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Training Highlights
Stylized Rendering with Brushstrokes
Geometry Nodes from Scratch
Procedural Shading Fundamentals
Stylized Character Workflow

Training types
Course Documentation Production Lesson Workshop

Training categories
Animation Geometry Nodes Lighting Rendering Rigging Shading
Film Highlights
Wing It!
2023
Charge
2022
Sprite Fright
2021
Spring
2019
Project Highlights
Project DogWalk
Interactive
Gold
Showcase
BCON24 Identity
Showcase
Fighting with Grease Pencil
Article
Course
Stylized Character Workflow
Intro
  1. 01

    Introduction

    Free
  2. 02

    Introduction Update

    Free
1: Head Sculpting
  1. 01

    Defining Goals

    Free
  2. 02

    Research

  3. 03

    Blender Setup

  4. 04

    Sculpting a Primitive Head Shape

  5. 05

    Sculpting a complete Planar Head

  6. 06

    Smoothing the Planar Head

  7. 07

    Stylising the Head Sculpt

  8. 08

    Timelapse: Sculpting Rain's Head

    Free
  9. 09

    Timelapse: Vertex Painting

  10. 10

    Timelapse: Sculpting Hair

  11. 11

    Timelapse: Head Design Variations

  12. 12

    Timelapse: Finishing Rain's Head Design

2: Body & Outfit Sculpting
  1. 01

    Creating a Primitive Body

    Free
  2. 02

    Sculpting the Planar Torso

  3. 03

    Sculpting the Planar Arms & Legs

  4. 04

    Sculpting the Planar Hands & Feet

  5. 05

    Smoothing & Stylising the Body

  6. 06

    Creating Clothing Basemeshes

  7. 07

    Update: Optimal Clothing Basemesh

  8. 08

    Modelling additional Basemeshes

  9. 09

    Stretching vs Compression

  10. 10

    Sculpting Wrinkles & Folds

  11. 11

    Polishing the Surfaces

  12. 12

    Finishing the additional Elements

  13. 13

    Timelapse: Sculpting Rains Body

  14. 14

    Timelapse: Rains Autumn Outfit

  15. 15

    Timelapse: Adjusting Proportions and the Outfit

  16. 16

    Timelapse: Rains Summer Outfit

    Free
  17. 17

    Timelapse: Sculpting Rains final Outfit

3: Expression Testing
  1. 01

    Fast & rough Retopology for the Head

  2. 02

    Modelling the inner Head & transferring Details

  3. 03

    Adding the teeth, gums & tongue

  4. 04

    Basic Expression Shapekeys

    Free
  5. 05

    Sculpting an Expression

  6. 06

    Breakdown: Expression Guide Part 1

    Free
  7. 07

    Breakdown: Expression Guide Part 2

  8. 08

    Breakdown: Design Adjustments

  9. 09

    Breakdown: Adding extra Appeal

4: Clean Retopology
  1. 01

    Retopology Introduction

  2. 02

    Creating & Guiding Topology

  3. 03

    Planning the Facial Retopology

    Free
  4. 04

    Retopology Setup

  5. 05

    Facial Retopology - Edge Flow & Articulation

  6. 06

    Update: Strategic 2-Poles

  7. 07

    Facial Retopology - Patches & Poles

  8. 08

    Facial Retopology - Creases & Tweaking

  9. 09

    Timelapse: Head Retopology

  10. 10

    Timelapse: Body Retopology

    Free
  11. 11

    Timelapse: Inner Body & Transfering Volume

  12. 12

    Timelapse: Head Objects & Tweaking

  13. 13

    Timelapse: Hair Retopology

  14. 14

    Timelapse: Shirt & Pants Retopology Pt.1

  15. 15

    Timelapse: Shirt & Pants Retopology Pt.2

  16. 16

    Timelapse: Shoe modeling & additional Tweaking

  17. 17

    Timelapse: Scarf Retopology & Finishing Touches

5: Bonus Chapter: Snow
  1. 01

    Timelapse: Sculpting Snow's Head

    Free
  2. 02

    Timelapse: Sculpting Snow's Body

  3. 03

    Timelapse: Polishing Snow

  4. 04

    Timelapse: Sculpting Snow's Outfit

  5. 05

    Timelapse: Remeshing & Adjusting Snow

  6. 06

    Timelapse: Snow's Expression Tests

  7. 07

    Timelapse: Posing Snow

  8. Live: Face Retopology Free
  9. Live: Head Retopology Free
  10. Live: Hair Retopology Free
  11. Live: Upper Body Retopology Free
  12. Live: Body Retopology Free
  13. Live: Retopo tweaks & outfit Free
  14. Live: Outfit Retopology Free
  15. Live: Retopology Finale Free
  16. Live: Body UV Mapping Free
  17. Live: Outfit UV Mapping Free
  18. Live: UV Mapping Finale Free
  19. Live: Base Colors & Preparations Free
  20. Live: Tiles & Procedural Detail Free
  21. Live: Height Map Painting Free
  22. Live: Detail Extraction & Stitches Free
  23. Live: Textures & Procedural Eyes Free
  24. Live: Procedural Skin & Hair Anisotropy Free
  25. Live: Turntable & Hair Textures Free
  26. Live: Baking & Final Renders Free
Bonus Videos
  1. 01

