Sorry, I must confess that there was still some tracing involved.
I used the original screenshot as a base, then edited some of the proportions to make them look more modern - e.g. making the forearms less bulbous, and squaring up the overly round edges on the armour etc.
Then I overlayed a facial screenshot from the kai intro which suited the scene. I mostly traced that, but had to re-do the lighting the make it look consistent.
The scouter is original, as is the part of the hand that wraps around it. I also made up my own shading for the body and armour, to make it look more kai-esque.
Then obviously I extended the scene to 16:9 and filled it in with some new cliffs and clouds

zolockit - I don't understand your reaction. Is photoshop taboo these days? I wouldn't know.

^When making a drawing like this Illustrator is the normal choice because it's easier. Still, I prefer to stick to what you know.

On another note, which tool did you use to draw the character? Was it as pen tool with a stroke path or the line tool? I have been trying to draw a original character but my drawing style with the pencil is too rough. So I would like to make it a little cleaner.

I didn't think you could do this on a raster graphics program. I thought you needed to use a vector graphics program. So I was impressed more than anything.

I used the brush tool for everything. I think it was size 1 or 3 for the outlines. If your lines turn out rough at first, you can clean them up when colouring in - use a larger brush diameter for that bit.
The brush hardness was either cranked to full, or reduced to zilch - can't remember. And from memory I also turned off some mouse acceleration feature that had been on by default - this was based on some advice given to me.
It was a good learning exercise, just time consuming.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm getting tired of Photoshop. I'm never really satisfied with anything I make anymore. If I had a wacom I'd be using it more often to practice my drawing and coloring.

I don't blame you for tracing dude. Its actually a very good thing to do when your learning because it can help you on how the actual creator did it. Thus giving you some ideas for whenever you draw your own stuff. And as for the process; I agree with you. It is BEYOND time consuming. When I do this type of work I work like this: Get the image, Print the image, Draw the image and the main stuff I want, Scan that drawing, and edit it on Illustrator (which is another process: outline drawing, actual color, editing that image, so forth...)
And @ Zolockit: you actually CAN do this on raster-based programs. Its not really recommended but you can. You just have to work with a Bigger than usual image.