I am pretty sure I know how these were done. I hate to take the wow factor out of it for you guy, but here it goes.
Take any tiff, jpeg, bmp, or just about any other graphic file and place it in Illustrator. Select Live Trace, and set the options to use max colors and max definition, then apply. Illustrator does the magic, thats it!
Exactly! As cool as it is I just don't see why you would do anything like this unless you're making some kind of fantasy piece that can't be photographed. Hell, these folks are most likely working from a photo that is already created. DOH!Correct..all Illustrator files as I understand it. Not sure what the practical use may be, but still cool.