What do you get when you cross a Kangaroo, a Crocodile, and a Velociraptor?

Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn't it?

I'd like to introduce everyone to Macropus Velociraptorae, commonly known as Velociroo. He's what happens when the head, claws, and feet of a velociraptor get combined with a kangaroo's body and crocodile spikes.

The hardest part of this project was the beginning. It seems that when searching for images to use for a project, you can pick between high resolution, uncropped, or good quality pictures. Found one? It's copyrighted. I have a newfound respect for photoshoppers everywhere.

For this CA² assignment, I copied the head of the dinosaur (after rough erasing the surrounding area) and pasted it onto the kangaroo. To make it blend in, I used a low opacity eraser and clone stamp on the neck. I used a burn tool to add faint stripes to the kangaroo's body, then individually added a dinosaur claw to each of its fingers. Turns out kangaroos already have large claws, but I wanted them to be the same color as the feet. I pasted the velociraptor feet over the kangaroo's, then used the clone stamp to add fur to the top. The crocodile spikes were added about three at a time to the kangaroo with a reduced opacity near the ends. Needless to say, this project was basically all erase, copy, paste, transform. In the end I had about 25 raster layers.

I'll probably change the baby kangaroo into a velociraptor and add a background later.