BTW: the Knight here was actually really easy, compared to the Keeper of the Flame.
Not counting all the border elements, there are:
2 sketch layers, that are removed, before flattening(background and foreground);
2 lineart layers(knight and shield);
2 color layers(Knight and shield);
1 shadow layer (duplicated and blurred, before being merged back together. The ground shadows are just part of the rock, only the knight has shading in a sperate layer);
2 background layers(sky and rock).
This is actually less work than doing it all in one or two layers, like the keeper was. Because, I can remove the sketch lines easily, and apply the glow filter to only the shield color layer.
For contrast the Keeper was:
1 lantern layer;
3 light layers, painted by mouse, after all the splitting and merging was done(one of them is behind the lantern and the Keeper, one is just the yellow slits, and one is the hard light you see.);
1 yellow line layer(some of these are highlighs and some are contour lines. --should have split them.);
1 excessively involved color layer (I should have split this into robe, face and detail layers.);
1 Shading layer(--should have made a second one for the robe, to really mess with the eyes.);
2 background layers(black and dark blue);
