i resise to 200%, do the skin, take the shots and then resize it back to 100% and save the .blp. so the shots are actually kind of a cheat to see more detail. but i always check the 100% versions and the loss of detail is so minute you wont notice it ingame ^ ^'', its just nice if you can present your skin in a higher quality picture, so everyone can see the full effort you put into it.
its no big deal, as i said before, the loss of detail is so small you wont notice it ingame. at all.
as for the caveties in his skull... meybe he does have a skull deformation who knows... it does make him that little more badass. though i did my best to make him a little friendlyer looking then the original skin ^ ^.
another goal was, to make him look a little more unique, especially the head, who looked too much like the original mortar head...