Ultra-realistic Pokemon artist breaks down his creation process

We've featured the artwork of Joshua Dunlop before. He's know for making ultra-realistic versions of Pokemon, just like the image of Bulbasaur above . Ever wonder what goes into making one of these pieces? Joshua himself has detailed the process in an interview with GamingBoulevard.

I’ll start by building up mood boards (collages) of reference material, nature has such weird and wonderful things to pull from.
I’ll then start sketching ideas out, playing with the design until I’m happy.
I’ll start to think about how I want the image laid out, and play with some compositional sketches
The next stop is Zbrush, a powerful 3D sculpting program. I’ll flesh out the creature using ZSpheres, which allow me to create a base to work from.
I’ll then begin to shape the creature until I’m happy. I’m always thinking about muscle shape and how the skin hangs on the body etc.
Nex,t I go into detail. This is usually a combination of freehand tools and alphas. Alphas are essentially texture photos I can use to create detail textures like scales on the surface of the model.
I then paint the model in Zbrush. I’ll use a combination of photo textures and hand painting.
Next, I move the model into Keyshot, a very easy to use real-time rendering software. Here I play with material and lighting.
I’ll render the whole thing out into a variety of passes, such as shadow, AO, highlights, etc and bring those into Photoshop.
In Photoshop I use a combination of Matte painting (using photos) and digital painting to build the image until I’m happy

Joshua says that the entire process can take upwards of 4 days before he gets to the final product. I'd say the time spent is well worth it when the results come out like this!