Just coming from a guy who's worked a tattoo shop, observing for a while, you're not going to want a "vague picture of yourself" on your skin. It's very difficult to capture the eyes of a person in a portrait, and unless this person means something very close to you (mother, grandfather, favorite actor/musician), making a permanent attempt at putting a GOOD portrait of yourself on your skin is too risky (not to mention an idea you may come to regret later on) in my opinion.
You have a really cool idea with the puppet. Why not run with that? There are a million ways you can do a puppet, and you could get a really sick looking one. You could maybe add a few figures that look like they're moshing, but honestly this would just clutter up the puppet, and take away from the overall quality of the tattoo. Just stick with the puppet, and run with that idea!
There has been tons of tattoos that I've thought would be really cool at the time, but it's amazing how much your tastes change over the course of time. Stick to getting tattoos of things that mean something to you, remind you of the things you want to remember. You'll never regret those.
