The above picture is not 'real'... It was produced by Alec Heidenburg using an Open Source (free) software package called 'Blender'. Blender was also used to make this short animation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYFo6-AWuxM

Another image:

There are countless examples of images and animations online- there are also many thousands of tutorial videos on youtube teaching you how to use the various tools Blender gives you.

I started using Blender in late 2011- learning it became a hobby of mine... I have used it for april fool's gags at work, and to illustrate concepts at work... It has become so useful that I invested in getting a computer specifically built for blender and it's GPU rendering capability... You can do photorealistic work with it...

It is a powerful tool. I highly recommend it to anyone that would like to explore their artistic side, or could use a modeling program.
You can find it at:blender.org
http://Www.blender.org
http://www.blender.org/