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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 shading. This will be our background.

2. Body Shaping

This 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 forearms 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 forearms 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 thats 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. Well add the detail next.
* I hid the thigh layer we had created before so you could see this step more clearly.

Unhide the thigh layer and youll have a nice clean edge with the newly created background:

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Hyperborean said 1 month ago 8/4/2010 7:40:39 PM EDT

- 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 wont bother with the car texture because it will be covered by the shadows and wont 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 vests 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 chests 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 its time to make the bones pop to complete the effect.

3. Body Shading

To 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. Ive 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 didnt have to paint as many highlights but you may have to apply more depending on your image. Ive 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.
Heres 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.