A&E
Tattoo Highway
"Tattoo Highway" takes tattoo reality television on a road trip with master tattoo artist Thomas Pendelton. Pendelton and his business partner and wife Monica have transformed a 1970s tour bus into a tattoo parlor on wheels, featuring a swanky interior and top-of-the-line tattooing equipment. It's a tattoo shop that can tattoo anyone, anywhere. For the image spot, Herbruck and Baudenbacher traveled to picturesque Lancaster, CA to film Pendelton, using the state-of-the-art digital RED camera system, standing in the middle of a desert road and talking directly to the camera about his life as a tattoo artist and his motivation for taking his work on the road. Swirling around him as he talks are a series of highly-detailed tattoo art that was first hand-drawn on paper and later scanned and animated using Flash. "The goal for this project was to introduce the show and Pendelton to viewers," Baudenbacher says. "We wanted to capture his intense personality and get a sense of who he is and how passionate he is about tattoos and their meaning to people. For the tattoo art, it was crucial that we use illustration to capture all of the subtle imperfections that make them so powerful. Digital is too perfect to create realistic-looking tattoo art."
Client: A&E Project: 'Tattoo Highway' image spot Creative Director: Maria Pecoraro Producer : Jonathan Davis Production/Design: Loyalkaspar, New York Director/Creative Director: Beat Baudenbacher Executive Producer: David Herbruck Senior Producer: Melissa August-Levin Design Director: Geoff Bailey Illustrators: Ann Kruetzkamp, Serge Kirsanov Animator: Sebastien Larreur, Anthony Serraino Editor: Eli Mavros Director of Photography: Rhet Bear Line Producer: Carmen Bosley Music & Sound Design: Kick Music & Sound Design, Santa Monica, CA Composer: Greg Smith
