CG work: Sophia General

Here's a character Illustration plus some steps on CG coloring and rendering, Manga style.
Sophia General, yup thats her name!

DRAWING
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Draw and scan you're work and start cleaning it by using Brightness/Contrast. For more detailed cleaning, instead of using the eraser tool use the brush tool and pick color white.
Using Multiply makes bright[White] colors transparent while dark[Black] colors makes visible or solid on that color. So thats why we use brush tool and the color white. And a little use of pen tool helps a lot for more detailed cleaning.

COLORING
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Now we color the work. Create a new layer and drag it under the multiplied layer. I use brush and smudge tool here.

More coloring info [link]
Thanks to

FINAL RENDER
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-For color lighting, I use Photofilter.
-Filters gaussian blurr and Paint dubs.

Other Fun effects, Create another layer on TOP of the work and Pick the paint bucket tool and make sure the color pickers are in Gray and Black. Pick the gray color and go to filters>render>Fibers... then use overlay or softlight etc on color blend. You can rotate it if you want like the one of my work, Oh yeah, try to lessen the Opacity too. Pen tool or Magic wand and erase too fix it.

MERGE AND GROUP
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Merging and Grouping are one of the best ways for managing layers. Merging layers makes two layers merge into 1 hence the word merge. But make sure that the layer under has no blending effects.

Layer1- Normal
Layer2-Multiply

If you merge it with the effect result will be multiply on the combined layer. Same if you do vice versa.

Layer 1- Multiply
Layer 2- Normal

So here's a tech if you want to merge it without having effects on other layers. Use Group! Select 2 or more layers you want while holding SHIFT, one youre done CTRL+ G to group it THEN right click that group layer and select merge layers. In that way you can merge layers without having effects on any layers. Like the ones you see on my work on the top.

Sample
-Layer1 multiply
-layer 2 normal
-layer 3 normal and so on...
-Then Group it and select merge group.
The shortcut key for merge is CTRL+E
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Hope you like it.
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS2

The final work is here>[link]

For more questions just ask. I'll try to answer as I can within my knowledge.

NOTE: On Brush tool, Smudge tool and Eraser Tool, I use the soft brush option. On the Eraser tool have a 40% opacity for more softer coloring effects