I needed some characters for a Pick Bonus in my Russian-themed game.   I decided on doing my interpretation of 19th Century Russian General portraits.  There are a TON of them.   I loved all of em because those guys were over-the-top blinged out.   They were Gangsta (of their day).

So basing my initial concept sketch very loosely on this guy....

..... I began.

These were the final sketches I choose....

I brought these into Adobe Illustrator.   The first stages looked like this....

I love working like this because AI is scalable.   You don't have to worry about textures, resolution, blah, blah.

THIS is the final "General".  In AI.   Granted there are some things now that I would change, but....whaddaya gonna do?   We hafta work fast  and meet deadlines.   So asking myself "will this guy work at this point?" -- and answering: "Yes" -- we pressed on.

This is the final iteration (just for fun).....