A while back, I saw this image: http://porkpiesamurai.com/ayco/final.jpg
I was really inspired by it, and wanted to do something similar. I wanted to see what I could do without any sort of time constraint, so I ended up spending WAY too much time on this. I think it was worth it in the end though - learned a lot about shading with cycles.
I used Blender for modeling, sculpting, texturing, and rendering, and I used Photoshop for compositing and color correction.
Hope you like it!
Wow, just wow! To be honest i wish you can give some spesifics abouth the minerals on the turtle. Are they hand made/sculpted, about the materials etc. I am planing to have a smilar effect for one of my personal projects and i feel totally lost on that mineral/crystal effect.