Photoshop Fun With "The Devil's Nightmare"

Thought I'd share a little Photoshop fun. I did a few sample magazine covers to show to a potential client. Click on the image for a closer look. What do you think? The original photo is from 1971's The Devil's Nightmare, one of my all time favorite Euro-horror films.

I scanned from a black and white image in a book, so it was already half-toned which created a few challenges. I scanned at twice the size and resolution then reduced to the target size and applied gaussian blur to soften the image closer to an actual greyscale. The black areas consist of two bitmapped images combined with a mask. The hair was achieved using a threshold layer. I brightened the levels for the skin-tone then converted to lined half-tone. I'm especially fond of the lined effect because it reminds me of John Totleben's drawing style in the Swamp Thing and Miracleman comics of the 80s. Finally, I manually painted in color using a Wacom tablet.