Suerte’s Designs Featured in ‘Rock Band’
The blood and the ink were still fresh, and a paper towel was taped to his chest, when Adam Suerte sat down for the interview.
He was sipping on a Jack Daniels-and-Coke to relieve some of the pain. For nearly three hours, the tattoo gun was in someone else’s hand, for a change -- and it was Suerte’s skin that was getting pounded and pierced with needles.
The local tattoo artist, who works out of his shop at 99 Atlantic Ave., got his chest tattooed with a drawing he had sketched over the summer. A cartoon rendering of a streetlamp with sneakers hanging from it, it is the exact same design that millions of video-game enthusiasts from around the world are getting “tattooed” on them this month.
The streetlamp tattoo is just one of Suerte’s designs that appear on the “skin” of the video-game characters in “Rock Band.” The new hit game, which was released several weeks ago, as a more complex successor to the popular “Guitar Hero” games, allows several players to play instruments in a rock band, rather than just play guitar.
“It replaces karaoke for the most part,” Suerte, said. “Before the game was even finished being designed, there was five million pre-sold.”
The “Rock Band” video game, available for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, was designed by Harmonix Music Systems, which is now owned by MTV Networks, having acquired the corporation after the worldwide success of the “Guitar Hero” games.
Suerte, 38, who admittedly doesn’t play video games, knew of the “Guitar Hero” craze from local neighborhood bars, such as Camp on Smith Street, which actually hosts weekly competitions. So when Suerte was approached this summer by one of the game’s designers who was familiar with his artwork, Suerte immediately agreed to illustrate the fictional tattoos.
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