What is this illustration style?

Looks like a highly detalized illustration like the one here https://gapsystudio.com/service/illustration/. I'm not sure though.

I would say the foreground characters are created using photoshop brushes from photo reference.

The backdrops may have been created using photo-manipulation, such as alpha channel slections...

TBH there's not really a correct answer for this thread yet. Proabably my title question was not the right one, i was more interested in how to achieve the detail and sharpness of the shapes.

I still can't tell if i have to paint it with Photoshop and then image trace in illustrator and edit the results till they look nice enough.

or if it's straight out of any vector painting software and a good Tablet / screen using a lot of lasso tool.

Possibly all of the above.

But i liked all the responses because they all share some wisdom for me and others, i think JET was the best response tho.

Currently testing it on Photoshop free hand / lasso tool and looks pretty cool, tho can't tell if this is the pro way of doing it. because it does take a lot of time. (Specially if like me you are using a cheap wacom Tablet).

Also tested tracing my PS drawing in Illustrator and the result wasn't that far from looking pro.

Really srishtib8795206​ ? That's the answer you mark correct!?

This is not a good example that I have made

I rest my case. ;-)

JET

The basic style is called posterization (limiting the colors in an image to just a few), which can be done in most raster imaging programs. Getting professional results like the sample, though, is not a simple matter of invoking an automated command. That just yields a rough beginning with which to work.

1. Start with a quality image; one artfully composed, well lit, and having good dynamic range. Garbage in; garbage out applies.
2. Perform the posterization. But don't just take the default results. Study it. Do the color breaks occur at optimal places to most clearly and cleanly and pleasingly suggest the shapes and contours of the subject? Default results seldom do, even starting with a quality image. You can improve the initial results by undoing the posterization, adjusting tone curves, and trying again.
3. Once you've got what seems the best that the automated posterization algorithm is going to give you as something to start with,  commit it, save it, bring it into a vector drawing program, and manually trace it with artistic discernment.

That's how you get professional quality results: with work, not with just the take-it-or-leave-it results of a completely unintelligent algorithm that doesn't know a smooth forearm of a damsel in distress from the sweaty forearm of a burly iron worker.

Doing it with an auto-trace feature in a drawing program is technically performing the same operations, but more crudely and without the all-important artistic discernment. Autotracing:

1. Posterizes the raster image, but not with the amount of image tweaking controls you have in a full-blown raster imaging program, and not with any discernment about whether where the color breaks occur is good or bad.
2. Tries to trace around areas of contiguous same-colored pixels. That it. That's all it does because that's all it can do. It has no idea whatsoever about which details are important, which are not, which need to be smoothed or roughened, which should represent actual geometric shapes (circles, for example), which "blobs" should actually be combined into simpler and fewer, but more recognizable and meaningful shapes.
3. Does all that even while yielding sub-optimal paths that are more tedious and time-consuming to clean up than just manually drawing optimally to begin with.

Most important of all, drawing paths manually—by nature of the process—imparts a stylistic consistency. That's the difference between drawing with human discernment and just resorting to an instant-gratification automatic algorithm. That's the difference between a pleasing, professional result and just yet-another amateurish attempt at something-for-nothing. The judge is the audience. The audience instinctively knows the difference. The audience is human, not a piece of software.

Autotracing is a crutch for hobbyists.

JET

Without knowing much more about it, I'd assume it was made with an original photograph to which the creator applied the Image Trace option set to only 8 colors or so. If you were to do it in Photoshop, you might try Posterization, but I agree, it wouldn't necessarily be as crisp as an illustrator image.