Alrighty after some trial and error I landed on a project that better suited the time I have and the skills I would like to put in practice, I got permission to change the project a while ago and I figured its time to show some progress. I have chosen to do a mandala so I can get some practice with patterns in photoshop and Substance Designer without jumping around too many programs, here is the new reference: 
I prefer not spreading myself too thin when picking out reference in the beginning of a project because I do not want to get bogged down in the Idea phase at this point. I have learned that I work best when I limit my time to be creative and come up with ideas to the last 15% or so of a project, this allows for me to at least have something finished and usable if I start to run out of time and the proper amount of space to be creative. I will gather more reference as I move into texturing the different alloys and drawing out the specific ornaments in photoshop. Shapes made in photoshop, everything else is in Substance Designer.
Here are some test renders I put together to hype myself up and test the height map in marmoset: 
