Fixated on the Not So Important: Choco Gurren Lagen

On the kick of redrawing my old art, I wanted to redo my deviantID for a while...it was pretty crappy:

I did this pretty quick and this was my working on inking drawings then scanning them--they always turn out all pixelated which looks bad. I believe the original drawing was way smaller than this so that's probably another reason. Anyways, there are tons of thing wrong with this so...let's just forget about it. Anyways, I made another sketch:

Trying to work with line thickness and depth...the right foot still looks too bold--I think I may thin out some edges laters. Anyways, I added color:

then shadows:

then highlights:

then light sources, the body shadow and an emblem (which I may dump laters):

Here are the photos I used for reference:

1) Sogeking (from One Piece series)

2) Kamina (from Toppa Gurren Lagann series)

I like the gradient deal w/ Kamina's background and but the gradient feature in Photoshop is limited and would make the chocobo look flat anyways. I may just do it by hand or find something else. My original idea was to have Choco Gurren Lagann outside with clouds like the Sogeking drawing above but honestly...I just forget, hah. I'll find something I'm happy with in time...I really need to get to The Weird Family Breakfast.

SIDE NOTE: My friend Tim suggested that I overlay a gradient. I tried it and it looks pretty cool. Still, I'm going to mess around with even more stuff to finalize this picture. Tim's deviantART page will be posted below and he's a talented artist who does commissions and stuff. Please give him money to draw stuff for you:

http://dra90nboi.deviantart.com/