some process

The comics in the previous post were made over a week ago, however I wanted to wait to post them so I could put up all of the Dragon Age II stuff together. This took longer than I thought though because the piece here took so very much work. I was working not only entirely on the computer, something I am not used to and which makes me more prone to want everything to look perfect, but I was also working in a colouring style I had never before tried.
I will now outline my frustrating, but ultimately successful journey of trying to draw a nice picture of my Dragon Age II party:

Alright so to start off I do a very quick sketch just to get the composition, the positions and poses of the characters. I was trying to get a kind of "V" composition going on with Hawkes Greatsword and Avelines sword and shield.

After the sketch I draw the lineart, and then redraw the lineart, and then redraw it again until I reach a point where I'm satisfied with it. I've added in Merrill's staff as well as made Varric a bit shorter (he is a dwarf after all). 

Now that the lines are done I do the shading in a nice, warm tone, adding detail and depth with the burn tool.

This is where I waded into unfamiliar territory: Going section by section I lay down ares of flat colour, then, like the shading layer, I go over it with the burn and dodge tool to add depth and highlights. It was at this point that I realized the afternoon I spent on the shading was made completely redundant.

Anyway I deleted the shading and carried forwards with the burn/dodge tool, then I made Merrill a bit smaller in the background, added in some minor details to Bianca, Hawkes sword and Merrills chain mail, then made the whole thing a bit taller, slapped on a background and, in the immortal words of Neil Buchanan, when you're done, you should get something that looks like this:

Reasonably happy with how it turned out.