OC Character 3D Modelling With Edge Loops

I decided to screen cap my way of going about it. I couldn't find stuff all tutorials about it and the ones I did find were for really old blender which only lead me to being confused. Instead I just went and learned Maya and 3ds Max edge loop tutorials, finally found a few decent speed modelling on anime heads and got a grasp of various ways to model 3D Anime heads and my odd semi-realism anime head. This has been hell and a half trying to apply 3D to my art style >_> Personally I like the box modelling method the best but my heads keep coming out with horse face syndrome at the moment XD Practise though should fix that in time. Anyway... Feel free to pinch/ use the reference images in this journal. If it helps you out then awesome.

Now next to the name of your image is a little downward arrow. Click that to collapse. This is so it doesn't get confusing. Once you have done that. Click Add Image again and add your side view. I want to add the right side view since that is what I am most comfortable with modelling but you can add the left if you like. Same process only where it says all, select "Right Side". If you press 3 you should see your side view reference image. What to change is marked in red again.


From here, go to the modifier tab. That's the icon that looks like a wrench. Select Mirror Modifier. While there also tick clipping. This will join the middle verticies together. There shouldn't be any funny business. Also while there click the three dotted icon that makes a triable to enable the wires to be viewable on the other side. This will enable us to adjust the other side as will with mirror modifying. Marked below is the things to enable.Try to keep your front view verticies as closely aligned to your side view eyes. This will help keep your model smooth and even for later. Try not to do to many faces since you can use the subsurface modifier later. I prefer to use it if I have to but I like to work low poly. I want a smoother look already so I am going to press "a" to select all, then go in the menu on the right and where it says shading, press smooth. Some don't like to do this so early but I do because I feel I can see flaws easier. I like to switch between flat and smooth as I go.
Where the ear is, extrude up and below. This will be our marker of where we want to stop out forehead and jawline edge loop. Continue the edge loops around. The top of the head and along the jaw line. The top of the head loop when you get there, try to make it as many faces long as what's alread on the front of the face. If it's not, that's ok I'll describe how to delete and adjust. No triangles though. Be careful and mindful of how it will line up later.
Mine don't add up just yet. I have less rather than more. The reason for that is because it's easier to loop cut than it is to delete too many faces. "Less is more" ^w^
Select the edges under the eyes or the edge from the nose bridge and extrude upwards. Rotate and move the edges or verticies around to start making the eye shape. Use your reference and some guess work on how you think that would look. Select the edge on the outside to the bottom of the inner eye. This is where we'll start a new edge loop for the eyes. When you get close to the end, select the two corner verticies and press Alt+M to merge. I marked in red where I joined my verticies.
Because it's slightly anime style there aren't as many eye edge loops to do as you would on a realistic head. But there's more work to be done on the eyes yet. Only add extra loop cuts where necessary. If you can use less faces than I have the better because it will be simpler and easier to manage. So lets have a look at it so far.


Do your best to keep the topology as clean as possible the whole way. This is the part I personally hate because it's tedious and quite a challenge. Left click and put the 3D cursor on the center of the lips. Shift+A and add another plane, scale and rotate, push to the front where the lips are. Don't do anything to deselect it untill it's approximately where you want it or at least in front of the face way from your current mesh. Don't want to do anything to get it lost in there. You should then end up with something like this after you resize it.

Select the edges and extrude for the bottom lip. Align to the lip shape you desire. Similar to the eyes, there needs to be an edge loop around the mouth. This will help give the lip shape and eventually join nicely to the nose and cheek. Extrude the lower lip half first and try to align the verticies to the jaw line. You may have to cut faces if you need to. It should look similar to this.
Now complete the edge loop for the top of the lip. And there it is, the first mouth edge loop. To neaten things up you can go ahead and join the jaw line.
Select the two edges from the nose bridge and extrude them down. Join them to the top of the lip skin area. Shoul look similar to below. Just like the lip corners pinch in the corners of the nose. I like semi-realism anime style so my nose is fatter at the the bottom than most anime 3D heads but it's still a small nose and my lips are much bigger at the moment but I may change that later. If you do your lips thin and small a thin nose shouldn't be to hard to do with this technique. Just keep trying. Use the top view to really see the nose take shape as you model. Don't just rely on the side view and front view alone.
The area I joined is going to disturb my topology so I'm going to cut it with "K" and delete the triangle leaving me with this. Now I can fill in the cheeks.

You can see I've slimmed down the nose. After fixing that one quad the face is filling out nicely. No matter the eye or lip shape, edge loops are important. I had to learn that one the hard way. Below I turned on and off smooth shade. I also misjudged and had to put in a few edge loop cuts.

To further neaten I removed a few loops and joined the faces, lowering the poly count and making the face take shape better.