Nova Corps.
When Annihilation came out that was the greatest resurgence the Marvel Cosmic characters had seen in a long while. To be fair, the Nova Corps wasn't featured much anyway, so them being destroyed didn't upset the balance of really any other character than Rider.
Even though I loved the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, one thing I didn't like was that the Nova Corps was reduced to a rather mundane everyday police force. I didn't like the design of the helmets I saw on the Nova Corps, and it sure didn't look like any of these guys would be flying through space unaided any time soon. So it's too bad we wouldn't be seeing a real Nova appearance in the MCU, but I guess I see why they did it.
I made this one in Daz Studio (armor pieces modeled in Blender), then did the rendering in Blender using Cycles.
There was a time when Richard Rider was just one of many Nova Corps members. That changed when the Annihilation Wave destroyed the entire Corps except for Rider. After that, he was the sole wielder of the Nova Force, alone in the universe.
Just starting out here, trying to nail down the textures and materials of the suit.
Here I was working out the blur and glare effects on the various lights in the eyes and suit.
Working out the positioning for the background characters. Here you can see all the "fireflies" in the glossy materials in the Cycles render.
Playing with a combination of smoke simulator and volumetrics in Blender.
The ambient occlusion pass rendered out separately for compositing in Photoshop.
The shadow pass rendered out separately for compositing in Photoshop.
The raw final render before any Photoshop post-work.
The scene as set up in Daz Studio.
The scene as set up in Blender.