Grayscale to color

[Amit Dutta]

Hey man....you know the thing about realism...it's not crisp. It's blurry, and it's all about the gradients and soft transistions. That's what you need for reality. Applibot is not reality. It's highly rendered, uber tightness. I personally appreciate the skill required, but hate the aesthetic. If you want realism, look at things like impressionist masters (contemporary and dead), Jaime Jones, Mullins, maybe even Gurney etc etc. They are all about simplification.

Applibot artists I don't think model that ethos. If you want to go for that style, then I think you're probably on the right track but you won't get further by tweaks to this image. I think you need to move on to the next one and focus on the goal from the start. Mostly I guess it is just really about focusing on a more dynamic pose and perspective (that is the one thing that I think is mostly lacking) and really using value, saturation and lighting to your advantage.
Study their images for perspective and posing and with a color picker for value and sat in particular. You won't have to study edges because they're almost all 100% tight. euchh. :D

I'd probably recommend doing colour and lighting studies of their cards, as well as other cool character work you like. This will probably help you the most