Lines: [link]
Colours: Me [link]

From left to right and top to bottom:

1. Original lines

2. Butchered lines
Here I cut the majority of the solid black "inked" areas out of the original lines so that I can colour and light the scene in my own way. I wouldn't do this to everyone's lines though. Some people are precious about things like that

3. Flats
I always choose muted tones for my flats (even for this primary colour clad character) because they're just the base colour. If the base colour was really vibrant it'd burn your retina when the shading was done.

4. Shading
I use four colours (two for shadows and two for highlights) to shade with. These are applied with soft round brushes at a really low opacity (like 8-12%) so I can have full control and build up the shadows and highlights gradually.

5. Coloured lines
For me this ties the lines to the colours. But it can be a real pain to do with complicated lines.

6. Gradient BG
I often start my backgrounds with either a gradient or solid colour. This way I can see if it clashes with the figure or not and adjust it easier than if it was a complete background.

7. Stars BG
Obviously this step is only for this image. I kind of made this background up as I went, which is not like me at all. I usually have a pretty good idea what I want by the time I've finished the flats.

8. Soft highlights
Unlike my other shading, these go on top of the lines. It's another way to tie the lines and the colours together. Plus it also makes the subject pop.

9. Final tweak and effects
Lots of little things here just to finish the image off. I don't really have a set formula for this stage of the process. I just gauge each image individually.

For this one I wanted to anchor the subject to the image instead of have him float in the background. So I added a black gradient on top of the star field at his feet and vertically flipped sections of the subject to create the reflections.

I added a colour coded glow around him because...well, to be honest I'd just watched Finding Nemo and I loved the look of it (next time you watch it, check out the glow surrounding the characters, subtle yet beautiful).

The rest is really just minor colour and contrast tweaks and highlight blooms.