Now that's quality work. Start with a high-res image, but be careful not to push those warping filters too much. Pixels will turn to mush if they are magnified too much. (Note the blurriness over the stitches.) One way to hold off that mush effect a little bit is to apply the warp filter twice at half the intended amount. Since the first pass interpolates new pixels, the second pass has something more substantial to work on. It's not perfect, but it helps.
I like the subtle gloss effect added over the warped areas, and the noise added to the tank makes it look less computer generated. Very nice.
Anyone know the name of the artist for this one?
I'm actually the original artist who posted that and several others on InflateChan a long time ago (I've been a long time lurker here as well). I uploaded two other images that were done using the same technique to this website under "wetsuit inflation" (same chick, differnet suits + a beach background). I was a bit surprised to see other folks post my earlier experiments that I'd posted to InflateChan thinking nobody would care.
I never did get around to doing anymore then what you see on this website (the two wetsuit ones were the last images I ever made). Finding high-res source material for this kind of thing is next to impossible, I only ever did manage to track down 4 or 5 separate images that were suitable for this kind of thing.
These weren't 2D morphs, there's no warping filters involved. They were a silly experiment into "3D" morphing- the original texture was projected onto a subdivided plane (think of it as a giant stretchy flat cloth), and then sculpted accordingly (so you can think of that as shaped objects being placed under the stretchy flat cloth, causing it to bend and warp in the ways I wanted it to). Afterwards some reflection textures were painted up and the whole thing was re-lit in a 3D environment, the tank prop was added, and the entire setup was rendered out to the image you see above. The others that I uploaded were basically the same thing, except they had a beach backdrop and some cheesy shadows underneath everything.
Sorry that there isn't more. I could never find decent material, apart from a few ancient (circa 2007) product shots which is what I based my original images off of.