Kingdoms Hearts is an amazingly popular series of video games incorporating a wide range of Disney, Pixar, and Square Enix titles into it’s gameplay.
The Kingdom Hearts series has proven to be a popular and enduring theme. Lovers of tattoo and the video game franchise combine the two elements for superb displays of body art in various styles and technical applications.
First created in 2001, the original Kingdom Hearts game has expanded to 13 titles in a variety of formats – including three major video game titles – a Manga comic published in Japan and the US, and a host of other memorabilia options.
The Kingdom Hearts games have sold well in excess of 300 million copies worldwide, with plans to further expand into 2020 and beyond on smartphone and console platforms.
Read on for 50 examples of brilliant Kingdom Hearts themed tattoo designs to help you choose your next piece of awesome video game inspired ink.
1. Black Line Tattoos
There’s some bad ass examples of effective black line ink above. There’s a variety of methods used, whether it’s sharpie like thick lines, or more delicate, gentle combinations. Given the subject matter, I particularly like the comic book/manga choices some artists make in their depictions, giving their images the look of a cartoon development storyboard.
2. Sora Tattoos
Sora is the main protagonist in Kingdom Hearts. Throughout the games, Sora journeys throughout worlds and interacts with various Disney and Pixar characters, often accompanied by Donald Duck and Goofy. He wields the Keyblade, developing skills and experience as he journeys through the game and fulfilling objectives.
These various tattoos show off Sora’s attributes, and allow each artist to utilize a range of skills to bring him to life on skin. There’s an emphasis on Japanese traditional color, such as single bright single fill, as well as a range of fine line techniques in black ink. The tattoos also create a wide array of background images and framing methods, including strong shapes, supporting characters, and a variety of black and gray traditional shading.
3. Kingdom Hearts Keyblade Tattoos
The Keyblade is a special weapon wielded by main characters in Kingdom hearts, such as Sora and King Mickey. It’s usually used in traditional hack and slash strategies, but has a range of other uses within the game.
These tattoos show off the Keyblade in superb fashion, coursing through a range of design ideas and applications. All are effective and tremendously varied in execution. I particularly like the interaction of shape and crisp color for these weapons, adding to the weapon’s mystique with clarity of depiction and epic, innovative style.
4. Full Color Kingdom Hearts Collages
Kingdom Hearts may be based on Disney, however there is a wide swathe of different styles that can be drawn upon to make quality body art. These color tattoos do a fantastic job of mixing up full color compositions, whether they’re done with cartoon like crisp flat fill, negative space and shapely framing, or shadowy contrasting colors and incorporation of neo traditional effects
5. Black and Gray Kingdom Hearts Tattoos
Just because Kingdom Hearts is a video game, doesn’t mean it’s restricted to high octane, bright color ink designs. These black and gray examples run the gamut of black and gray delineation. There’s the nuance of painstaking dotwork, saturated gray scale shading, fine needle black fill, and some brilliant delivery of clean, crisp linework.
6. Colorful Kingdom Hearts Tattoos
There’s some bad ass color options to utilize in drawing up Kingdom Hearts tattoos. There’s the natural Disney and Pixar connections, meshed with bright colors inherent to the popular Japanese traditional color palettes.
The examples above are like kid’s coloring books brought to life, with the innovative thrust of strange imagery added in to crank up the new wave aspects to eleven. Equally important to the wide variety of color schemes for these pieces is the necessity of using clean, slightly thicker black line conveying scale and balance to the riot of vivid ink.
7. Watercolor Kingdom Hearts Tattoos
Top quality watercolor tattoos can be difficult to pull off, however these are uniformly brilliant. The best thing about these watercolor images are how they’re deployed- there’s a range of saturation depths, color thicknesses, and incorporation of more restrained color styles styles used in aiding the flow of each concept.
8. Kingdom Hearts Anime Portraiture Tattoos
The Kingdom Hearts franchise was born from the studio responsible for video game leviathan Final Fantasy, and then folded into the amazing world of Disney and Pixar. There’s so much source material to use and develop which extends to the anime genre as well as classical cartoons.
These portraits show off the fundamentals of anime. They mesh a wide range of vibrant colors with classical tattoo portraiture fundamentals of staging, shape, and clean delivery. Using anime allows for innovation, such as shadow concepts, cartoon effects and the incorporation of texts from within the game framework
Kingdom Hearts Tattoo FAQs
What is the video game Kingdom Hearts about?
For the uninitiated, The Kingdom Hearts games contain elements of action role playing, and good old-fashioned hack and slash concepts at the crux of its game play.
You follow the main character Sora – and various accompanying Disney friends -from story to story in a linear fashion as he battles the machinations of antagonist Xenohart.
In addition to original locations, the Kingdom Hearts series features many worlds from Disney films, as well as characters from titles such as the legendary Final Fantasy – developed by the same parent company, Square Enix.
Sora must visit these worlds and interact with various Disney and Pixar characters to protect them from enemies, often closely following the storylines of their respective films.
As is the case in traditional RPGs, the Kingdom Hearts games feature real-time combat incorporating physical attacks and magic (and battlefield healing of course) to develop the story.
Sora’s capabilities increase as he works through each objective to finish the game, while there are also side quests available to provide boosts and bonuses to your character and team’s experience points.
Will there be a Kingdom Hearts 4?
According to Director Tetsuya Nomura, plans are being made for a 4th Kingdom Hearts major title to be released in the future. At this stage there is no concrete timetable, plot or outline attached to its development.
There is set to be a Kingdom Hearts game title released on iOs and Android in spring 2020, based on Xenohart. There’s no title yet, however the tagline for the game according to Metro UK is:
“Why did he become the seeker of darkness?”
Looks like a game worth looking into for future tattoo ideas.
Did you enjoy this glimpse into Kingdom Hearts but fancy a look at other video game and anime inspiration. Click on the links below to delve into more galleries: