This design was made in several portions. The first of which was actually heating up a big pancake of microcrystalline casting wax and pushing it (still pretty hot) into my face. Except for the searing pain, it was relatively painless. Then, I peeled that puppy off and got to shaping it to my whim. So there I am in some approximate form. Doubled down on the wrinkles and cleaned up the edges and shape overall.
My plan was grander still. So, I got out my lazy susan and a drop cloth and captured the mask in 360 degrees, spiralling down the shape via photogrammetry. Using those photos, it composites a vectorized model and allows us to import it wholesale into a 3D shape. The wax I use isn't lustrous like this, of course, it's dull, mottled brown. So once I had the asset I used blender to reassemble it into a facade, giving it new metallic color. The runes I had to assemble as a bitmap graphic, and are a real alphabet scrambled and arbitrarily painted on as a bump stencil. Followed with some post-processing and lighting/camera work, it concluded at this.
Truth be told I was going to turn this into a lenticular 3D poster, you may have seen them outside theaters a few times. I designed it in such a way as to appear inside the wall the item is hanged in. The effect would be that this would appear to hang in space in front of a cascading tunnel.
Unfortunately, the printer I chose ruined it, brutally. They applied the wrong LDI lenticular screen, they shipped it internationally without any wrapping or sleeve and blurred the frames together into one immense shapeless mess. So, by the time I was going to use it, it was too late.