    Youtube Version: Stylized Character Workflow in Blender 2.81

    Free
  2. 02

    Snow Character Creation Recap

    Free
  3. 03

    Sculpting Fundamentals

    Free
  4. 05

    Preventing/Fixing Boolean Errors

Cheat Sheets
  1. Topology Guides - Killing/Directing Loops
  2. Topology Guides - Poles & Edge Flow Free
  3. Topology Guides - Stretching & Pinching
  4. Topology Guides - Hiding Stretching
  5. Topology Guides - Strategic 2-Poles
  6. Topology Guides - Hard-Modeling Creases
  7. Facial Topology - Edge Flow
  8. Facial Topology - Landmarks
  9. Facial Topology - Articulation Free
  10. Facial Topology - Patches & Poles
  11. Facial Topology - Creases
  12. Facial Topology - Deformations
  13. Retopology Setup Free
  14. Body Topology - Seperate Limbs
  15. Body Topology - Joint Loops
  16. Body Topology - Finishing Touches
Course Lesson .blend files
  1. File 1: Head Sculpting Lessons
  2. File 2: Body Sculpting Lessons
  3. File 3: Topology Examples
  4. File 4: Facial Topology & Planning
Final Renders
  1. Rain - Final Render Free
  2. Rain - Turnaround Free
  3. Rain - Turnaround (Clay) Free
  4. Rain - Turnaround (Wire) Free
  5. 05

    Rain - Turntables

    Free
  6. Snow - Final Render Free
  7. Snow - Turnaround Free
  8. Snow - Turnaround (Clay) Free
  9. Snow - Turnaround (Wire) Free
  10. 10

    Snow - Turntables

    Free
  11. Rain & Snow - Final Render Free
Rain - Character Development
  1. 1 - Head Exploration Free
  2. 1 - Head Polish Free
  3. 2 - Body Iterations Free
  4. 2 - Outfit Variations Free
  5. 05

    3 - Expression Tests

    Free
  6. 4 - Retopology Free
  7. 4 - UV unwrapping Free
  8. 08

    5 - Turntable Renders

    Free
  9. 6 - Pose Exploration Free
  10. 10

    6 - Pose Polishing

    Free
Rain .blend files
  1. Rain - File 1: Head Sculpting
  2. Rain - File 2: Body & Outfit Sculpting
  3. Rain - File 3: Expression Tests
  4. Rain - File 4: Retopology & UV mapping
  5. Rain - File 5: Shading & Texturing
  6. Rain - File 6: Posing
  7. Rain - File 7: Lighting & Composition
Snow .blend files
  1. Snow - File 1: Concept
  2. Snow - File 2: Sculpting
  3. Snow - File 3: Testing
  4. Snow - File 4: Retopology
  5. Snow - File 5: UVs & Shading
  6. Snow - File 6: Rendering & Compositing
Snow - Character Development
  1. 1 - Concept Drawings Free
  2. 2 - Head Sculpting Free
  3. 3 - Full Body Sculpting Free
  4. 4 - Outfit Sculpting Free
  5. 05

    5 - Expression Tests

    Free
  6. 6 - Pose test Free
  7. 7 - Retopo (Face) Free
  8. 08

    8 - Retopo (Head)

    Free
  9. 09

    9 - Hair Retopology

    Free
  10. 10

    10 - Body Retopology

    Free
  11. 11

    11 - Outfit Retopology

    Free
  12. 12

    12 - Turntable Tests

    Free
More Resources
  1. Base Meshes Free
  2. Matcap: Default with Specular Free
  3. Matcap: Gradient Free
  4. Matcap: Ghost Free
Addons
  1. Screencast Keys Free
  2. Magic UV Free

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Julien Kaspar
Julien Kaspar Author
License CC-BY
Report Problem
1: Head Sculpting

Stylising the Head Sculpt

This lesson is all about stylisation and simplification of the head and the principals on creating an interesting and appealing design.

