Tattoos

Turn your own artwork into tattoos for The Sims 4, one body region per project, exported as a Create-a-Sim .package file.

Tattoos are CAS (Create-a-Sim) body ink made from your own artwork. There is no mesh involved: your image is painted onto the Sim's skin in one body region.

Workflow

Pick the body region: upper arms, forearms, legs, back, chest, or stomach.
Upload the artwork: the image is the tattoo.
Place it: slide, zoom, and rotate the art within the region.
Adjust the ink: fade the opacity, or rebuild the design in a single ink color.
Set restrictions: which ages and frames can wear it.
Add swatches: each swatch is its own artwork and ink treatment; they all ship in one .package.
Fill in details: name and description. Catalog placement is handled by the Tags section.
Download: click Download and install via the Install in Game guide.

Body region

A project targets one region, and that choice decides two things: where the art is painted on the skin, and which Create-a-Sim tattoo category the finished mod appears under.

Your artwork and swatches carry over unchanged when you switch regions, so the same design is easy to try in different spots.

One quirk inherited from the game: there is no separate forearm category in Create-a-Sim, so forearm designs appear under the Upper Arm category, exactly like the game's own sleeve tattoos.

Artwork

The uploaded image is the tattoo: line art, script, flash designs, watercolor splashes, anything.

Images with a transparent background work best, because only the inked pixels land on the skin. A solid background reads as a rectangular patch instead. Every swatch needs artwork before the project can be downloaded, since an empty tattoo would be invisible in the game.

Placement

Across / Up-Down slide the art within the region.
Zoom scales it from a small accent piece up to filling the region.
Rotate turns it, which helps when following the flow of an arm or a shoulder blade.

Art is always clipped to the region, so nothing can spill onto other body parts.

Ink

Opacity fades the whole tattoo: 100% is fresh ink, lower reads aged or subtle.

Single ink color rebuilds the tattoo from your art's dark lines in one ink color, the classic single-needle look. Dark linework carries the ink while light and white areas fade out, so it works best with black-on-transparent line art.

Restrictions

Tattoos default to Teen through Elder for every Sim, matching how the game's own tattoos ship. The body slot is locked because the Body Region picker owns it, and the species is always Human.

Tips

The preview skin tone only changes the editor. The finished tattoo adapts to whatever skin tone a Sim has in the game, so check your design against a few tones before downloading.
Line art with real contrast survives the skin better than soft washes, which can disappear on darker complexions.

Controls reference

Region

Body Region

Where the tattoo sits on the body, and which CAS tattoo category it appears under.

A tattoo project targets one body region: upper arms, forearms, legs, back, chest, or stomach. The region decides two things:

Where your art is painted on the Sim's skin.
Which Create-a-Sim tattoo category the finished mod appears under.

Your artwork and swatches carry over unchanged when you switch regions, so it's easy to try the same design in different spots.

One quirk inherited from the game: there is no separate forearm category in Create-a-Sim, so forearm designs appear under the Upper Arm category, exactly like the game's own sleeve tattoos.

Preview Skin Tone

The preview surface's skin color: cosmetic only, not part of the mod.

Sets the skin tone of the preview surface so you can check how the ink reads on different complexions. It only affects the editor preview. The finished tattoo adapts to whatever skin tone a Sim has in the game.

Artwork

Tattoo Artwork

Upload the art that becomes the tattoo, the creative heart of the mod.

The uploaded image IS the tattoo: line art, script, flash designs, watercolor splashes, anything.

Images with a transparent background (PNG) work best: only the inked pixels land on the skin. A solid-background image will read as a rectangular patch.

Every swatch needs artwork before the project can be downloaded, because an empty tattoo would be invisible in the game.

Placement

Slide, zoom, and rotate the art within the body region.

Position the artwork inside the region's canvas:

Across / Up-Down slide the art within the region.
Zoom scales it from a small accent piece up to filling the region.
Rotate turns it, which helps for following the flow of an arm or shoulder blade.

Art is always clipped to the region, so nothing can spill onto other body parts.

Ink

Fade the tattoo like aged ink, or reduce it to a single ink color.

Ink controls how the art reads on skin:

Opacity fades the whole tattoo: 100% is fresh ink, lower reads aged or subtle.
Single ink color rebuilds the tattoo from your art's dark lines in one ink color, the classic single-needle look. Dark linework carries the ink; light and white areas fade out. Works best with black-on-transparent line art.

Restrictions

Who can wear the tattoo: ages and frames. The body slot is fixed by the region.

Restrictions control who the tattoo is available for in Create-a-Sim:

Ages / frames default to Teen through Elder for every Sim, matching the game's own tattoos.
Body slot is locked, because the Body Region picker owns it.
Species is always Human.