New School
Turned all the way up. Cartoon energy, saturated colour and heavy outlines — tattooing with the volume up.
Tattooing meets the cartoon
New school broke out in the late 1980s and 90s, when a generation of artists raised on graffiti, skate graphics, comics and Saturday-morning cartoons started bending traditional tattooing's rules for fun. Keep the heavy outline — but exaggerate everything else. Proportions balloon, perspective warps, colours run hotter than anything in the classic palette, and subjects get personality: characters mid-laugh, objects with faces, chaos composed carefully.
The technique behind the play
Under the cartoon surface, new school is rigorous. Those saturated colour fields demand clean packing; the exaggerated forms still need believable structure and lighting; the bold outlines have to be as confident as any traditional piece. Done well, a new school tattoo has the readability of old flash with the energy of an animation cel.
What lives in this style
Characters above all — film and cartoon icons, original creatures, reimagined pop culture — plus graffiti-inflected lettering, warped everyday objects, and any subject you want rendered with a grin instead of gravity. It's the style for people whose tattoos are allowed to be fun.
New school at Tough It Out
Both Julio and Elias take on new school and character work — full-colour backpieces included. Colour-heavy pieces reward a proper consult: reference images of the character plus honest talk about size, because saturation this dense needs room to breathe.
Saturated colour asks slightly more of healing than black work does. Follow the aftercare to the letter and the colours pay you back for years.
Full-back Joker tattoo in saturated colour with heavy outlines — new school style — from the shop's own work.
