Colour tattoo of the cartoon character Plankton shouting and waving inside a white bubble outline, in a neo-traditional style on skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Plankton cartoon inside a bubble outline

Neo-trad · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows the cartoon character Plankton, a teal creature with a single large yellow eye and a red pupil, mouth open and one arm raised. Bold black linework and smooth shading give the figure a rounded, dimensional look, with small highlight lines around the body. A white circular outline surrounds the character like a bubble, and the skin around it is slightly reddened.

Neo-trad Cartoon character Bubble Eye Cartoon

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hall smells of floor polish and the same orange squash it smelled of in 1996, and across the room Gordon Pickering is holding a paper cup as if it owes him money. You haven't seen him since the Year Nine trip to Weymouth, when he tried to sell the coach driver a recipe for a burger with no meat in it. The driver didn't buy it. Nobody buys anything from Gordon. You, on the other hand, have spent twenty years selling the same grand idea to people who should know better, and you have a flat in Reading and a drawer full of blueprints to show for it.

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He spots you and comes over with the wary bounce of a man who has rehearsed a speech in the car park. "Still got the plan?" he asks, nodding at your name badge, which someone has spelt wrong. You tell him the plan is in that drawer under the gas bills, waiting patiently for a bigger ocean. He laughs too loudly. Somebody's mum shushes the room, and a sausage roll falls off a plate onto the carpet with a small, definite splat.

Later, when the buffet has become a crime scene, he shows you a photo on his phone. It is his daughter's tattoo, a little teal fellow inside a bubble, mouth wide open, one arm flung up at the injustice of everything. "She says he's a genius," Gordon says. "Reckons he's the only one who never gets a break." You look at that single yellow eye for a long time. It is the most honest drawing of ambition you have ever seen.

Gordon's face goes soft. "Remember the glue in Mr Hadley's chair?" You do. You raise your squash to him, and across the hall the old rivalry bubbles up, thin and bright, and pops against the ceiling tiles without a sound.