My baby steps on a journey exploring a world in my head (personal comic book project)

I have started to develope a world/story back in my college years. Created pretty rough concepts for characters and environments... But all those things have been forgotten for a few years. Started my career in the game dev world and for a few years I didnt really touched any personal works at home.
But maybe a year ago I have found my old sketches under my bed and the whole thing came back in about a glimpse of the eye. New ideas, story pieces, characters, settings started to come up and my old personal project became my NEW project.

So I hope it will be entertaining for everybody to watch the process of creating this world existing in my mind.

This was the first "keyshot" I started to work on in this project. Before this I have made a bunch of character and scene sketces, but this was the first one that appeared really clear in my mind. And I think I found the style and the visual language .

1st step:
First I have made light pencil sketch and after that I've done a pretty simple lineart with ink.

01.jpg1080x1080 247 KB

2nd step:
Put in some details with ink and created the background/surrounding

02.jpg1080x1351 731 KB

3rd step:
Brought it into Photoshop and created a nice detailed B&W version

FirstStep01.jpg3200x4173 2.68 MB

4th step:
I was not so happy with the head design and the values blended together too much because of the details, so I made a few tweeks on the head and tried to create some kind of lighting to be able to focus on the craracter much more

FirstStep02.jpg3200x4173 2.59 MB

5th step:
I added the colors.

FirstStep03_.jpg2000x2608 1.22 MB

6th step:
I didn't like the outcome of the prev. step so I took a step back, deleted the colors and tried something else.
I used "gradient map" to create the colors, but before that I created a good color palette (just like Marc adviced in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EL-ySlQIZY&t=168s)

FirstStep05.jpg1500x1956 1.35 MB

7th step: Still working on it Maybe tomorrow I will be able to share with you guys the final piece

Thank you so much! I really appreciate your kind words I can not tell you how happy I am to hear I can give you something... knowledge and maybe even inspiration.
8 years ago I have started my career as an art teacher but I get into the game dev industry and I have stopped teaching. Dont get me wrong, I have always dreamed about working as a concept artist, but there is something unique in theaching... And I missed it a lot!
But now maybe I will be able to be a "teacher" again

And maybe you would like to check this out: https://forums.cubebrush.co/t/first-step-finished-illustration-for-my-personal-comic-book-project-in-the-work/5818

Thank you so much! It's good to hear you like it! Hope you will find entertaining my journey on this project