Thank you for the kind words Dwindt!

I've been admiring this model again. Your modeling of detail is amazing and then your ability to enhance that surface with micro detail takes the model to another level. I assume that is with texture maps. Damn, you've learnt and perfected it all. The surface has a lot of vellus hair on it. Is that what has given the surface that fuzzy look or is it from a combination of vellus hair and displacement? How long does a model like this take you.

I'm humbled by your comment, thank you a ton!

To answer your questions:
Most of the detail you see was sculpted in Zbrush (this may be just a bust but I had to make it close to 100mil polygons in order scram all that detail in there).

The damages on the eyes and other areas were done in substance painter with procedural textures which were exported as displacement maps and combined using blender's node system with the displacement exported from Zbrush.
On top of that I added another tillable skin detail texture to unify it all.

The fuzzy look is again a combination of two hair systems (one of small hairs and one of bigger ones to break the silhouette a bit) plus the skin material itself, plus the usual supporting maps (roughness, SSS, masks, etc).

This took me quite some time (a bit less than 3 months) but that's because I hadn't used blender for rendering before and I had to learn quite a few things about offline rendering in general.
Hope this answers your questions, thanks again!

Absolutely. Well hats off to you! I tried to get my head around Blender and although I know it is worthwhile, I don't know whether I have enough years left in me to learn it...lol. I also have to consider the worth and what I'd need it for so opt to remain a hobbyist....but damn, well done for persevering and achieving such an amazing standard. Hope you succeed further with your amazing creations and more!

Oh, seems I missed this comment, apologies Dwindt.
First of all thank you for the kind words!
When it comes to Blender, it is much easier than it sounds. At least when it comes to rendering.
If you want a structured course, there is a complete Blender introduction by CGCookie that goes through everything, but you could probably learn just as well by searching on youtube for relevant videos.
If you decide to jump into learning Blender and need help with it, feel free to send me a message!

I agree with everything you said!