@Mesotronik - That looks like an awesome book. You've given me an absurd amount of reading material lately though, haha...
@Sundog - Yeah I do everything in GIMP. Sure its a pain to load, but it really pays off once you get past the steep learning curve.
1. I mostly meant the white overlay that makes the metal armor shiny. They're expertly done, but slightly too bright. If you have those highlights in a layer by themselves, you can just turn down the layer opacity. You could alternatively do a levels adjustment so they aren't quite so bright.
2. & 3. Yeah it took me awhile to figure the brush trick out. If you turn down the line opacity or otherwise make them closer to the armor color, the fact that the lines were done with the pencil will barely be noticeable at all (you can probably avoid redoing them that way).
4. All of the lighting fx for my ships is just me airbrushing white (for highlights), black (for shadows), or colors (when the lighting on the ship illuminates nearby stuff) onto the sprite with the layer mode set to "soft light." The actual lights themselves are just done with the brush.
Worked on the portrait a bit more. There was an issue with the nose that made the whole face look crooked. Fixed now (mostly
).
Here's how it will look ingame: