I got just a little farther on the mannequin for this project. I am not moving quite as quickly as I thought I would. There are so many reasons for that right now that I think I’ll just skip the step where I ponder the why of it and move on to telling you what I did get done. And what I think I need to do for some parts.
I had the head shaped for the mannequin. Well basically shaped. I know it looks a little like a cotton swap. What can I say. It needs a little more refining. Not much though. Remember this is an art mannequin used mostly for reference for positionining and for proportions. I may need to increase the size of the head though. It’s looking a little small compared to the chest. And it may turn out that I need it larger for the rest of the proportions.
The rule of thumb I was taught so many years ago when I started drawing was that a person was about eight (8) heads tall. So if you stack eight of your heads one on top of the other then it would make how tall you are. I know a little gruesome. Sorry. Also, I was taught that from chin to brow of the face is roughly the length of your hand from the base of the palm to the end of the middle finger. As far as I understand it these are the basic proportion rules of the body that artists have been using for years. So they are what I will try to work with.
Now back to what I got done. Though I had the head roughly shaped I hadn’t made a good spot for the neck to fit into so I selected the point at the bottom and the set of points along the next edge loop and transformed them so the were up into the head area. I used the soft selection tool so that I could get more of a cupped look to it. By using the center point and the soft selection tool with a shorter falloff I was able to control how much got moved a bit better.
Once I had a spot for the neck section to fit in, I moved it over some to put it in place and then scaled it up. It turned out to be a little small. That was all the easy stuff.
I think it’s going to be easiest just to work top to bottom so next up is the chest. If you 
remember from one of the earlier shots, I used a cylinder to block in the chest.
It works for blocking it in but turns out not to work as well as I would like for actual shaping. For one, I forgot to add cap segements to the cylinders as I created them so without additional steps it’s pretty difficult to shap the caps and I need to do that. I need to be able to make the shoulder part of the chest a bit rounded on top and I will want to make an indent for the waist area as well.
So I created a sphere about the same volume as the chest cylinder and I will used that. First I Scaled it so that it looks a bit more deflated front to back. If you look at it from the top view it’s more oval looking. Then I selected the bottom half and scaled it in a little, and took out some of the deflate look. I want a bit of a rounder and skinnier lower torso area. I flattened out the top a little. I don’t what the mannequin to be totally round shouldered 
and I want a little indentation for the neck.
In this more zoomed out view it looks like the head is a bit small compared to the chest.
But it may be the right size over all because when I look at it zoomed in some they start to look about right. I’ll need to pull out the ruler at some point.
Here you can see where I’ve got a pretty good start on the basic shape of the chest.
After I got this far and started thinking about the next step I realized that I will probably end up swapping out all my cylinder pieces with spheres. I think I’m going to get better shaping control that way.
I need to get the waist moved up into the torso and add the proper indent for it and then I’ll swap the pelvis cylinder for a sphere and see how that goes.