Dragon Ball's Android 18 Sketch + Step by Step

Mel MIltopn advises to use reference, and it really makes sense. Not only will your sketches be better, but you will be adding new poses and ideas into that library of yours! So this is the first of hopefully a series of many to come. I started with one of my favorite characters from DBZ, Android 18! This image took me a bit less than an hour to complete from start to finish.

So first of all I gathered the reference I needed.
1) Clothing and design ref from the wiki

(http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130704202016/dragonball/it/images/e/eb/C-18.png)

2) Pose based on a drawing from the book Anime & Game Characters vol 4 :


3) I looked for an image I liked so I could try and replicate the style, in this case I picked the same colors. The original image is from (http://dribbble.com/shots/1230662-Android-18/attachments/165879) I believe the artist name is Jisoo Kim. LOVE THE IMAGE! :D

The process starts with a sketch, since the reference I was using was male I had to adjust the figure to a more female shape:

Tight Sketch on a second layer with clothes:

Clean up sketch on yet another layer:

I then did the flats based on the colors from the image I references above:

Applied some "color doge" on the edges as that is what the original artist might have done, I then added some extra shadow and the  pattern on the arms:

Finally Applied another layer on overlay to get an effect of light pouring in at some of the corners. Of course I really rushed through all those steps and I personally think it looked better at the color flats stage but it's fun to experiment!