The message I am trying to convey is that tattoos and piercings are an art, and not all tattoos are related to gangs, and is also one of my biggest interests. My audience is mainly young adults between 21 and 35, both men and women. I used a photo I had of one of my tattoos and cut out the original background using a layer mask. With the same selection, I cut out the profile from a plain, black layer as well as a dark red layer with difference clouds applied so the photo stands brightly against the dark background. I created the left and right gray tribal designs by filling in a circle with the ellipse tool. I created a smaller circle in a different color and aligned it with the first circle to make a crescent moon shape. Using the magic wand, I selected the second circle, selected the layer of the first circle, then pressed delete. I repeated the process for another size, then multiplied the layers and aligned them until I had a nice tribal design. To get the other side, I multiplied the first tribal image, then flipped it horizontally.

The tattoo gun was a vector image that I had which I imported into PhotoShop. I selected each section with the magic wand, then filled it in with the paint bucket tool to add color to the gun. The jewelry was created using the Ringpin true type font, then rasterized and recolored. I applied the Bevel and Emboss layer effect to each piece to make them look 3D and reflective. The smaller tribal designs were created the same way, but with the Tribalz by Marioz dingbat font. I applied the Inner Shadow layer effect to the tattoo gun to give it some slight shadow, and make it look more 3D. The fonts I used for the text was Tribal for the word Tattoos, Poor Richard for the word and, and Ringpin for the word Piercings. Tattoos and Piercings each have the Drop Shadow layer effect applied, and the word and has the Inner Shadow layer effect applied.

I'm not too sure about how well my message come across, but when you look at it, there isn't anything there that makes you think about gangs or violence. I chose my Philip tattoo because name tattoos are often related to memorials. It's an original drawing of a yellow rose with the name Philip cut out of it. Tribal designs are very common with my generation, as well as the rings and barbells I used in my design. The hardest part of this assignment was just trying to come up with a design that related to what I am interested in, and not look like a collage of images. The most time consuming part of the project was coloring in the tattoo gun, but I am satisfied with the way it came out.

Oh, and yes, the tattoo did hurt ;)