Anime & Manga

On YokoFolio, pick the style Anime & Manga and then your city, and widen the radius if the list is short. Judge on two things: fidelity of line — a character's face rests on very precise ratios — and the density of the flat color, which has to cover completely. Look at healed work: that's where you see whether the color went in solidly enough and whether the screen tones haven't turned to grey.

A character portrait, a key scene, an emblematic object, an organization's symbol, a creature. Multi-figure compositions work well on a thigh or a full arm. One piece of advice that prevents a lot of regret: pick something that will still matter to you in several years, and go for an interpretation rather than an exact copy — it usually looks better, and it gives the artist room to fit the drawing to the skin.

Yes, and it's one of the most requested formats. The difficulty is specific to this style: your characters often come from different works, drawn by different hands, and it's on the tattooer to bring them back to a single line. Without that work, a sleeve ends up looking like a page of stickers. So have the overall layout worked out — background and transitions included — before the first design goes on, even if you spread the work over several years.

They come from the works themselves, and their meaning is the one the story gives them: a clan crest, a curse mark, a crew's symbol, a sign that binds two characters. Some borrow from real Japanese traditions — seals, kanji, Buddhist motifs — and keep their original meaning in that case. If you're choosing a kanji or an inscription, have it checked by someone who reads the language before the session.