Making poster and blending photos

I can't have enough of graphics so here are my problems:

I'm trying to imitate the poster graphics in starwars.com
1. how do I make photos look like posters or paintings or airbrushed graphics ?

2. I have my son's photo and I want to put it in a poster of Yoda holding a green light saber:
a-how do I blend the picture seamlessly with the same coloring or ambience (wish you can add shadowing, too)
b-how do I create the green cast from the light saber on my son's face

eager to see your tut on this and you make lots of fathers and sons happy with this tut.

Thanx,
ArtN

Glad to hear of the fun you're having!
Your first question: I assume you're talking about the poster art by Drew Struzan. He's got a great style and I'd love to know exactly what he does. His work is obviously heavily reliant on the photographic image. Back in 1999, I was toying with a project where I was doing exactly what you're talking about- trying to add images into the Phantom Menace poster- and mimic the artistic style. I had some good luck- and maybe I'll resurrect this for a tutorial soon- but all I can remember now was that I used a combination of filters. You'll have to try out a few combos, but I can tell you I think they were all in the Brush Strokes and Artistic sub-menus.
Second question: This is easy. Take a look at the 1st image in my tutorial,
Creating Complex Reflections:
http://www.teamphotoshop.com/photoshop/tutorials/techniques/reflection/jreflect.php
See that green glow on the side of my head? It looks like the Light Saber is causing that. Here's one way to do it:
Make a selection of the head. Create a new layer. Pick the "glow color" you want and make it your foreground color (in that case it was lightsaber green) and use the linear gradient tool (set the gradient to Foreground to Transparent). Click and drag to make a gradient over the area you want the glow. Then lower the Opacity of that gradient layer until it blends in nicely with the photo on the layer underneath, and looks like a glow. You might also try changing the Blend Mode of the gradient layer.