Machine Crusade. This time the publishers wanted something similar to the previous DUNE (Butlerian Jihad series) book, but not the tipical robot warrior, but still a bit disquieting. I came up with this robot without any visible weapon with the idea in mind of a monk, usually unarmed, but still lethal. The rosary tries to emphatize this idea, giving the robot a mystic look. Placing some more robots introduces the "army" concept. Everyone was very happy with the illustration, and I hope you are too.

Some statistics about the illustration. The whole scene was more than 1 Gb file, containing more than twenty-four million polygon (yeah, 24). My old G4 with only 1 Gb RAM could not render it in one single pass, so I did 12 rendered different layers and 37 render passes (diffusse, specular, reflections...) to composite the final illustration.

 

Robot Monk. Head detail

Robot Monk. Arm detail

Robot Monk. Rosary detail

Robot Monk. 3/4 view

Robot Monks. Full Illustration used for the cover

Giant Robot Monk (just for fun)

Cover by Opalworks.
Designer: Juanjo Ávila

Coverand back cover illustration: David Argemí

Spanish Title: Dune. La Cruzada de las Máquinas. Original
Title: Dune. Machine Crusade. Authors: Brian Herbert and
Kevin J. Anderson

Book ISBN: 8401335914

Publisher: Plaza Janés