Cheers for the suggestions guys, still barely scratched the surface of zbrush so wouldn't really want to start with that for this. Managed to sort out the seams with some tweaking of uvs and more carefull painting in photoshop though.

Here's a render from a different angle and tweaked the diffuse so it's a little less dull.

The main problem I see at the moment is that it's too reflective (clearly reflecting the sky dome too much), though to more experienced eyes there will be more faults I'm sure - crits and comments welcome on improvement (though I know at the moment that the settings need tweaked - more looking for advice re lighting/material)

cheers

gubar