SaiyukiGaiden colo 'Next time'

[EDIT 09/18/10]
After some very helpful person pointed out to me that I had failed to notice that Konzen still had some part of his glove left on his arm, I decided to correct that. However this happened to be a much harder task than I thought it would, and I ended up digging out the original lineart; and started redoing the colo on top of the old one. I was like “Oh my God, this is SO messy, how could I have EVER released such a rushed colo, I so need to do justice to this epic moment” and eventually changed a LOT of things. I also changed the greenish heaven's background (since another helpful commenter said to me it was an odd color here) for a very angsty, very dark one... AND purple (this was not because I'm so fond of purple that I put it everywhere in my colos, no; who said that?? è_é), and that was because this is Konzen's scene. And Konzen's color, as Sanzo will be, must be purple. Konzen FTW.
I got all teary working on that pic again. Sad me. Poor me.
Anyway, to allow people to compare and also for the people who might like better the older version, you can still find it and download it right here: [link]
Although I'm not sure if anyone will like the angsty background, this version is however IMO much cleaner & much more expressive. Besides, technically, I've learnt a lot in the meantime. But you're free to like the older one better! Please comment


*****


[Konzen] “—Next time, I promise…I…I’ll be the one to reach for you.
’ll definitely reach for you.”




Saiyuki Gaiden Colo from Vol. 4, chapter 33, page 37

It seems to me that Minekura has tried to make a lighting effect in this drawing, because of how unusual the shadows are. She decided to keep one thin outline of non-grey, whereas usually it's more like scattered shadows that follow the curves of the characters, and so on. To me, it seemed as if there was light coming from behind those guys. I tried to keep that in my coloring.

Lineart and character © Minekura Kazuya
(Saiyuki Gaiden)
Colors mine