I used the Gnomon DVD 'Head Sculpting and Texturing - ZBrush Techniques with Alex Alvarez' for the basic workflow for this image, though the design itself is very different to Alvarez's model, which was more of an orc-ish kind of thing. The head was done almost entriely in ZBrush, before being brought into Maya to render. The other foreground elements were done in Maya.


The background elements are a combination of 3D, Photoshop painting, and the HDR image I used for lighting.