Funny Photoshop Head Swaps

Digital artists can use Photoshop to give people a makeover, or in extreme cases, to replace the entire head. Here's what happens when digital artists have fun swapping heads around.


Photoshop Head Swaps Bridge the Generation Gap
According to knowyourmeme.com, head swaps were were first thought up by Something Awful's user Ryan Adams when he started a thread called "Swap Grandparents and Babies Heads!" The thread spawned dozens of Photoshop head swapped images, most notably of fathers and their babies. These later became known as "manbabies".

Above: This image gives a new meaning the the slang term "baby daddy". Photoshop artists need to get the lighting just right to give the finished art work a convincing feel. [source]

Above: The Rowan Atkinson baby, born in Photoshop. You can call him Toby. [source]

Above: Photoshop artists need to be careful when swapping heads - outlines from cutting tools are a dead give away. [source]

Above: Photoshop can age a child in a matter of hours. That's one hairy manbaby! [source]

Above: Another funny Photoshop manbaby image. [source]

Walk a Mile in My Shoes with a Photoshop Head Swap

Photoshop head swaps aren't reserved only for babies and their parents - any two people or animals can undergo the digital surgery. Head swaps can also be used create man animal hybrids, or to create hybrid animals in which two species are combined. 

Above: Hulk Hogan gets a Photoshop head swap. Lovely nails, Hulk! [source]

Above: Hollywood's hottest couple, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt get the Photoshop head swap surgery. [source]

Above: A kid and his pet cat swap heads for an afternoon, creating a terrible toddler duo complete with sharp teeth and claws. [source]

Above: This Photoshop head swap picture is a visual definition of the phrase "pig-headed". [source]

Head swaps are one of the most popular forms of Photoshop humor art works. Although some don't quite hit the funny bone, most are bound to win a couple of giggles.

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Sam Spratt has PAINTED ALL THE MEMES!

Sam Spratt's website describes his work as having "sprattitude". This fine arts graduate combines classical training with current ideas, many of which stem from online media and internet memes. 


PAINT ALL THE MEMES!
Spratt's collection of paintings entitled Illustrated Internet is based on what he calls the visual vernacular of the internet. These paintings are based on popular internet media characters found in rage comics. Most of these characters are used online in their original form; simple black and white sketches of an expressive cartoon face. Spratt has fleshed out these characters by giving them a 3-dimensional existence.

Above: "Paint all the memes!" based on "X all the Y". This character has been used as a template for expressing a fanatical point of view. Notable variations are "Clean all the things!" and "Eat all the brains!"

Above: The rage comics fffuuu face. The painting of the meme character is complete with flying spittle and red eyes.

Above: An expressive painting of the meme Forever Alone.

Paintings of Memes

Although there are thousands of fan art works of internet memes, Spratt's paintings are original in that he has removed the characters from their ordinarily 2-dimensional state and given them a fleshy substance. Although each of the faces still stands alone, bereft of a body, the characters are complete.

Sam Spratt's art style uses a combination of messy brushwork and careful lighting to create the overall effect of a character suspended in endless space.

Above: Trollface in 3D. The troll face rage comics character is used to express delight or humor at someone else's misfortune, and is often used in forums, comics and .gif animations. See more trollface fan art works.

Above: LOL face. Rumor has it that the original lolface appeared in Garfield Christmas 1987.

Above: Me Gusta. The rage comics character is used to express a sickening enjoyment of disturbing media.

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Trollface gets Immortalized in Art

The Trollface (or Troll Face) character has its origins in a comic created by Deviant Art user Whynne in 2008. The original comic was intended to express how pointless trolling on 4chan was. Since its creation, the Trollface character has become an online meme, popping up in thousands of rage comics and fan art works.

Mona Lisa Troll Face

Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, the Mona Lisa, is a popular subject for character hybrids and parody art. In the picture below, the Mona Lisa gets trolled by the infamous meme, Trollface. Ordinarily Troll face is depicted in black and white, but the artist has used color in this Photoshop face swap to blend the two characters into one subject, the Trolla Lisa.

The Fine Art of Trolling

Artist Sam Spratt has PAINTED ALL THE MEMES! This fine arts graduate has created a series of paintings of internet memes and posted them online. One of the most appreciated paintings in the collections is the painting of Trollface. The character has been fleshed out, complete with wrinkles, shiny eyeballs and the hint of a tongue. This is most likely what Troll face would look like if he were real.

Trollface gives a Load of Lip

A photographed body art version of the famous meme, Troll face. The appeal of this photograph is that it doesn't use photo manipulation. Instead, this girl has used body paint to transform her own grin into that of Trollface. 

Trollface in his Troll Cave

In this meme fan art work, Troll face is depicted in his cave, trolling the internet with his troll laptop. The Trollface character is used on forums, in cartoons and in .gif animations to show that someone has been trolled, and is often added into videos at the moment where someone messes up.

Get Troll Faced on Halloween

Artist Psycho-Stress creates masks of popular memes, such as trollface, Me Gusta and Forever Alone for Halloween. The white plastic and black paint mimic the design of the original black and white Trollface sketch.

Troll Face looks like Robin Williams?

This artist's painting of the rage comic character depicts troll face as looking a little like actor/comedian Robin Williams. 

Photo Manipulated into Troll Face

For this artist, evolution was not happening fast enough, so he used Photoshop to turn this guy's face into a real life Trollface. For a bit of fun he's added a top hat, monocle and a pipe to create a steampunk affect.

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Internet Meme Graffiti

Internet memes are ideas or media that go viral online, inspiring thousands of fan art works in a short time. There is no way to force something to become a meme or to predict what image, video or social action will become a meme. 


Meme Street Art
Street artists often reflect internet-based ideas through their art, incorporating popular online phenomena into their street murals. Online games, popular videos and internet cartoons are moving from the intangible world of the internet to the physical canvas of the streets. These appear in the form of spray painted and stenciled images or printed stickers.

Above: The Forever Alone meme is based on a rage comic character, and is often used to express loneliness or unhappiness. For a humorous effect one of the words from the phrase "forever alone" is replaced with another word, eg forever a foam 

Above: Me Gusta, a spanish phrase that translates into English as "I like it" is associated with this rage comic face. Online, the Me Gusta face is used to express a perverse pleasure or the enjoyment of something disturbing or anti-social.

Above: This clever vandal has transformed a road sign into a parody of the popular image of an owl with the abbreviation "O rly?" The phrase is often used in online forums as a sarcastic response to a statement that is either blatantly true or implicitly false.

From the Internet to the Street
Many memes have a distinct character that doesn't change all that much, such as Lolcats' image of a cat riding an "invisible bike" and the character from challenge accepted. For other memes, the image changes and can be interpreted in hundreds of different ways, as with Nyan Cat and the Anonymous hacker group character.

Above: Lolcats famous Invisible Bike image has been recreated as an enormous graffiti mural, complete with, um, exhaust fumes.

Above: Challenge Accepted graffiti. This character is often depicted facing near impossible situations, and has become an online symbol for determination and stubbornness. 

Above: Anonymous, Nyan Cat and Lulzsec get together to become the main subjects for this meme graffiti art work. Two hacker groups and a rainbow-farting pop tart cat. Not even Salvador Dali could have imagined such a painting.

Above: Trollface, a linear drawing of a grinning face; presumably the face a person makes while trolling the internet. The trollface meme appears in videos, gifs moments after a person has been caught out, and on forums when someone reacts to a troll.

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