VectorRide 0x00 - Kizna in Space Suit

This is going to be the longest page in the entire VectorRide section of my site... I think.  I personally love this image of Kizna Towryk from Yukiru Sugisaki.  There is a lot of detail in the original scan I got from Minitokyo.  I keep putting this one on hold and come back to it for a few weeks, and put it off... in favor of other vector tracings, and come back with a better control of the tools I use.  Right now, I only use the Pen tool and Live Paint Bucket.

This is my third attempt.  What makes this different from the others? SINGLE Layer.  I saved my original black line art on a duplicate layer, in case I really botch up some of the colors like in the end attempt #2.  But I will try working with some effects on other layers.  Yes, I'm still playing around with the eye color.  I'll put the Ear(s) on the layer behind this so I can toggle it on or off, depending on what I want to work with. I should have simplified the hair model and added the color first, before the details, but that only created a slight problem with the paintbucket tool in LivePaint.		I put the 3rd and most recent attempt at the top.  This is a continuation of attempt 3.  I just started experimenting with the mesh tool in Illustrator.  There are a lot of layers now.  So far, only the front arm, the globey thing on the sholder and her eyes are using meshes.  I still don't have a good feel for what I am doing, but that's why I am not tossing out my old work.
3rd attempt from scratch. created 2006 - December - 6 Updated:  2006 - December - 16
Original attempt... Abandonded and restarted with one on right
Started: May 18, 2006 Abandoned: July 9, 2006
Second attempt Started the face with the inked outline.		I like the detail on the hose here.  Abandoned because of the color borders were not working out well for me.
Started:  July 9, 2006		Updated: 2006 - December - 6

The reason I restarted this one was because I got a Wacom Tablet and learned new ways of adjusting the position of anchor points.  The newer one has some more progress with color added.  There are a lot more layers too.  Instead of restarting, I'm using a layer ontop of the hair to make the change into a Color Region.