I'm in love with Machinarium and Samorost games series by Amanita Design. Graphic is just awesome there and I would like to start something similar in 2018. Actually we need pencil sketches, textures and a little bit of Photoshop magic to achieve this.
Technological boost
As for me this is the year of high technologies that's why I've took my old robot which I've done for my site ages ago as a visit card. Now it is a fully functional portfolio running on Cargo Collective engine. By the way, do you know any other such a good platforms to have run a site from simple portfolio templates there? I am about to redesign it but Cargo is slow and I don't like current templates there. Anyways, here is some few stages. As you can see my cartoon robot + references for inspiration from Samorost 3 + redrawing my robot with hard brush + adding details, shades and depth with soft brush + main texture I found in Google as a base.
Then the fun comes. Putting the texture layer as a Clipping Mask on top with Overlay for about 50% of Opacity. Something like that. You could try to make the texture black and white as well, play with different types of effects like Multiply, Screen, Soft Light... and vary an opacity level untill it will satisfy you. Look, so nice texture!
Happy New Year 2018!
Here is the final. Don't forget to try this as home and show me your results here please! I wish you so much of love and happiness in the New Year. Let the passion of education move your forward for new openings. Don't stop. Keep your searchings and develop yourself as a beautiful being. Good Luck everyone!