Well if you already have your character drawn in AS you can use that image and turn it into something that looks as if it were painted by hand. First, render and save a jpeg of your character from AS.
Next, open it in a paint program- I'm using Corel Painter Essentials (came packaged with my Wacom). I'm sure other paint programs have a similar function to what I'll be using. It's called the clone color function- it basically allows you to "repaint" your underlying image using any brush you want. So here's how you do it in Corel: first, make a clone of the image (File>Clone). In the clone, select all and delete (ctrl+A, backspace). Then set tracing paper (ctrl+T). Then set the original image as your clone source (File>Clone Source>original image). in the color pallete, click the clone color button (looks like a stamp).
Using pencils, watercolor, pastels, whatever- redraw your image in a new empty layer. Follow the outlines as if you were drawing it from scratch. Turn off clone color, and add whatever details you want. For my example, I gave my character dry, red skin.
This was my first attempt using this method. I suck at art (lol- anything that's not vector) so for me, this is a good way to cheat. You end up with something that looks like it was drawn/painted from scratch. This could also be useful for creating backgrounds.
