Now what is left is rendering out elements that weren't rendered enough, so characters and background.

It's the last step before finalising the illustration with additional effects and some colour balance corrections.

With this as a base, everything should progress in the right direction, now I need to overpaint it more, not so sure about the signal lines in the sky, will probably change that a bit.

With roughly figured-out colours, it's time for background photo bashing and refining the character's colouring.

After figuring out the designs, I drew the lineart so it would be easier to colour them. Plus giving them a contour will contrast nicely with the planned painterly-looking background.

With 2nd character, I drew 4 concepts before deciding on the 3rd one.

I was drawing a more detailed character concept based on what I drew in the main sketch. I decided to continue with the 2nd version.

The first nice-looking sketch,

I'll definitely will need to define the core characters more, so that will be the next step. 

I'm happy with how the environment is coming together so I will be photo bashing, applying gradient map and painting over.

Few thumbnails. I really like the green compositions, so I will be developing the ones with antennas and closer characters on the left side. I have some photos of buildings from my home city that will be great for creating a bit of a photobash/overpaint as the base for the background.

I started developing the sketch further, but I'm not so sure about it anymore so my plan is to make some thumbnails of other ideas. Maybe something connected to my homeland, my childhood? Polish apartment buildings from 70's but improved, more colourful and fun. That might be a idea worth exploring.

A sketch of an idea, that I will try to develop further, perhaps? Like a futuristic street of some sort?

This thing here is not really a proper concept but was kinda my initial response to the theme.

Made in Affinity Photo, the first time I ever tried to draw and photo manipulate in that software.

I will probably go back to drawing compositions by hand, rather that merging photos first.