A lot of people have asked how I do a lot of my characterizations and weird aliens, so I thought I’d finally sit down and write a tutorial.
I thought a fun image to focus on would be my “Face Off” image for the “Alien Nation 3” contest.
So here goes!

First off I thought I’d explain a little about my methodology. Basically I do a whole lot of adjustment layers, cloning, and healing brush coupled with a bit of liquify. My basic theory with humanoid characters is that I try to leave as many of the original pixels intact as possible.. What I try to do is make them a different color. I hardly ever resort to doing any destructive paint strokes.

First things first, I didn’t have the entire concept in mind when I started this image, or even what the alien was going to look like. In fact I didn’t even plan for it to be Tom Cruise for any reason other than I like the intense look on his face and it was a high enough resolution file to manipulate without having to work around too many jpeg artifacts.
That being said it evolved into a silly goof on Mr. Cruise that ended up getting a good reaction from the voters so, go figure!

  Click to begin.