Murderin'Koala steps

I was bored a few days ago (before some deadlines came in and disturbed my laziness-zen), and decided to start doodling this image I had in my noggin'.

AND since some of you have been kind enough to ask about 'process' stuff, I figured I might as well use this one and save the steps as I went on.

1. doodle out the idea, come up with the big-shapes, general placement of stuff, screw the details, they don't matter at this point.

2. I could have gone straight to pure color and done this 'painterly', but since my first love was comics, I can't help myself and ink this 'comic book style'! ...here I define the details... generic textures, gadgets, etc.... these are digital inks by the way.

3. I didn't want to overwork this piece, so I rough in my values (shadows vs. light), and I keep it simple and don't use more than two tones for the shadow-side... and I colorize it blue because shadows tend to be blue or blue-ish during the day, and blue shadows are pretty flexible (I like purlple-ish shadows as well, but that tends to be more of a sunset-shadow color)

4. I flat the mofo' (on a separate layer, knowing I want this to be a sunset kinda scene), and I place my shadows above the flats and set the shadow layer to 'multiply', and THIS is about 90% of the work!

5. I render my 'rimlight' highlights on the figures from the strong light-source behind them (I like to use a 'screen' layer and then I use my light-source color and start rendering away)... I throw in a 'rippling' sun back there, AND last, using my favorite ANIME -technique, I push the background back with a color layer to create a bit more depth (forget the exact layer setting, it changes depending on what I want) .....in hindsight, I should have rendered that kid's booger more.... it's the most important part of the illustration after all!

... there's really no way to 'cheat' inks (not this open style anyway), so there's no shortcuts one can take there... that probably took me an hour and a half more or less? BUT I love this kind of coloring because it goes pretty fast, so it took me about one hour to do the color-rendering? so overall, it took me about three hours or so from start to finish....

There's a GAZILLION ways of doing the same thing in Photoshop, this is one I've used 'cause it's deadline-friendly, and very easy to make changes (if stuff is kept on separate layers), so I hope this helps some of you!