Thanks, that actually helps to get me thinking about a few things that I had passed over for lack of time and also stirs up some more fundamental questions.
I'm not a huge fan of the font I used either, but I haven't found one that I'm happy with since going digital. I'd love to make a handwriting font of my own, but haven't set aside the time to make that. So I put some more time into finding a decent free one last night... This one is better, but maybe not final.
That's the benefit and the curse of illustrator–nothing is final. I can endlessly tweak an image. I originally switched to it because I wasn't happy with how my paper work looked scanned, and I thought it might save me some time working on a longer project because I can save objects to a library and reuse them later on. Those objects also give me the flexibility to translate it into flash at some future point if I want.
I'm still not sure if it's the way to go though, because I've been so picky. But I've also been teaching myself illustrator while making the dragon image, so maybe it's just the learning curve that makes it feel slow.
I darkened up those cloud strokes some as you suggested–but maybe I just need a more defined light source... All those details on the clouds come down to a time thing too. How much detail should I worry about if this is one image among hundreds? Unfortunately I can't afford do this full time...
Maybe I should give coloring in Photoshop another try? Any thoughts on process?
Thanks! Scott