I love the Zeratul render. Lots of fun stuff you can do to it.

That said, it looks like you started off with the render in B&W. Your V2 is much better, but if you try using the render in full color and then blending it in with C4Ds and other stuff, then topping it all off with some gradient maps/photo filters, you could make it into something awesome.

You're definitely on the right track, kiu.