I felt that because I've learned so much from being here and watching so much great art in the last two years, i'd share my experiences with you guys.

1. the pencils

2. the inks (this layer is at the top set in Multiply)

3. I added a layer of green under the inks, started erasing where I felt the most light would hit Cobra Commander (CC) and slid the opacity to 65% and used a Multiply setting

4. I then put a layer above it and laid out the flats at 100 % opacity and actually had a screen capture from the cartoon on adultswim.com and used the eye drop tool to get the specific colors I wanted.

5. I added highlights on a layer above the flats set to Lighten @ 100%. it seemed to still let the original colors shine through while making the colors on that layer a bit vibrant (I may be wrong but thats what I think it did)

6. Here is another layer above the highlights and everything else that I added some red tones that I felt would be present in the lighting I'd later show

7. New layer, set to multiply @ 100% where I selected the snake emblem, used some brushes to add some textures and then once I was satisfied with that, I darkened the background with some red tones. No need to lower the opacity here, the Multiply helps to make sure what's underneath is seen.....

8. Here on a new layer I selected the Commander and actually set the later to Multiply but at 40%. With the Snake, it is suppose to be like a stature of some sort, so the textures coming through hard is good for that weighty feel. On the Commanders clothes and mask, hard textures would take away from it's softness in the cloth and would take away from the Masks nature metalic sheen, so I left the opacity low.

9. New layer, multiply @ 25%. If you look all the way at the bottom, I show how i fill an area or the whole piece and then take away, or erase, what i feel isn't necessary. So here I filled the piece with black, lower the opacity so I could see the work I've done, and started erasing. I made sure the areas that would get the least light had the darker tone in it and then played with the opacity til I felt comfortable with the results.

9. Same thing here as #9, but I did this with brushes instead of a fill. Once I felt that the brushes left the right mark, I decided i was basically done... but i needed one more thing and that was....

10. Background layer. This layer is behind everything so that it doesn't interfere with anything and helps establish the type of environment the commander may be in .....

I wish I had time to break the image down even more like I did in the bottom area of this tutorial, but hopefully this helps those of you who it can help.

For those of you who find anything here that I could do differently or more efficiently, I would love to hear it=] it can only make me better=] thanks guys=]