Progress pic #2 - Instead of trying to do something that feels weird and difficult, I went with my gut and made him into a toon wolf :P Added more BG things and toys ^^.
Progress pic #3 - Fine-lined the foxy and made him less sketchy.
Progress pic #4 - Laid down a "cool and warm" base for shadows and light sources here using complimentary colors.
Progress pic #5 - Threw in some violet purpley hues in places to break up the monotony of blue everywhere. Also used it to fill in a bit of color for things that might need it later.
Progress pic #6 - Now I'm starting to fill in more of the 'actual' colors for the fox, mostly to get an idea of what a brown or reddish brown would look like as an experiment.
Progress pic #7 - Filled in colors for the wolf and several background objects, keeping it light to let some of that "cool colored" background help with the shadow areas.
Progress pic #8 - Experimented with some more pastel colors and really happy with how it's looking so far :)
Progress pic #9 - Used a black overlay mode layer over those light pastels, and it made all nicely saturated and darker.
Progress pic #10 - Gett'n to the nitty gritty part now - paint'n! Thanks to \r\n\t\t\t\t\t
| \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twizardofwtf\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Progress pic #10 - Here's a shot of the painting about 75% done. Most of the characters are painted in completely, but I turned on the sketch layer here to show how it was being followed. I kept that sketch layer on quite a lot while painting. At least until I had a better idea of what I was going to do with a particular part.
Completed image here:
| \r\n\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t |