No matter how you got to this point, rather traditionally painting and scanning your page in or doing it full in the computer, you're on the home stretch. You can now determine the final things that need to be done, and look for areas that feel uneasy to you or like they're lacking something. This is also the point where you would want to add those extra effects that finish everything off.

We're going to need to add those extra things that you need to accent the base images. How much you have to do in this step depends on your scene. Sometimes you don't need to add anything. Most of the time, you'll be painting parts like fire, light, energy, or blood here. If you don't have such elements, you probably won't be doing this part.

You may have already done the effects if you use the painting method comics like Gone with the Blastwave focus on. In the case of comics that use methods to paint such as mine, you're likely going to want to wait until the end. It's best to help blend with the rest of your picture and figure out a balance. An great example of adding effects is page 44 of my comic.

Blood
Creating extra effects like blood is as simple as making a new layer (Keep it above your color layer.) and painting the extra bits on there.

It's best to use a brush with a hardness of 0. You can also choose to turn the opacity of the brush down to paint more gradual blood effects. This may come down to preference, so try both ways.

You want to paint from the back. Start with a dark red to paint the shape of the blood.

Now put some lighter red and touch-up over the original to bring it out and make highlights.

Using opacity to make some lighter touches can add the effect of dried residue easier.

Energy
While not utterly complex, to some people the concept of energy is hard to draw accurate. The basic design is simple though. White on yellow.

You want to work with a soft brush. 0 hardness may be the best, but you may want to adjust it if you don't like the way the effect looks. You'll paint out the color in yellow.

Don't forget to change the opacity to suit your needs. If you want something solid you can leave the opacity alone, or if you're going for a light touch you can always change it down on this step.

Now we're going to add some white over the yellow. You're probably going to want at least a little transparency here, so try it with 50% opacity. You can play around to figure out what you like. Blend to the edges, leave a yellow glow and you're done!

You can do this with other colors substituted instead of yellow for other effects. You can substitute out for the white to make it a little less bright of a color too. Just remember most energies will use white if they're meant to represent actual visible energy or electricty, as it is is resinating actual physical light.

You might also check out a friend of mine's tutorial here. It shows a different approach to the same concept. You never know which you'll prefer.

Your characters may look great, and your shading may be awesome, but where is your character at? He/she has to be somewhere unless he's standing in a negative void. Sometimes just shading your characters to sit in the scene isn't convincing. They can still look super-imposed in the picture. This is common when the lighting is extreme in the scene, such as a sunset or when the character is holding a light or something. It can also happen when the character is in shadow.

Intense Light
We need to blend the characters into the background with a simple bit of color. Basically, whatever color is being emitted is going to be cast on your character.

You can do something simply by taking a brush set to 0 hardness and a very light opacity such as 10%. You'll be using the same color as your intense light.

Now we just gradually blend some tones on the areas of the character facing the light. This may come down to an artistic judgement/style on how much to use. Working over the same area several times, causing some blending out of the light.

Blending Into the Shadows
Simply put, characters in the dark often look weird if they are bright despite the surroundings being completely shadowed. We can fix this very easily.

We just use the gradient tool on a new layer above the character. Set it up so that it's going from the dark color of your background into a transparency.

You can use the selection tools to choose the area you want the gradient to be confined to.

Then click-drag on the image to add the gradient.

If it's too dark you can adjust the opacity and do multiple passes. Also, you can change the overall opacity of the layer to get the perfect blend you want.

There's plenty more that can always be done, and depending on what you do in your comics, you can choose other effects to add on. Be creative and experiement. Use real-world examples to figure out how certain objects/materials react. You'll be please with the end result.

Eyes
One thing that you can do at this point if you didn't before is add some blending in the eyes to make them more soft looking. Eyes are one of the most important parts of a person. They tell a lot about someone.

Using a brush with 0 hardness and 20-50% opacity seems to produce good results. Simply grab the color in the eye and blend it into the darks and lights, as well as vice-versa.

Well, thanks for sticking with me through this guide. I hope it helps anyone who reads it at least a little. I'll try and add things to the guide in the future, such as specific "how to"s to actual elements like drawing clouds or even how best to study to improve if I get time. If you see things that you would like to add or comment on, you can always contact me via e-mail at adyonf@gmail.com.

Don't ever forget that art is always about creativity. You have to experiment and find your own style, preferences, and ways of doing things. Never get stuck thinking your way is the only way. I wish everyone the best luck with improving their own skills!