what does this have to do with completing my FemShep tattoo?

I want to start off by telling you that I in no way planned this to happen the way it did. It just so happened that I was replaying through the Mass Effect series and the day before I finished my tattoo, I had completed all 3 games. What does this have to do with getting the tattoo finished? Nothing really, but for me it was kind of an end of an era. I’ve been playing Mass Effect since 2010 when I first bought Mass Effect 2, I know I was late to the party, but this was the first time that I played all three games in a row. I already knew why I loved the character of FemShep whether she was a paragon or renegade, if I didn’t then I wouldn’t have had her image tattooed on my arm for everyone to see for the rest of my life. What I didn’t realize until now though, was the effect that this character actually had on me as a person.

Through good times and bad, which felt like a hell of a lot more bad times than good, this character was one of the constants in my life. She fought for what she believed in and she fought hard. Never giving up, never wavering, and getting the job done in the very end. Throughout the years of playing this game, I made a lot of huge changes in my life. I won’t detail them here and bore you to death, but I like to think that some part of me did this because of the admiration I have for this character. In a way, the completion of this tattoo is like saying goodbye to Shepard. Not only goodbye, but also a thank you and constant reminder that if you believe in something, it’s worth fighting for.

Now that you’re completely bored, I will tell you that my session took a total of four hours. Yes, four hours to just color in FemShep to perfection. While we were supposed to start on the background as well, after four hours I was in a shit load of pain. Yes, I admit this time I was in a lot of pain. If my tattoo artist is reading this he is probably pumping a fist in victory as I finally admit to being in pain since I usually just brush it off and tell him to keep going. Anyway, below is the final product of my last session.

Since I was really eager to finish up my arm before the year is out, I scheduled my next appointment for next moth where we’ll work on the mysterious background that I talked about last time and I’ll give able to finally give a picture of the full 360 view of my completed forearm sleeve. As always, I look forward to my next session and would like to give a huge thank you to my tattoo artist who always makes the crazy shit that I want done into a reality with a few tweaks here and there to make it look amazing.