Tips for Adding Tattoos to Game Characters Without Overcomplicating Design?

General
1

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a small indie game and want to include tattoos as part of a few character designs. The idea is to use them to hint at backstories or affiliations without taking too much focus away from the rest of the design.

The problem I’m running into is keeping the tattoos visually interesting but not overwhelming the character’s overall look. For example:

  • How do you decide on the size and placement of tattoos?
  • Any advice on balancing tattoo details with the rest of the character’s textures or design?
  • Are there tools/plugins that make designing or mapping tattoos easier in engines like Unity or Unreal?

I’d appreciate any examples or insights! Especially curious about how others have handled this in their own projects.

2

Hi Jim!

Personally I have not used tattoos yet for my characters but this is interesting. My first thought in Unreal would be adding decals or perhaps materials to the characters so those can be tweaked in color, brightness but also switched out for others

Soon I’m gonna start working on a “clothing” update for my cat game but that’s more like “pasting” static meshes to skeleton meshes via sockets for example.