I would also like to discuss my "process" with anyone interested. It is obviously based in a lot of topics I have read in this forum, with a tweak or two. For this miniature I performed the following steps:
1) draw the front of the figure in a full A4 sheet with a mechanical pencil.
2) ink the figure with what is available. Usually a 0.4mm black ink pen but in this case a regular black ballpen.
3) draw the back of the figure by laying another sheet on top of the first one. I use cheap, thin paper that does not even require a light table
4) ink the figure back.
5) scan both sheets at 300dpi and import them as layers in Gimp.
6) take care of any misalignments between the layers (eventually re-scan.)
7) convert the image to pure black and white with a simple threshold operation and clear any specks.
8) scale the images down to around 75% and open them in Inkscape.
9) trace the bitmaps with the edge detection operator. This, combined with the scale reduction, makes the contour lines thicker and more uniform.
10) export the resulting images and open them again in Gimp.
11) add flat colors in one layer for the front and another for the back.
12) add shading in one layer for the front and another for the back, usually set to multiply.
-- at this point I have the final hi-res image, which is saved for future editing.
13) scale the image down to the final size -- in this case, 25mm from feet to eye level.
14) merge the flat colors and shading layers, adjust contrast and brightness as needed.
15) merge the contour layers with the color layers.
16) select the transparent background, invert and trace the selection to add black borders (2mm for the front, 3mm for the back.)
17) cut the figure at feet level to allow adding tabs.
18) export front and back to inkscape, add tabs and lay them out using the alignment tools.
-- export the result as PNG or PDF.
Any suggestions and criticism welcome.
