Part 2 Beginning The Head

Ok, so you've got your image planes set up and are ready to go? Then we may begin modeling. Make sure you're in Polygon mode, since you won't find most of the tools I'm going to use in Animation or Surfaces, or anything like that. We'll start at the side view. It's usually best to work in the orthographic views and use the perspective view to check the results.

Detailed list of instructions below the video.

Details

• Go to Mesh: Create Polygon Tool. Starting at the front of the neck, trace up and around the profile of your head. There are two things to remember while doing this.
  
  1: keep the mouth open and make a mouth cavity. A lot of reference images may have a closed mouth, but try to estimate what it would look like if it was open just a little bit. If you want to animate it later, you'll need it this way.
  
  2: it's easier to start with a low poly object and add detail later, so don't worry about getting every nook and cranny, especially the mouth cavity, since you're going to delete most of it later.
• Ok, you've got a polygon silhouette of your head. This gives you a starting point for everything else. If you're anything like me you're going to need to go back and make some adjustments, since I tend to play it fast and loose, just to get the geometry started.
• Select the face (Right click Face, then select it) and extrude it.
• Switch to the Front View and pull the face to the side of the nose.
• Delete the two big inside and outside polygons, the long polygon on the bottom, and the mouth cavity except for the inside of the lips.
• Time to start on the mouth. Select the edges for the inside, top, and front of the bottom lip as well as the inside, bottom and front of the top lip.
• From the Front View, pull these to the corner of the mouth and scale it down to match the overall dimensions of the mouth.
• From the Side View, pull it back to match the corner of the mouth.
• Adjust the geometry to keep the inside of the lips pointed towards the center of where the mouth cavity will be, rather than just pointing straight back.
• Pull the top and bottom vertices on the front of the lips to the side, so their edges don't have any geometry between them.
• Use Edit Mesh: Append to Poly Tool to connect the top and bottom lips at the side.
• Now use Edit Mesh: Insert Edge Loop Tool to split these new polygons horizontally. Pull these new edges to the right and shape the geometry so the mouth has a corner.
• You can add vertical edges to the front of the lips now and round it out so it's no longer just a straight line to the corner of the mouth.
  
  (Around here I realized that my image planes still didn't quite match up, so take the layer off reference, move it up a little, and reset it.)
• You can also give the upper lip a little dip in the center, for the cupid's bow. The face I used has thin lips, so I didn't bother make this very pronounced.
• Now, select the outer edges (The ones that will be on the face, not inside the mouth) and extrude them. Pull these edges out to form a ring around the open mouth. Remember, the muscles around the mouth are concentric rings and you want to mirror that in your model.
• Select the vertices of the extruded geometry nearest the head outline and snap them to the appropriate vertex. (Press V and hold it as you move the vertex.)
• Continue extruding and snapping until you are one ring past the bottom of the nose. (It depends on how many splits you've got, which depends on the kind of face you're making) Do not snap that last, top vertex to the profile. Leave it loose. You'll need it to attach the nose later.
• Select the edges on the bottom half of your last ring, from the corner down. Extrude them, translate them down to the bottom front of the neck, and scale them down along the Y Axis to flatten them.
• Insert edge loops along the length of the new polygons and translate them to match up with the outline of the neck.
• Snap vertices to the profile. Be careful. If you snap them from the side view you may snap to the center line rather than the extrusion.
• Adjust the geometry from the front and side views to match the shape of the original head. This step varies from head to head, so you'll just have to play around with it until you like the way it looks. Check the perspective view constantly.
• When you snap vertices together, they're still separate. To highlight where these vertices are go to Display: Polygons: Border Edges.
• Drag select the vertices on the border edge and use Edit Mesh: Merge Vertices to seal everything up.
• Normals: Soften Edges.
• The normals are probably facing inward. Display: Polygons: Face Normals to check. If so, Normals: Reverse.
• Freeze Transformations and Delete History.