Jagua Tattoos In The Movies!
What an eventful day! This jagua tattoo booking was only confirmed properly on Friday (1st) so I just had some time on Sunday to prep some of the artwork in advance. So this morning, (well yesterday morning actually as its now just gone 4am Tuesday 5th Sept.) Simon & I travelled down to London ready to start working on Andy Serkis. We had prepared artwork for the main tattoos, and apart from that we went prepared with books of tattoo photos as well as the life saving laptop and internet datacard. We didn’t actually know anything about the plot of the film, or the time and place it is set in… So its always better to be prepared, having worked on a few films over the years, I always like to have everything I need to be able to do whatever is needed at the drop of a hat.
It was a really great afternoon… em evening… and night, well suffice it to say we arrived at 3.30pm on Mondy 4th Sept and we left at 12.30 am this morning. Andy is a really great guy, and has a huge amount of patience! Hats off to him seriously, he was a willing and patient canvas, he really thought about every tattoo that his character was having, down to its placement, style and the era it was tattooed in. We got a great insight into the film and by the time we left we also had quite a detailed knowledge of some of Andy’s lines LOL ;-). Not only was Andy being Jagua Tattooed by the two of us, trying to stay very still and getting pretty cold accordingly - he was also reading his script for the next morning. What a guy, just back off his holidays, straight into full body tattoos and having to rehearse his lines at the same time!
When we left Andy he had less than 6 hours before he was due on set, I really hope he’s getting some sleep right now. We had also hoped to be home and tucked up in bed by now… But as luck (bad luck that is) would have it, we are instead sat drinking yet more coffee in Watfor Gap service station, waiting for the next RAC man! Yep, we broke down at Northampton Services on the M1 at around 2am, thankfully we had just pulled in for take out coffees, so we had nice hot drinks while sat at the side of the M1 for nearly an hour! If you’re goinmg to breakdown, do it in style ;-). We were then towed upto the next services, where we’ve been since arond 3.15…. Its now about 4.15 and I’ve ran out of things to say… here we are drinking coffee and waiting for the RAC. You’ve got to laugh really, we are, sat here grinning insanely jittering from excessive coffee drinking, blogging on the Si’s laptop. Only a few hours and Andy’ll be on set, I hope his tattoos look as good as I think they should!
I forgot to ask when this film is due out, needless to say, until it comes out I can’t describe or post any photos of the tattoos that we did. But I will of course post some pictures from the film as soon as I can. I’ll find out when its coming out and post here again. All that remains to say is a big thanks to Andy and his Good Lady for putting up with us and feeding and watering us amongst the chaos of their first day home! I’m off now to play beannie with Si - never go anywhere without a deck of cards either ;-)