And some gears:
Really cool style! I love the detailing in your pieces. 
Thank you very much. Your Russian Tsar Cannon is bonkers!
Swear all you like, you’re having too much fun teasing us.
One needs only to look closely at each individual cog to see that’s been keeping you from us.
Each cog a Mandala.
Oh, I am and I’m not (having fun teasing). I’m really just flying by the seat of my pants here. I’d be having more fun if I was totally confident that it’s all going to come together in the end, but as you say it’s the journey (or something along those lines). Perhaps it wouldn’t be so satisfying in the end if my workflow wasn’t such a haphazard, snail paced, scratch and sniff goat screw. Or, perhaps it would. I don’t know. I have nothing to compare it with. I just know that it don’t come easy.
In any case, I’m starting to put the pieces together now. Here’s the stars of the show, roughly as they’ll appear. Picture 6-8 floating Wimpy heads and God’s engine room (still somewhat in progress) behind them, and a couple of extra symbolic props thrown in just for good measure, and you’ve probably got an idea of where I’m heading.
Working title is I Yam.
You’re pioneering and blazing an individual path which takes just as long as it needs .
Good luck with the final stages - look forward very much to seeing it come together as I’m sure many other folks hereabouts are too.
Wow. This is magnificent! Completely bizarre and so beautifully and imaginatively executed.
Thank you both. Your feedback and support means a great deal.
So, I decided that this asset, which was originally meant to be a header hanging over Popeye and Olive Oyl, would look better on its own. That composition is already extremely busy without it, so now I get two pieces for the price of one.
I’m calling this one Muerte. It looks good at its native resolution of 6989x2804, less so when I scale it down to this size, but most of the detail is still more or less readable.
Art its fantastic to see your work again.
Im not on the other site as much as I want to be where I would see all that great stuff so this will have to do… and it does!
Beautiful and very very… um… on.
GRIN!
Heed the words of the wise and talented Boozy Floozie. You’re on your own road and it will pay dividends. Such magick!
Very cool. It has a (kinda-sorta) 3-D R. Crumb feel to it.
Nice work!
Okay. Here is my final image. It’s called I Yam. Native resolution is 4573x6685.
Thanks to all for the endless inspiration.
Bravosmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamond
I am delighted to see it for it is delightful and very original.
I keep coming back to look.
Yes, great stuff. Can’t wait to see what you do next! 
Thank you both very much. They never really quite come out in the end the way I see them in my head. The final result is always a bit of a surprise, and I never really know how it’s all going to mesh together until all the components are stacked together.
I’m pretty happy over all, but it was sooooo very labor intensive. I usually feel a bit let down once I’m done.
I really love how crazy this whole thing is
and how much effort you put into the individual pieces.
Though it could be so much more interesting with proper more dramatic lighting.
Have you thought about using a different renderer?
Holy cow…
Thank you much. ZBrush is all I know, to be honest.
I’ve tried my hand at modeling in Maya, but only have a VERY rudimentary understanding of its most basic functions. I think you’re right that I need to up my game in the rendering department though, and I may just have to jump back in and try to learn a new skillset. What would you recommend? VRay?
I’ve tried to vary the values in the individual renders, but I recognize that the whole thing reads much flatter than I would prefer. I would add in light caps, but I’m pushing my poor little laptop about as hard as it can handle already. I’ve got about 20 individual renders here all stacked on top of one another, and because the size is so large (so I can print and frame big enough that all of the detail reads), some of them take 8-12 hours to process (if they don’t crash the program before they finish - which they often do…). The whole process is ridiculously cumbersome, and I suspect it would be quicker, easier and more effective using another renderer.
I want the viewer to feel like they could reach into the canvas and pull out a gear or something, and I recognize that I’m not quite getting there. But I am committed to improving with each one and steadily increasing my skillset.
I very much appreciate the feedback.
It’s so weird, I was just putting something up in that other site for you and everyone else… Foolishly I hit the wrong button switching back to that window and closed it instead of hitting send. Oh dopey me.
I think you might like KeyShot, its got limits and some problems (like the whole world is stuck inside a sphere) but its pretty good, its keeping me out of Blender for anything other than rigging and that is a wonderful thing…
On the other hand Im learning Houdini, its hard, mainly due to complexity, but its got some amazing abilities that I think you would like, specifically:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Qw9TTZTKE&t=114s
It was made in ZBrush, Maya, Houdini and composited in something called Nuke.
I know its violent and destructive, but you get the idea of what you can do with ZBrush objects in Houdini with this I think.
The compositing you only need if you are making a movie, which I think you should.
Houdini is, as I said, hard, its procedural so there is a lot to learn but all that animation and simulation stuff was done in it so its looking to me like its worth the effort. Theres also a free version and a ton of tutorials of varying degrees of ease or intense difficulty.
So far its more fun than Blender and I need to get away from Blender for a while.