Ink Master Pilot Recap: No Cover-Ups Needed

The original commercials for Spike’s new reality show, “Ink Master,” weren’t exactly enthralling. Lets be honest, rocker Dave Navarro, as a judge?

But when the ink finally hits the skin, the show has plenty of color and personality. The contestants are all different. It’s easy to find someone to love and hate. The judges, including Navarro, are charismatic and pull no punches.

When all the palettes are mixed, there’s a winning spectrum that’s worth keeping your eyes on. No cover-ups needed.

The pilot wasted no time getting started. The group quickly got to work on their first challenge- drawing a skull on a dead pig- in a meat locker. During this feat of the elements and time [they had just 90 minutes to show what they had], all of the contestants showed something. Josh Woods won the initial challenge with a pretty cool design worth remembering because of the color and outline. The other designs were interesting, but the other contestants mainly stood out because of their personalities. Southerner James Vaughn is hilarious. Urban inker Al Fliction is annoying as well as arrogant and a total misogynist, but he is real. Youngster Bili Vegas is talented and uses color extremely well. Heather Sinn is also talented, but she complained too much about the cold.

After the initial challenge, the group faced an elimination challenge- a cover, this time on a live subject. While all of the inkers did a decent job, no one stood out as amazing except Bili. His eye cover-up was absolutely beautiful, totally eliminating a joke of an old piece. Tommy’s cover-up was also solid and made a silly tramp-stamp actually cool. Justin, on the other hand had serious problems. His client, Christine, cried during the procedure, most likely due to the fact that Justin wasn’t smart enough to ask her lay down during the tattoo. As a result, he wasn’t able to finish the work.

After getting their work critiqued by the judges, Tommy, Shane, B-Tat and Justin were called in. Tommy and Shane were told they were the top two, while B-Tat and Jeremy were singled out as the weakest. B-Tat’s work shows promise, but he destroyed his client’s skin and his work was simply rough around the edges. He was out of his league. For that, he was sent home, instead of Jeremy, who didn’t even finish his design.

While there are plenty of tattoo-inspired shows on TV right now, the realism and intrigue inspired by the challenges make this a must-see.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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