Not sure when I'll have time to get back to working on this, but I will eventually. Here's a fancy render of the current high-poly model in the meantime. Criticism is especially helpful on this one since it's quite WIP, so let me know what you think!
I used 3DS MAX to model and render out separate lighting passes, which I then composited in Photoshop. The vast majority of work is just 3DS MAX though.