The original inspiration for the aesthetics of the piece came from a Softimage reply card in a 3D magazine. It had this blurry bluish image, and white writing on top of it. Of course, my final image has almost nothing to do with the original, except for the color and the fact it has text, but it's strange the things that can inspire you.

Technique wise, this is done with Max2. The geometry is actually pretty simple, lofts for the hair, lofts for the face segments. Some complex metal textures using the Shadow Light map (to make sure the reflections only appear in the lit part of the objects). A little bit of fog blends the creature with the background. The background is a material made from several layers of noise and various other procedural materials, including a fury map. A volumetric light from the sky, RLF glows around the eyes, and a RLF Non-Clamped colors glow on the rest of the face. I really like the way the Non-Clamped glow works in this image, it gives the metal a soft and blurry quality, like a camera slightly out of focus.

The 2D elements and text are added in another max file. Why did I add these 2D elements? Well, there's the original inspiration thing, and anyways I've been fiddling with typography and graphic design a lot recently. Sort of makes the piece look like a poster or comic book of some sorts. The font used for the main text is Digital Stabbing, the numbers in the background use the Keypunch Plain font.