Diablo III Wizard - WIPs #2 & #3

I'm happy with the progress I've made on the wizard so far this week, with what little free time I've had. I decided that I didn't like her floor lamp staff; it looked too inadequate and unimpressive. Not "Blizzard" enough. So I made it into a dragon (or wyvern, depending on how much of a geek you are). I like how the staff gets cropped out of frame. Early critiques of this one commented that she was too close to the wall, and I think that's a fair point at this stage, but I think the following WIP fixes that quite a bit.

 Here I've just about finished the shading and texturing on the wizard and started to fill in tone and lighting detail in the background. It's still a long way off, but I think it's a lot closer. I added a foreground creature to balance the composition, and I'll add shading details and rim lighting to it, which will help draw the viewer's eye back to the bottom half of the composition. I also brought her left foot back, which makes the pose more energetic and dynamic.

My Flats channel.

I'm still ambivalent about the process of flatting. It's a common technique with coloring comic books. The idea is to separate areas of color using the lasso tool (anti-alias turned off) and paint bucket. It's a time consuming process but when it's done you have a channel or layer with which you can use the magic wand tool to make selections. This way, if you don't like the color of the pants or something, you can repaint it quickly using broad strokes that won't disturb adjacent areas. However, it does take time and I think it's probably better to not be so careful and just paint over stuff. if you have to repaint areas it makes it more interesting.