Mecha Drawing Step-By-Step

Hi all. I made this drawing a couple of weeks ago and thought you might like to see the incremental stages of the drawing. I took photos with my digital camera as I went along. using the camera is faster than using my scanner and it seems to pick up some of the more subtle colors better than my cheap A3 scanner. (Most A3 scanners cost$1200-$2500!!! but mine only cost about $200)

I decided to do a more traditional "Transformers" style mech this time around. This mech can turn into a car.

1) Rough sketch. I used a blue colored pencil to make a rough under drawing. Blue pencil does not pick up on photocopiers and scanners if you tweak the contrast/brightness settings just right. I added a little dude to the mech's shoulder to add some interest.
2) Inking. I decided to try inking with one of my new Japanese brush pens and it really worked great. I'm left handed so I ink from right to left to avoid smearing the ink.
3) Stupid Humans! Arrrrrgh! I realized that the guy I drew on the mech's shoulder was waaaayyyy out of scale so I enlarged him as much as I could without using any white-out. I think I got the proportions a little weird... people are hard!
4) Inking finished. Finally! This took a while to draw and I'm glad it is done. I couldn't figure out what to do with the lower legs so I just stopped drawing at the knees. I tried to lighten the blue pencil as much as possible with an eraser but I couldn't get it light enough without erasing some of the ink too. The blue pencil could muddle the markers when I color the mech so I decided to make a copy and color the copy. I set the coppier contrast to a higher setting and it dropped out the lighter values of the blue pencil so I had a nice, clean drawing to color.
5) Basic coloring. I didn't have a lot of time so I only colored the guy and some of the translucent bits. Hopefully I'll have time to finish it in a couple of weeks. I still haven't decided what color to make the mech, but I'm leaning towards red.
6) Detail. Here's a detailed shot of the upper torso. You can get a better idea of the subtle color overlays I used- see the faint blue in the face visor? The guys pants color was made by layering a brighter blue and a cool gray.Well, that's all for now. I'll post the color version if I ever get around to finishing it!!!