Links mentioned in the video:

00:10- File 1: Head Sculpting Lessons: The collections of final head sculpts that are shown in the video

General Links
  • Short version of the creation of Rain
  • Recap video of the creation of Snow
  • Rain .blend files
  • Snow .blend files
  • Course Resources

Join to leave a comment.

42 comments
MARCOS ISMAEL MAIA JUNIOR
MARCOS ISMAEL MAIA JUNIOR
July 16th, 2024

Hello! Here is my head sculpture, I had done this exercise a long time ago and as I am resuming my studies with Blender, I decided to start from scratch.

Hugs

MARCOS ISMAEL MAIA JUNIOR
MARCOS ISMAEL MAIA JUNIOR
July 16th, 2024

Hello!

Adrian Gilbu
Adrian Gilbu
April 15th, 2022

Here is my sculpt! thank you for the guide, it's been very helpful. I think I need to search around for some indepth explenations of dynotopo tho, ended up with a looooooot of triangles hahaha.

Also I encountered a, not sure if it was a bug or just me hitting a weird command. But when I would tab out of blender to look at the guide, sometimes when I tabbed back the camera would be super jittery. It'd go from spot A to B with no inbetweens, like, just a hard cut if that explains it.

Edit: Picture didn't stick, here is a link

https://imgur.com/a/rTz3nYk

David Soares
David Soares
Feb. 19th, 2022

I sculpted a Clone Trooper head, is my first attempt into stylized sculpting.

David Soares
David Soares
Feb. 19th, 2022

@David Soares

Show more replies
David Soares
David Soares
Feb. 19th, 2022

@David Soares https://youtu.be/p14qrws9668

David Soares
David Soares
Feb. 19th, 2022

@David Soares alt text

David Soares
David Soares
Feb. 19th, 2022

@David Soares

Ali Mu
Ali Mu
Feb. 9th, 2022

Great work

Bert Van Eeckhout
Bert Van Eeckhout
Jan. 19th, 2022

My progress

Aiden Venter
Aiden Venter
April 15th, 2021

Im going for a weathered sailor look https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tTIggN0Q9lfo61cHT1KYZo1hKU1NK_ZU/view?usp=sharing

davebass.dp
davebass.dp
Jan. 26th, 2021

Great Tutorial!  I tried out some different hairstyles on my dude... alt text

Joanne Seale
Joanne Seale
Jan. 11th, 2021

How do i upload a photo?

Julien Kaspar
Julien Kaspar
Jan. 11th, 2021

@joanneseale Sadly it's not directly implemented yet to directly upload images. You need to emebed them into the commend. You can read how here on the Markdown cheat sheet: https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet#images

Otherwise you can also just link to it in the comments.

Joanne Seale
Joanne Seale
Jan. 11th, 2021
Ceren Erdoğan
Ceren Erdoğan
Jan. 1st, 2021

Hi Julien! I think I lost the geometry and details of my mesh and this is what it looks like after I Voxel remesh or Remesh. What can be causing it? It was very laggy after a bit of sculpting so I increased detail size in dyntopo to 4 and decreased voxel size to 0.9 or 1m. https://drive.google.com/file/d/10BJNWBSoUNOPTrGYLe2ZNiROUxXlgbMG/view?usp=sharing

Julien Kaspar
Julien Kaspar
Jan. 4th, 2021

@Ceren Erdoğan First of all I can recommend to use flat shading in sculpt mode to see your resolution better. This can be set in object mode in the right click context menu and also in the remesher and dyntopo settings.

Since the values are depending on your world scale I can't tell you if that's too small or to big. But I advice to first use the Shift + R and Shift + D shortcuts to change these values in the viewport with visual feedback instead of always changing the numbers in the menus.

Antonio Mateos Pomar
Antonio Mateos Pomar
Nov. 21st, 2020

This is what I 've done so far. It's being a tough one but I am having lots of fun. It's my first character and I hope I will be able to finish all the tutorials. Thank you so much for these wonderful videos Julien! I am learning quite a lot and it's also a joy to watch you sculpt. Criticism and comments are welcome. https://www.dropbox.com/s/6hha26o8t47au79/Edvard.png?dl=0

Julien Kaspar
Julien Kaspar
Nov. 24th, 2020

@Antonio Mateos Pomar It's looking really good! I think one of the main things that sticks out to me is how far the eyes are sunken into the brows. The brows are overlapping a lot on the eyes and that transition can be smoothed a bit more. Look at some planar head models as simplified reference.

