How does a tattoo go from design to reality?

"Simple measurements work if it's just putting one tattoo on someone's arm, but when you're covering a full body, like Jason Momoa's Aquaman, you're essentially taking a 3D person who has movement and a silhouette with curves and wrapping 2D graphics around them. So we take a 3D duplication of their body that's like a thin plastic wrap, which can show the key details that are necessary to map out, like nipples, the spine, and elbows. Then we take that human figure, filet it to a flat surface, design the tattoos within those perimeters, and then fit it back together like a puzzle piece. That way it looks like it was meant to be on that person's body. That's the biggest hurdle we face — designing is one aspect of the job, but figuring out how that design can be engineered for that body is a whole other process.