How I Created “Anorexic Jessica Simpson”.I think the most important tools when trying to make a Fasting Times-type image is to have a few anatomical references on hand. Putting bones and muscles in the wrong places can change the whole effect and turn them into mutants instead. Find good skeletal and muscular system images to guide you and make your work easier.
1. Select your source image and make any adjustments necessary. In this case I had to rebuild part of the tire and remove some unwanted background shading. This will be our background.
2. Body ShapingThis is neither the fastest, nor the easiest way to reshape the body but I find it helps retain the skin texture as well as the natural shape of the individual parts, as opposed to using the Liquify Tool, which is fast and easy but destroys all detail and makes the skin look like plastic and the bones like rubber. The technique is the same for all body parts so I will only show a couple of them.
- Start by making a
rough selection of one longitudinal half of the body part you want to work on and create a
Layer via Copy:
- Select the
Move Tool (V) and reposition this new layer closer to the center line of the forearm to decrease its overall width.
- Open the
Transform menu (Ctrl+T) and select the
Warp function. Adjust the upper and lower edges to match the original lines of the wrist and elbow.
Depending on the complexity of your background you may have to use the
Clone Tool to fix any mismatched areas, in this case I was able to match the car lines along with the forearm’s in one go.
- Choose a soft brush and
Erase the inner edge overlapping the middle line to expose the original forearm.
Repeat the same process for the forearm’s inner half.
- The right thigh is a little trickier because the background has to be rebuilt. Start by repeating the same technique we used to reposition and shape the forearm. Once that’s done, erase everything below the skin line so you end up with something like this:
- Select your background layer. To recreate the background for the thigh I used the
Smudge Tool to pull some of the car colors and skin from the other thigh upward. I then sampled the colors from the shorts to roughly paint the fabric with a
Soft Brush at
100% Opacity. This is just to lay down the basic shapes. We’ll add the detail next.
* I hid the thigh layer we had created before so you could see this step more clearly.
- To create the texture,
copy/paste a
rough selection of the upper part of the shorts and
reposition it to create the lower edge. Use the
Burn Tool to darken as needed.
We won’t bother with the car texture because it will be covered by the shadows and won’t be noticeable.
Repeat the same steps to do the remaining upper half of the thigh.
- To “deflate” the chest, select the
Clone Tool and sample a mid-tone area on the vest. Clone over the lightest and darkest areas around the breast to give it a flat appearance. If you need to, use the
Healing Brush Tool to blend in the edges around the new cloned areas.
Just like with the arm, make a
rough selection of the vest’s edge on the opposite side and
move it closer to the mid line using the
Warp function to match the edges.
Do the same for the remaining side of the vest using the
Clone Tool as in the first one.
Use the
Clone Tool again to remove the shadows and highlights on the chest’s skin so we have a “flat” area to work with.
Continue using the same technique for the rest of the body. Since the feet and hands are pretty small, you may be able to use the Liquify Tool without any noticeable loss of texture. Yay!
You should end up with something like this:
Now that the body shaping is done it’s time to make the bones “pop” to complete the effect.
3. Body ShadingTo create the protruding bones we have to paint shadows and highlights. This is where the anatomical references are very useful.
- Shadows
Select a
Soft Brush at
100% opacity and sample a skin mid tone. Create a new layer and change its blending mode to
Multiply. Use your reference images to figure out where the bones should be. I’ve changed the paint color to bright green so you can see the strokes better. Paint along the areas around the bones to create the depth effect.
Use the
Smudge Tool to make any adjustments and apply a light
Blur.
- Highlights
Create a
new layer and change its blending mode to
Screen. Use the previous method to paint the highlights. In this case, the shadows were very effective and I didn’t have to paint as many highlights but you may have to apply more depending on your image. I’ve changed their color to purple to show them better.
- For the final touch, create a
new layer and change its blending mode to
Multiply. Choose a grayish green tone and paint some veins all over the body using a soft brush. Lower the layer opacity as needed.
- Create a
Levels adjustment layer on top of all others and adjust to your liking.
Here’s the final image:
Happy Chopping!
*Note: I used Photoshop CS3 but you can try using the new Puppet Warp tool in CS5 for the basic body reshaping.
Some stuff