ZBrush begins..

Okay this is a late post but im at a.. 'milestone' so it seems like an appropriate time, a few days ago i started the zBrush sculpting and at first, found it quite hard, but that was trying to get the form and shape right, after that it began to get more easy, there was alot of experimenting going on, firstly i will explain the brushes i use, just so see if throughout the project i use more burshes less and stop using certain ones, currently i use:
Dem_Standard - i use this to make small indents but mainly use the pinch tool after whenever i have used this.
SoftClay - I use this a lot to add clay although  i also use Layers for the same purpose.
Layers - As stated above I use this brush to add clay the same as 'SoftClay'
Standard - this is normally used to add more form which i try to form into bone or muscle but haven't been used much (yet)
Pinch - As said i use this to make fine lines but pinching where i have used the 'Dem_Standard'.
hPolish - This is my most used brush, i use it on almost everything, to fix any mistakes i make and also give a smoother finish to the model, also i use it to make indents of a larger scale then the 'Dem_Standard'.
Smooth - I dont pick this brush but holding Alt makes this come on so that is why i have put it here,  use it to make hard and sharpe lines if needed more softer and not as inflated.

These are the brushes i currently use.

Now from what i know there are 2 ways to start the model, making a blob of the whole body to get the form and then adding detail to certain areas or starting with one area e.g. the head and creating that then forming the rest.
I picked to start with the second one, creating the head first, this i believed would make it easier as i would be starting to use a new software and trying to get the whole body perportions right, i believe this was the right choice as the head was hard enough to get into the right choice. I have encounted some problems within the model but that will be explained and show later, firstlt here are screenshots of my model this far.

3RD Person

Front

Side

Back

I am proud of where my model is currently at, although i know i need to add mroe detail and i would have been further through it but i had a problem with the ponytail. the problem is shown slightly in these photos.

It might not be apparent in these photos but i hit a problem with the polys on making the hair, I attempted to create a long ponytail (longer than shown in the printscreens). The problem was that the faces of the polys became visable when i got closer to the tip, after dividing it again it didnt help much so i divied again, this time a pop-up came up about the max limit of polys set, so i had to change how many, but after seeing how many polys had been used i didnt want it to be that limit so early into it, the poly count was over 1million. I believed this to be too much so didnt save and tried using other brushes like layers and move but didnt have any success so i tried a different approch, this was to add another later, create a cone and sculpt of that, I didnt printscreen this because of how the problem as, what happened was that the cone was inside my sculpt, so i tried to move it and it moved everything, the cone and my head. So i hid the layer of my sculpt and tried moving it but whenever i made the layer visible it was still inside the cone and couldnt get around the problem so I ended up rage quitting and watching YouTube videos :) although the YouTube videos started off with me looking for tutortial on how to do it and came across something called 'Fibermesh' I didnt do anymore research into this and just tried to add more detail to the form and wait until college to ask Drew or Simon on how they beleive i could make a ponytail.

 

I beleive i should explain the changes i have made to my model and also what did/didnt go to plan. So here is the 3RD person view of my model and will explain what i changed and anything else relevant.

 

Okay firstly I will speak about the form. At first I found it hard to get the shape of the head how I wanted it. Originally i believed we would have started the physical sculpt first which would make the zBrush work easier becasue i would know what it would/should look like. The bone on the head was quite easy, i was able to get the form although the first time i had it moved too far from the mouth but that was easy to change, the first detail i added was the teeth and since have only been touched once. I also had a design flaw; this was that my creature isn't going to have eyes but has eye sockets in his skull. Drew pointed out that i can make it out to be something other than eye sockets which i plan on doing but having thought of an idea yet, i was given the idea of nostels but I created one of the small horns on his head into a nose so that idea doesnt stand anymore. The area i have changed the most on the model is the back side bones, the bones near his eye sockets, here i had imagined the bone on the top and side to fade into the skin, so to create it to look like that was a struggle as the bone on the jaw is easier to notice, and then sometimes the clay built up too much and made the side look extremely wide. I have tried to add some from from dones and muscle, around the horn and nose, gave the lip more defination and also gave bone structure around the eye socket.