I see Anne has posted a blog on creating a head in Blender, so I should continue my adventure in creating an avatar. Up until now, I have been following the construction methods outlined in Jonathan Willianson's tutorial at Montage Studios. The trouble is the character he models is a super hero type avatar - and rather than have eyes it has a fancy set of goggles/shades - so I was in my own a little more. (NB If the above link does not work then try this one here)

However Johnathan has a number of other tutorials that gave me some guidance.

1. Modeling a female human head - parts 1-3 here - higher polycount but still useful principles.

2. Modeling a Human Head parts 1-6 here

(Note the links for these will change as new tutorials are added they get push further down the list - so look at higher number pages if necessary.)

So here we go

First, select the three vertices in the neck ( just select the two in the red box - the third gets chosen because we are building using the mirror method remember ?). Hit Shift D and drag the mouse up to the forehead - we get a duplicate of those 3 vertices.

Next, select the rightmost vertex (green box) and extrude it once - we now have 5 vertices joined by 4 edges.

Using these 4 edges extrude the edges (the E key) around the the head in the side view - rotating, scaling and tweaking the position as necessary until reaching the start of the neck.

Now the neck :

To start the neck, extrude twice more down the back of the neck (red box in image 2), then select the two edges outlined in green - extrude twice more towards the front with the second extrusion ending on your centre line - the mirror will produce two extrusions on the left side and the neck will close.

And finally, go around the neck selecting pairs of vertices and then chose matching pairs of vertices on the torso neck loop - so with four vertices chosen hit the F key and make a face. Repeat this 3 more times and connect/fill the right side - the mirror handles the left side. (See how the mirror technique reduces the work load?)

Onto the Chin -

Select the vertices at the top front of the neck (red box image 3) and extrude 4 times scaling and rotating as you go in the direction of the arrow until you are just below the lips. (Different chin profiles may require more or fewer extrusions but 4 works quite nicely.)

Finally for this blog post, chose the original five vertices you created on the forehead (green box), adjust the vertices to suggest the structure for the eyes and extrude down once to the bridge of the nose.

We have the base head shape set up to add the main features of the face.

More to come,

griff :)