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I would like to know why many CG artist sculpt the head and then the body?

I suppose many of them make the head first to then joint to the body or clothing?

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The head is usually the focal point of a character and is therefore the most detailed part.

The head is often sculpted separately to allow for higher subdivision/detail when sculpting, before retopologising, although with dyntopo this isn't so necessary. Many artists may also want to focus on the head to get a good feel for the character/get the character right before continuing with the body.

It is worth noting that this isn't always the case, from what I observe its usually personal preference. If I start with just a head its usually because I was doing a quick bust and decided to turn it into a full character because I liked where it was going.

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  • $\begingroup$ whenever you can create the head first then you can decide what kind of clothes the character would have? with the head and neck consider the topology, if the character is naked , the topology is different , if the character has a jacket or some kind of armor , the topology might change , right? so that is the way the artist might create the head first , and study the neck area to join to the body mesh in case the torso, would be naked chest or armored chest (body ) $\endgroup$ – Reifus Rufus Jan 4 '17 at 0:20
  • $\begingroup$ Mostly artists will sculpt and model without worrying to much about topology, and once they have settled on the final shape, retopologise to fix things. In general with clothes, you still want to at least roughly model then shape of the body underneath, which may or may not be a separate mesh. Clothes are normally initially modelled as separate meshes as it tends to be more natural (they are separate objects after all). $\endgroup$ – Sazerac Jan 4 '17 at 0:39
  • $\begingroup$ so, if the clothes are separate meshes, not necessary to join them as one object? If I would like to rigging the character , for example a soldier. $\endgroup$ – Reifus Rufus Jan 4 '17 at 1:12
  • $\begingroup$ It depends what the model is used for. Some game engines may require it. Usually the meshes are joined after initial modelling and sculpting, during retopology (you may want to read up on this, there should be plenty or resources floating around, try blenderartists.org/forum/…) You might also want to look at a full character creation tutorial of some sort for help. $\endgroup$ – Sazerac Jan 4 '17 at 1:25

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