Giger reference! Good idea. I have that second image as a poster next to my computer. . .
Sweet, I have those big format necronomicon books, I & II, featuring most of Giger's famous ones. Hours of entertainment.
Here's a nifty site concerning the Brain Salad Surgery cover.
I wish you had posted some of these refs earlier. And the problem is not so much scale, as the BG was intended to be abstract, not literal. The reason for the aura is to separate the figure from the environment, so there could be a nice contrast, and the details of the bg/figure would not be lost when they came together. But yeah I really like that first ref, I'm wondering if it's worth redoing in a similiar style. I think those colors would work as well. If I went with a light chrome blue/white like that, it may be enough to keep the contrast intact.
I'll consider it.
(yep, your bg is obviously meant to be an abstraction, just meant to convey digital/electronic/technology)
Dang, I wish I would've been more mindful of this then. From experience, I know it gets harder and harder to spend time on something once you've already spent so much, considering a re-do can be painful! Just think ROI - will the Return On Investment be worth the amount of time you've spent so far PLUS the amount of time it'll take you to pull off the machinery concept or will the time be better spent elsehow?
Don't underestimate Giger's genius, his stuff is nearly impossible to replicate, all I meant was for you to be inspired towards doing some custom tangible physical machinery. I don't think it should be nearly as macabre as Giger's stuff.