These Artists Made Tattoos Come To Life And It's Mesmerizing

Wait. Shut up. 3D tattoos?!???

Oskar & Gaspar, artists from Portugal, specialize in video mapping and stage design.

Oskar & Gaspar / Via vimeo.com

If you haven't heard of video mapping, it involves projecting light technology on irregularly-shaped surfaces. The resulting effect is like a 3D optical illusion that's trippy AF.

They're actually the first company to do face mapping, which involves spellbinding projections like this:

Oskar & Gaspar / Via vimeo.com

You can see more of this magic in the video they worked on for David Guetta's "I Can Only Imagine."

Two years ago, they had the idea to try tattoo mapping.

Oskar & Gaspar / Via youtube.com

"We wanted to continue exploring the human body and we're big fans of tattoos," Guillaume Alatak, project manager for Oskar & Gaspar, told Buzzfeed.

"It's an expensive experience. It took about one year to find people to help fund the concept and finally a few months ago we found someone."

The idea finally came together in their first live tattoo mapping event held recently in Lisbon, Portugal.

Oskar & Gaspar / Via vimeo.com

As part of the project, they invited the works of their tattoo artist friends, Eduardo Cavellucci and Igor Gama.

The animations took about one month, which were done on the tattoos of select people beforehand.

Oskar & Gaspar / Via vimeo.com

"It wasn't easy — we were looking for persons that we believed were going to be at the right place at the right time," said Alatak.

Some of them are so realistic it's batshit freaky.

Oskar & Gaspar / Via vimeo.com

"The visual impact from what you can see from the video is really amazing," commented Alatak. "It looks real, like the demon is coming from the inside of the girl. But the live impact is stronger."

In the future, they hope to incorporate storytelling in their tattoo mapping videos and bring this technology to music videos and commercials.

Oskar & Gaspar / Via vimeo.com

This would involve tattoos interacting with one another. "Imagine if I got a tattoo of a butterfly and you got a tattoo of a flower and my butterfly could fly to your flower," said Alatak.

You can watch the incredible production here:

vimeo.com