Character Creation - Blender Foundations: The Essential Guide to Learning Blender 2.6 - page 127

In the end, this multistep process creates a multipart character, with each part a separate object—head,
hands, and clothes—that actually forms the “body.”

Starting from a Base Head
As there are a number of “modeling a head from scratch” tutorials available on the Internet, I'm not going
to go into that here. You've already done a modeling tutorial, so if you want to do it from the ground
up, you'll be able to find and successfully follow one at this point. There is a lot of trial and error involved
in the process though, and in order to facilitate actually getting on with things, I've provided you with
the base head model that I've been using for years now. It can be found in the Web Bucket for this
chapter under the name base_head.blend .

There are two ways to begin working with this model. The first is to simply make a duplicate of the file;
call the new one something like my_character.blend and open it. This ensures you can begin to work on
the model without messing up the original. The other way is to Append the head model from the file
into your current Blender session.

To Append, use either the Shift-F1 key combination (it's like a modified open command) or select
Append from the File menu. The File Browser window (see Chapter 2) appears and lets you locate a
file. Locate the base_head.blend file and LMB click on it. Notice that in the Append view, the browser
shows BLEND files as though they were folders, not files. That is because in a way, they are. Each BLEND
file on your hard drive is really a browsable library of everything that is in that file. When you click on
the file, you go “into” it and see a number of folders like Animation, Group, Material, Object, and Scene.
We're looking for an object, so LMB click on Object . The only object available in that file is called
base_head . LMB click on it to select it.

On the left of the file browser, you will see a small options panel like the one in Figure 6.1 . There are
two ways to bring an asset into your Blender sessions: linking and appending. Linking maintains a link to
the original asset in the original file and limits what you can do with it. Appending just makes a new copy
of the asset in your current session. This is what we want, so make sure that Link is disabled (unchecked).

LMB click the Link/Append from Library button in the upper
right to add the head model to your scene. The base head is shown
in Figure 6.2 . One of the reasons that modeling a head from scratch
is difficult is that there are certain requirements for nice facial anima-
tion. The way the quads line up needs to match the alignment of
facial muscles in a real face, or it will deform unconvincingly. If you
enter Edit mode on the provided base head and begin issuing the
Loop Cut command (Ctrl-R), you will find a number of conspicu-
ously located loops—around the eyes, from the nose to the chin,
and around the mouth—all of which are highlighted in Figure 6.2 .

Using this as a starting point, it is easy to it it to your sketch or
reference pictures.

Figure 6.1 The Link/Append panel in
the ile browser.