Put your page on another page or card so as to not leak through, I've had a few cleaning issues because I failed to note how thin the paper is...and how thick the ink can be.

Basically all you do is ink the outline of your character, spend time on it, make it clean as possible (or hashed depending on your style once again, and really get into the characters art. Your whole characters' end result starts from here, so you might as well get it right now, saves you editing, cleaning and fixing the thing up heaps later on.

Inking is something that needs practice, just like everything else. I find a varied line is good for character, it adds vibrancy. Although I'm always paranoid about overdoing it. I recommend overdoing it sometimes on a test character, sometimes if you go overboard on something you get even more impressive results.You may have seen other works that you find suit your purposes better. Once again research styles and material. Emulate, and build on that information.

Once you have inked your character to suit your purposes you can erase the former sketch so you can scan your work, if you worked lightly initially you will find there is less to clean up. Sometimes this is inevitable though and it's just a case of cleaning it up on the computer.

Scan your image at a reasonable size, 600dpi is a good start on grayscale settings. We do it so high so we can create the piece large, and then scale down at the end. You then have the ability to have it at a reasonable resolution no matter what application later on if need be. You can never scale it up either (without losing quality anyway) so it's wise to be safe from the start. It will also allow you to work on extremely high detail that will be super cool extremely high detail when scaled down.

Once your character is in (for my character I will be using photoshop 7, although you can use whatever image manipulation tool you want) you can clean up the image to your satisfaction. The main tools I use here are erase, smudge and even the clone tool if I need to keep some texture you have created.

You may need to play with the levels to bring out the quality of greys better. Use Image | Mode | Levels in order to do so and make your main line work how you see fit to continue on with colour. Using the White level and Black level is also a good way to do it as it. They tell the image where the 'White' is and reflects that change. Simply select the white level and click on the whitest part of the image, or vice versa for the black. Play around until you get a good result. If you use this method I recommend keeping it to greys (if you were using this in another coloured image for example) especially with midtone as you get some rather odd effects otherwise).

Convert the mode of the image from Greyscale to RGB.This can be found in Image | Mode.

Select the linework layer and name it 'Artwork' (or whatever befits your mood at the time) and set that layers properties from 'Normal' to 'Multiply'. What this does is makes the black solid and white see through with everything in between. Very handy to colour between the lines, as the between now falls behind. Also, Lock the layer so that you cannot edit it. This is very important as it gets very frustrating when you find you have painted onto the wrong layer later on.

Make a new layer BELOW that initial layer, and this is to be your main colour layer (it is always possible to separate all your different colours to different layers. Once again it's a matter of preference. For this tutorial though I'm keeping to the one. Label this new layer 'Base Colour' or something to that effect.

The colour layer has all the base colour information. For example, if you character had no light or shadows whatsoever, this would be the colour that you would be putting here. We can of course edit the colours later (darker / lighter as we see fit) but this will be a good indication of if your characters colours work on the whole.

A good palette is hard to find, work on colours you find that work and save them in your own personal swatch. Look on the net for colours you like, look through pantone colours, colour pick them off photos, you name it. The source is quite large in finding the colours for your characters.

My character, of course, is dark due to his clothing. The mechanical arm is a mix of steam engine tech that is 'inspired' by the Steampunk comic. So a bit of junky, dirty tech is needed for that. Skin, on the other hand, is a whole new kettle of fish, and needs some good colours to make that right. Once again, source that from other reference. And the best reference is skin, of course, so photos are good.

The end result is as follows. You could, of course stop there, it looks pretty cool. You've coloured between the lines like all good children should...but you can ALWAYS do better...so here we go.

Add another layer above that, this will be the 'Shadow' layer, so name it as such. Make this layer an 'Overlay' layer (although some of the other effects work well too. Multiply, for example, makes the transition between colour and shadows much cleaner.) and pull out a paintbrush or airbrush tool. Keep it at a reasonable size, lower the opacity to 10% to 25% so we can build up our shadows rather than overwhelm the image with it and start applying the brush to areas of where there is most shadow.

I also use the smudge tool to smudge the edges of a brush along a path to fade it out rather than have highlights always end with circles. I also use the selection tools to good advantage to partition off areas that I am working on. By using the Artwork layer and the magic wand tool, select an area and then use Select | Modify | Expand to selct areas as needed. This will keep the areas you shade under the lines (make sure to select your shadows layer though after selecting). For more information on paths and selections, click Here.

Now the thing you need to consider here is light sources. Make sure all your shadows are there for the right reasons and keep them all correct accordingly. There is nothing worse (well there is, but we won't go into that) than an image with ONE light source, and 10 shadow directions. Looks weird and doesn't come across well. So always keep in mind the direction of your light source.

A good understanding of virtual space and lighting comes in handy here too. It allows you to pre-visualise the virtual space and what the light should be doing. Things get really interesting when you start adding multiple light sources, and then those with different coloured light. This is something you do to create mood and effect and can go a long way in creating a pictures atmosphere.

After you get the basics of your shadows down (just keep practicing till you get it right!) then you are ready to add the highlights / lighting. Depending on the end result you are going for you may need more than one layer of lighting, in my case I only have the one, and it's a basic light. So I add another layer above my 'Shadows' layer and call it 'Highlights' and make it a 'Screen' effect layer. This is similar to 'multiply' in that it makes white solid and black see through. Another thing you can do is to set the layer to have a 'Colour Overlay' blending effect (yet still paint with white). What this does is give your highlights a hint of colour, as there is rarely any light that gives off a pure white light. It also improves the work in that it doesn't look so flat. For mine I made the overlay a blue.

Once again this is a case of knowing where light is to fall on your character. Build up where the highlights of your character should be using the paintbrush / airbrush tools. I also use the smudge tool to smudge the edges of a brush here as well. My characters highlights aren't that obvious, this is due to the fact he is a mostly dark character. Looking closely on the coat and metal you will find there is indeed a more lighter area than previously.

After the basics of Shadows and Highlights, I added detail either just by drawing it in or using the many tools of photoshop to create a particular effect. This can be the most time consuming process, depending on how good you want the end result to be. Generally the more detailed the better your result will be, but this is not always the case. In this case I didn't feel like going too far into it ( as yet anyway, as I want to get to the 3D stuff now! ) so I focused on the hair, the ball of flame and other small things to get it to a level of completeness that I am happy with to produce the final result.

The following links include tutorials I have made (or other peoples) that have good detail tutorials on photoshop skills if you really want to get into it.

http://www.phong.com/tutorials/
http://www.designsbymark.com/pstips/index.html
http://www.shadowness.com/tutorial.php

I do intend on going over the image once more later on after I get further into the 3D. Things to note would be the shadows that the flame would be giving off (a second light source), more detail and generally COOL things. So stay tuned for that.

There's not much more I can tell you in this regard as it's more a visual learning guide than not. So look at the steps involved and the works relating to them and see if you can develop your own methods of creating the work of art you want. Oh, and have I said practice?! :)

Every journey starts with the first step, as they say. So make sure you have a good set of shoes and a walkman.