How do I make a cropped image of a person look animated like in a movie poster?

[Artiefice]

I am creating a cd cover for a friend I would like to crop his image and create this effect. Im hoping I can get some suggestions or any tips on how to do this here is what I'm talking about see how everyone in this piece looks painted or animated... I do not know what to refer to this effect as... any help would be appreciated... Thank You!

 

[Steve]

With you’re background image in place, put each additional image of the model on it’s own layer.
Use the Lasso (L) tool or any selection tool you’re comfortable with and remove the background of each image.

Move, rotate, size the images remembering that the top layers will cover the layers below.

Create a layer mask for each of the images of your model, press the (D) key to set the colors to the default setting. Black should now be the foreground color.

Choose the Gradient tool (G), and in the layer mask of each image and drag it from the bottom of the image up, hold down the Shift key to get a straight line.

That should make parts of the bottom of each image transparent.


There’ll be a lot of trial and error, moving layers, and playing with the gradient tool to get it the way you like it.

There's much more that you can do but I hope this gets you started.