Final render.

a couple of Ideas that led to dead ends. There were a lot of sketches.

I ended up trying to use blender for reference in the pose. The model is "BlenRig 4.01 - NickZ" by jpbouza, really useful.

I made some anatomy errors in the figure because I accidentally moved the view in blender without realizing half way trough, luckily it wasn't that hard to correct most of it.

Worked over the figure.
I tried to bring some berserk vibes into the armor but tried to keep it close to the original design.

Flowing capes are cool.

Some base color and background, this is done in the layer beneath the line-work.

Started to work over the line-work, I usually merge everything into a single layer, and generally only use the normal blending mode and sometimes overlay for highlights.

I then use a small brush to add details, although texture brushes are really useful, I find that adding details with a hard edge brush is a lot more fun.
After this I only need to do some curves adjustments (everything is too dark), and done!