Sculpting a goblin head. With CC-BY downloadable mesh

Sculpting in 3d is very much like sketching in 2d. you let your hands do what they do best and steer the process intuitively. Maybe thats the reason I like sculpting so much

Or maybe its because, you get a very plastic and tactile result, which reminds me of how I sculpt in "real" claymaterials
In this post I will show you all some of the steps I go through when sculpting a face, in this case a goblin face.
Warning this will get a bit image heavy. On the plusside, all the images in this post are all released under creative commons license

I start of with a sphere that I squish a bit.

then I loosely sketch in the main features

Nose, eye cavities, jawline, cheeks etc.

then i refine the shape, but still keep it quite rough

I use Blenders sculpting and dynamic topology and x-symmetry is turned on for the entire sculpt

I use smoothing and adding/removing material interchangeably , much like you would with real clay

Then I start to add the smaller details. the amount of added faces by the dyn-topo tool is proportional to how much you zoom which is a bit weird in the beginning but gets really intuitive after a while

in the last stages of the sculpt I am mostly using the crease tool to refine and clarify the lines
and then just some final brushups. I always find little things that could be changed ever so slightly.

But at some point you need to call it finished and turn the shading to smooth - I can always elaborate on it later or use parts of it in another context.

here is a small animated gif to show the whole process as a timelapse.

and the final result with lights, teeth and eyes added.
I usually render using the cycles renderer in blender and with an SSS material on the skin. Three or four lights in different colours work well too.
if you think you can get something out of the model I have made it available as an stl for download here released under creative commons license
If you have suggestions for what I should sculpt next I would be happy to hear them in the comments below

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Im EvilHippie, a compulsive creative and jack o' trades. If you want to know more about me, check out my introduction post here

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