So now that I've reached the final stage, coloring, I guess I've got to bring the few people that follow this thread up to speed :p
So first I had to pick at all the excess lines. Removed all the "debris" left from drawing the thing, cleaned it up and made it look better. The outlines were still a bit messy around his ribs and arms, and his head.
More interestingly, I removed the entire back-piece. That stuff behind his head just looked silly.
This is where I changed the ribbons that hung from his staff and spaulders a bit (and even added two ripped ones to said shoulder guards). They now move along with the rest of what will be in the drawing (smoke, mainly!) on the "wind".
And here it is, the replacement for his "cloaky" head garment back neck thingy. (No idea what it's called!) Truth be told, it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do and I had tried a lot of things before I came up with this. It's got the same dragon on there as on his tabard. Consistency is paramount, apparently, when drawing, so I went for that logo.
The tabard got a small overhaul as well. Shading and added a "glimmer" effect to the buttons that have been attached to it.
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Below is the most interesting change: smoke.
As said before, this was hard. I had no idea how to go about this, and only discovered my method after trying hundreds of different methods. It was a complete accident-gone-good.
I started adding weird faces to the smoke, as well as strange objects and some bones and eyes. You'll see the full thing soon, I didn't want to give away too much. However, I'm so pleased with the result, that I had to show this as a seperate step!
After that, I re-did the "top bit" where the liquid turns into smoke. It's now a bit lighter, but mainly just a bit more detailed, and it looks a bit more convincing, in my humble opinion.
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The scythe got a revisit as well. I'm still not 100% happy with it, but it's close enough. I guess nothing can be absolutely perfect. It took me a while to figure out how to draw this too, though I knew what I wanted it to look like. The main issue was making it "fit the rest of the picture". I've got tons of ways to make metal look realistic in Photoshop, most of them made up by yours truly, but none of them seemed to fit the style of the rest of the drawing. I'll tell you that this is one of the hardest parts, even though I thought it would be the easiest.
Cliché!
As you can see here, I went back and did some shading on the shoulder guards and the piece of leathery skin/fabric on his waist. It didn't seem to fit the drawing, being way too light, so there it is
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The final touches were fun to do. I added some jewelry to the thing, you can see them below.
Sooo.........
What does it look altogether? I'll show you in a bit. Need to upload the pictures first :p
Oh and by the way; MY HAND HURTS LIKE HELL.
There. I said it.