Starting from the far left photo, I take the time to segment visible body parts, clothing pieces, accessories, and weapons using brightly colored outlines.

I use the bright neon colors so that it's clearly visible while I am tracing on the reference image.

If you notice closely, I actually don't include curves into my style of vector tracing. I found that doing things this way not only makes the process faster, but can also give a very powerful look to images if done correctly. The character present in this design is a perfect example of this method of vector tracing. The cloak is very sharp, sparratic and unpredictable looking. The shades on the clothing emphasize the intense posture the character is in, and easily defines the shape of its source with minimal color changes.

The last two photos although look the same, have different positioning in leaves. Upon the first final iteration of the design, the leaves did not seem filling enough to the photos proportions, so in the final iteration I re-positioned the leaves and gave it a slight angle, and actually created a second copy of the leaves and reflected them to fill in the lower end of the design.