There’s a method of character/creature design that never really caught on for me – photo collaging. I know it saves a heck of a lot of time and time is money in this business. But unfortunately, so many times I see artwork that I have difficulty telling which artist created it. Not always of course, but I never wanted anything to do with this method because I didn’t want to lose my style from the use of so many tricks.
Well, today I broke down and gave it a go. But, I tried to do it my way.
I started off with a nice high def black and white portrait. Then I found some great animal reference and started to cut up pieces and paste them on. Then I masked it to blend. But it still needed a bit more done to it. So I found some unexpected photo reference and used it as some great texture starting points – intestines and steaks. I masked those off as well.
After all of that, I saw it was looking a bit flat. I used the liquify tool to alter the center of the portrait to bring out some more recognizable shapes that felt right as a creepy portrait. Finally I used the brush tool for highlights and shadows.
And here he is:
Josh Hagen 
Freaky. Nice job.
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I like that it looks like the kind of alien that is often presented as accessible in animation and the like, but would probably actually look horrifying.
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