Redesigning Vodyanoy - how I work|Extended Practice

After talk with Mike and presentation-crit I've decided to go back to Vodyanoy. The reason for that was simple - initial designs were done very early, when I didn;t had any clear idea of where this project was heading. Since I've established overall look and style there was no other solution that reworking my water deamon character.
This post is just to show workflow I used for this task. First, rough sketches weren't a complete waste of time as I found some things that can work even with the new style. For example I'm going to keep his tear drop body shape, which indicates a habitat this creature lives in (water). Also facial explorations came in handy - I had a lot of different head shapes to play with!
In case of my puppets I followed simple few steps, so here is a little breakdown of how to create a animation ready character in this particular style:

1. Design part: draw a rough half of the character (as they'll be shown only from the front), copy and mirror-it to create a whole silhouette;
2. If there are any things that still needs changing - change them now, if not...
3. Start on the outline! However keep in mind that each element needs to be kept on separate layer, so it can be animated, for example layers can be made for: head, eyes, neck, torso, arm, leg, knee, etc.
4. Arm and leg parts can be done only for one side of the body and then copied and mirrored;
5. Fill-in each element with flat colour, still keeping layers separeted;
6. Using textured brush shade each part of the body;
7. Add little details;
8. Add pins to each part of the body, merge together lineart and colour layer for each element (e.g. head lines and head colour);
9. Done! Import to After Effects and have fun!

I used this process for all the front views and saved a lot of time thanks to coping and mirroring some of the parts (e.g. arms, legs).