I saw 's version of this one and so just had to give it a go for myself. If you have a look at his you'll see that I swiped the basic concepts and then took it from there.
The background was one of those happy accidents. I was originally making this a moonlit scene with various blues and a moon etc etc but accidently did an 'orange-red-deep red' gradient on a layer set to overlay and this is what resulted! So said stuff it, it was too good to waste so went with this instead!
Hi SeanE, your graphics are really powerful and pro, if you could go to next lvl with coloring instead of gradient shading, you could be one of the best graphic artists i ever seen for this type on DA, don't take this as a critique because i am not even a beginner to judge you, its more an advice from a man who see through "lines", Cheers.