Wow, its really dark and hard to see, but you are right that is Shinji the Vizard. That is just weird. But I have a feeling that Tite did not actually have him planned out, at least in that much detail. He was probably drawing up character designs for all of the ones that he knew that he needed. What Shinji looks like now is probably one of the many that he came up with in the course of preparation. The face probably did not have a name or story behind it for a while.

He probably knew that he was going to be making the Arrancar Arc since the beginning, but I doubt that he had all of the characters planned out in that detail from the beginning. It is possible that he did, but its highly unlikely. Most writers know where they are going even from the start, but they do not have all of the details until they get to the point and close to it.

I would be very amazed that he had 50 some odd story characters that well planned out from the on set. He had to create a ton of Shinigami first for the Soul Society Arc before even thinking that hard about the Arrancar and the 20 or 30 characters that were added just for that arc alone.

But on the subject of the manga, it is interesting seeing the popularity contest. Naturally, Ichigo and Rukia are number one and two, followed by Renji. But curiously Hanataro was in the top ten along with Byakuya, Hitsugaya and Uryu. Kon got knocked out of the ten top according to him Hanataro kicked him out, even though Hanataro was seventh and Hitsugaya was eighth and Byakuya was tenth. But hey, they're captains you don't argue with captains. This was the second popularity contest, by the way. I don't remember the first one too well other than Ichigo and most of the High School cast was in it. But not nearly as many characters were introduced at that point. By the time that the second came out Hanataro was and huge focus and strangely enough Hitsugaya had barely a few lines but grabbed eighth. I guess that has to say something about his stage presence. Oh right, Momo fell into ninth, but she was featured more due to Aizen and his death. Strangely enough Orihime and Chad were in at twelfth and fourteenth, but they were both reduced in appearances. Though Chad had a big scene with his fight with Captain Kyoraku. It was pretty interesting though to see who was popular.