Antonio Mateos Pomar
Antonio Mateos Pomar
Dec. 1st, 2020

@Julien Kaspar Thank you so much for the quick answer and the planar head model. You went straight to the thing that worried me the most about my model. I had already tried to change the eyes position once but was not happy with the result. Maybe the problem lies in the model I drew because I try to sculpt it and it doesn't look right. And now that I have put all the parts together I am afraid that if I change the eyes I won't be able to reposition the eyelids correctely. I am doing the body now so I will let the head rest for a little while, but I will get to it later. Here's my model sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13chz-DHXPjgRms0nlONKbuYeMqQDmGmn/view?usp=sharing

Julien Kaspar
Julien Kaspar
Dec. 1st, 2020

@Antonio Mateos Pomar One piece of advice: Never treat a line-drawing as the exact reference. Often you can't predict how well a flat drawing is going to look once you add dimension and shading to it. So your job as a 3D artist is not to exactly trace the lines but to interpret the drawing to get as close to it as possible. Sometimes the end result could be very different but still look similar enough to recognize the design.

Antonio Mateos Pomar
Antonio Mateos Pomar
July 6th, 2021

@Julien Kaspar, following your advice, I finally changed my model's eyes and in the process the whole face. I think it's a bit better now although a bit rough. I have to redo the eyelids because they were ruined when I repositioned the eyes, but it's not a big deal.  https://blender.cloud/r/yx8T3b

alt text

Sven Grausam
Sven Grausam
Oct. 9th, 2020

first, i hope i can finish him too, wanna go for a crazed surgeon

Giovanni Coakley
Giovanni Coakley
Aug. 6th, 2020

My first sculpt! Could've stylized and worked on it more but, oh well.

anasof.persa
anasof.persa
Aug. 1st, 2020

iulian lus
iulian lus
July 20th, 2020

Renningen
Renningen
July 18th, 2020

This is my first sculpt ever too. I think that is a monk. Don't know why. I don't understanding remesh header for what? And which voxel size playing role in particular?

Julien Kaspar
Julien Kaspar
July 22nd, 2020

*@kurotsuki999* Looks good. I don't think I really understand the question but I also can't really answer a lot of these via text.
Some beginner tutorials for sculpting will likely help you more and this course is not going to help you for some of that., sorry.

Renningen
Renningen
July 22nd, 2020

*@Julien Kaspar* Thank you. I keep learning and do my best. And will do some research, because i don't understand which influences voxel size on sculpt. Sorry english is not my native language :) But i 'll try reformulate my first question. What purposes for is needed remesh? What it gives? It's okay if you can't answer these questions in writing. I will understand. In any case, thank you so much ^^

Julien Kaspar
Julien Kaspar
July 23rd, 2020

*@kurotsuki999* The voxel remesher is used to sculpt more freely on objects. Whenever you run out of geometry to sculpt on you can just define a detail level and remesh the object to get a consistent resolution.
It is also good to merge objects and remove intersections and errors in the mesh. And whenever you want more resolution to sculpt on you can just make the voxel size smaller, remesh and continue to sculpt in more detail.

If you are really interested to learn more in detail what the voxel remsher does I can recommend the talk by Pablo Dobarro, who made the feature. It's very technical but the graphics and videos are already enough to understand better what it does:
https://youtu.be/lxkyA4Xslzs?t=167

Renningen
Renningen
July 24th, 2020

*@Julien Kaspar* Oh, thank you very much!

adela.kormoutova
adela.kormoutova
July 12th, 2020

StephenSun
StephenSun
June 21st, 2020

ammar mohammed
ammar mohammed
May 15th, 2020

is it ok if my first sculpts look bad and I am gonna get better by time?

ammar mohammed
ammar mohammed
May 15th, 2020

*@ammar mohammed* and does being in a younger age matter that much because i am really young

Julien Kaspar
Julien Kaspar
May 15th, 2020

*@ammar mohammed* It doesn't matter if the result is bad, as long as you keep trying and improving for the next ones.
It also doesn't matter if you start young or old. It just takes time to get skilled at what you do.

ammar mohammed
ammar mohammed
May 17th, 2020

*@Julien Kaspar* ok thanks for the advice

keraatona
keraatona
Aug. 10th, 2020

*@ammar mohammed* im aribian 2 and im 15 years old what about you?

keraatona
keraatona
Aug. 10th, 2020

*@ammar mohammed* and because you are aribian and english is not your netive languge you and me will need to re do some stuff sometimes

地味 キント
地味 キント
May 1st, 2020

seeing as the course is focused on black ethnicity

Willy Wijaya
Willy Wijaya
March 28th, 2020

this is my result :)

lina-black
lina-black
Jan. 5th, 2020

here is my result. First-ever sculpt =) feel so proud Thank you for great tutorial =)

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