Starting with the alligator source, cut out the circled areas. The tear drop shaped area will be used to construct the scales, the area above the eye will be used to construct the eye ridge, and the tooth will become the spines in the ear fan
step 1 of 10
step 2 of 10
Mask out the tear drop area until you only have the shape. Duplicate this about 6 times, move the individual scales into place one over the other until you have a group of about 6-8 scales. Merge these to create a group of scales. This will give us a patch to begin working with. As you apply groups of scales, mask out as necessary to keep following the contours
step 3 of 10
Start moving the groups of scales into place following the contours of the alligator. Start from the back of the head so that each new later overlaps the previous to keep the scaled effect. You will want to scale some of the groups down in size as you get towards the front of the head
step 4 of 10
When you reach the snout, use free transform > Warp to bend the scales around the snout. Continue until you have completely covered the alligator's head. I counted 7 layers to accomplish the entire coverage
step 5 of 10
Using the area from above the eye in step 1, use the same technique to create a bumped eye ridge: duplicate, move into position, and merge
step 6 of 10
Use the tooth shown in step one and using free transform, stretch it out into a spike and mask it until you have nice clean, sharp edges. Duplicate, move into position, merge
step 7 of 10
Create a layer behind the ear spike. Fill with the color of your choice. I used a nice reddish brown, but as long as you don't choose straight black or white for this, you can easily change the color using a color overlay on the layer. Add a cell pattern overlay to give it the veiny effect then mask out the areas outside of the spines. Set your brush to the same size as the space between spines to get the scalloped effect. Duplicate for the other side, add some burn, and mask out accordingly
step 8 of 10
Cut and duplicate the eye area shown in the pic. This will become our nostril. Simply black out the eye. Duplicate for the far side as well, but instead of blacking it out, use a clone stamp to put some scales over it.
step 9 of 10
Using the horn source pic, shrink to scale, duplicate, and move into position for the head spikes
step 10 of 10
Select the eye and use Hue\Saturation to adjust the color and dodge and burn overall to complete
Final result
Comments
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Nice, informative SBS
(5 years and 1418 days ago)