These heads were actually quite a challenge. We had a pretty good idea what Rick was going for -- a "scientist" (Rick) in his "laboratory" (the drum kit). The problem is that, aside from actually setting up a photo-shoot of Rick in a lab somewhere, there aren't a lot of options to get what he was looking for.
What you see are actually two images spliced together. One, the photo of Rick, was taken outside the MD offices in New Jersey. The other, the background, is a stock image we purchased specifically for use on this head. The original photo of Rick was a bit small and rough around the edges, so we had to do quite a bit of work to lift it off the original background and make it smooth and usable for the head.
We thought it was very important to give the design the "natural" look of a researcher in a lab, but doing so created a pretty busy and confusing image. Our solution? Wash out the background image a bit by converting it to grayscale. This has the dual benefit of reducing the business of the image overall as well as producing an interesting visual effect with the color photo of Rick in the forefront.
