Because it was time…. For a splash of COLOR!

Great job, Buddy!

Yeah good job Buddy, you also beat me to it. Haha.

  Guess I shouldn't have gone riding.  I laid out the flats in Painter XI with the water color brush and as soon as I did that it was time to learn some tricks on me trusty BMX.

It was nice clean and clear lines so I was gonna paint it. Ah well, next time I guess.

Good stuff guys

Yeah, the color work on this is far better and far more elaborate than I'd been able to manage.

A little nit-pick: Tetsuko's eyes are bothering me a bit. Not because you've misinterpreted Chris's drawing, or even a fault in Chris's drawing; it looks like an example of something that works in a line drawing that doesn't necessarily work in color. It concerns the placement of the highlight; were I coloring it I think I'd have taken the liberty of moving the highlight jut a little, and giving her a little more pupil in the eyes

The anime art style is something that doesn't translate real well into 3D, I've discovered. Whenever I color more realistic anime characters, pretty much everything from the lower cheeks to the forehead are colored as if they're on a flat plane. Since anime facial features are so far removed from realistic facial anatomy, I've discovered that a lot of the detailed color work that works so well in Western comics are rarely applicable for Eastern ones.

To me, (and this is strictly from my perspective, and meant as a legitimate critique), the bridge of Tetsuko's nose is narrow enough to the point to where her eyes look too far apart; also consider that the eyes look a bit sunken into the skull wheras the anime art style makes them appear flat and flush with the cheeks.

This is never an easy sort of thing to color; I've never been able to figure out the best way to approach it, myself. This is the reason that you'll notice on pretty much every image of Sheeri(or any Urusai you can name, really), I never shade in the nosebridge (or 'muzzle' if you will) since I can never get it looking right.

I was thinking something like this.

Also I agree with Dr. Otto for the most part. It can be done and done well if the right person comes along, but at the same time it wasn't drawn with the intention of being rendered like that, that's why the mass majority of Manga that gets colored is still pretty simple. Almost like a ball for the nose. Check out Hyung Tae Kim.