Finally, out of nowhere, I made two spheres with a rock texture to them. Something just clicked, I quickly made the chains, and thought that it looked like the chains should be dragging someone down, maybe into some deep water. I started playing with some fury maps and volumetric lights, and bingo, the background and atmosphere fell into place. It didn't look much like being pulled into water though, more like being pulled from some celestial heaven into a darker realm, so the name "Fallen Angel" came from there.

Next I needed a creature to be dragged down, and I decided on a skeletal robot (when in doubt, add a skeletal robot). The hands were made almost a year ago for another project, but the image sucked, so I only kept the hands, and I'm glad I finally found a good place to use them. The chains and tails were made using path deform, which takes an object and deforms it along a spline path. Everything else was modeled in pretty much the same way I've modelled all my other robots.

The background, as mentionned above, is a combination of RLF Fury Maps and gradients. The rocks are just some supersprays. One volumetric light comes from above, and the glow is another one of those great Non-Clamped glows using RLF.

Oh, and click here to read an article about how I made the tenticles and chains in this image.