Sephiroth

Sephiroth is one of those characters that I think is instantly recognisable, even if you’ve never touched a Final Fantasy game. Between the design, his story and how iconic he is within gaming in general, he’s always been a character I’ve wanted to tattoo, so I was stoked when Sam came to me with this idea for a FFVII sleeve featuring Sephiroth.

The most difficult part was deciding how to represent the character and do him justice. For this sleeve I wanted to focus on character portraits, but with some storytelling elements as well. We decided to go with the Nibelheim scene as I thought it was super iconic, but could also bring some interesting design elements. I really thought adding the burning village gave us that nod to a very memorable moment in the story, without taking away from the portrait itself.

I wanted to give the palette this warm and dramatic effect, so using the fire to create interesting lighting across the face and armour gave us this sort of cinematic vibe while still keeping the clean, graphic style that I love bringing into my anime and gaming tattoos.

Video game tattoos are always some of my favourite projects, especially when they allow me to combine strong character work with storytelling elements. This Sephiroth piece is definitely one of my favourite Final Fantasy tattoos I’ve had the chance to create.