How to Make a Bobblehead

A couple of people have asked me to make a tutorial for my recent
bobblehead entry so here it is:

OK First of all here is the original source I used for the bobblehead entry:

The first thing I did was take the smudge tool on 100% opacity and using
the normal brush I just smudged very gently all over the face in tiny
circles to create a smoothed look.

I also used Filter/Blur/Smart Blur and masked out the areas I still wanted to
be crisp and clear

Finally I used Filter/Noise/Reduce Noise for the nostrils and finer areas
Now that the skin is smooth it is ready for the next step (plastification)

I spent a good few hours looking for "Blythe Doll" sources on Flickr. These
dolls look really creepy but they have an awesome plastic feel to them.

Taking the shine circled below I copied this and pasted as a new layer:

I then desaturated it, applied a light gaussian blur and, resized it and
set the blending mode to lighten. (Note I only had to desaturate in this
case as the skin tones were so different, I may have also adjusted the
levels slightly too to match the tones)

I tried to imagine which parts of the image would reflect and the area
under his left eye looked like a good place to start so working from this
source I cut out this area and pasted as a new layer:

I then masked around the edges, applied a slight gaussian blur and set the
blending mode to lighten.

Next I wanted a bit more of an interesting reflection so using this source I copied
the circled area and pasted as a new layer:

I masked around the edges and again set the blending mode to lighten, I also
added a slight hue adjustment layer to it to match the colors of the other reflections
(If you look at the final result they have a slight purple tint around the white highlights)

Next I wanted some reflections that really popped, so taking this source
I copied the reflections from her nose and pasted them as a new layer.

I only needed to set the blending mode to lighten and mask round the
edges as the skin tones were pretty similar. The part just above the lip
is a duplication of this layer and then Transform/Warp to make it flow
better.

I took this section of this image, copied and pasted as a new layer

I set the blending mode to overlay and masked around the edges

The eyes still appeared to be too life like so taking this source image
I copied this eye and pasted as a new layer.

I adjusted the hue/saturation so that the colors matched Billie's real
eyes

As for the hair it was taken from this lego man and masked out as a
new layer.

Like this:

I had to adjust the hair using Filter/Liquify as it was off centre and too
square:

Finally as you can see the eyebrows and eyelashes are also different:

They were taken from this source, I had to add a few more stands to
the eyebrows with the smudge tool to match Billie's eyebrows.
The eye lashes were set to multiply

...and here is the final result.

Thanks for viewing :)