Awesome! This makes me feel better about my own (endless) tutorial because, damn, long tutorials are long. :D

I am most impressed by how dark Steve is (on my monitor) the whole time until he's actually bright enough even for me by the end. I tend to make the base bright enough for my taste before adding any gradient things in the end, and methinks I may not even need to do that, I can add the light later. Hmmm.

Also, I didn't know the "empty adjustment layer" trick, that's really neat. I'll have to remember that.

Same goes for using a hue adjustment instead of just filling with two colors to keep the saturation and brightness the same. That is very valuable information.

All in all: so many cool new tricks! Thank you!!