[FINAL, FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #7 (Apr 11, 2018): Thanks to those of you who have responded to the Questionnaire. The feedback is extremely helpful. If you haven't responded yet and you participated in the class - or even if you didn't participate - please fill that out and I will gift you 20 Breath of the Wild screenshots from my Switch.
[FINAL] CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #6 (Apr 9, 2018): We've reached the end of the homework extension period and this class officially comes to end. What a month! It's been a thrill to see each of you forge your characters, learn new things, share tips with each other, and offer critiques along the way.
This thread will be open indefinitely but it's officially at the end of it's "class lifespan" meaning I won't be able to commit weekly time to it anymore and I will unpin it from the forum topics list. I'll pop in occasionally if I see activity but you all are more than welcome to keep working on their characters here if you wish!
UPDATE: Closing post on page 44 and XP has been added to each participating account.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #5 (Mar 28, 2018): Week 4's stream is archived and available via the Past Events button on the Live Event page. Also a reminder that I'm extending the 'deadline' of this month and will be keeping this thread alive through the end of the first week in April. Hopefully that gives you all a bit more time to get your characters done!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #4 (Mar 26, 2018): Week 3, done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. I'm quite impressed by the neutralization and retoplogy work I've seen. It's a lot of work and I can see that effort in the WIPs and especially completed submissions.
Week 4 - the final week - dives into adding color to our model, primarily in the form of creating textures. Check out this week's breakdown a little further down in this description and see you tomorrow at the Live Event!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #3 (Mar 19, 2018): Week 2 is accomplished and I'm finally caught up on submissions! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. We have some impressive character concept sculpts underway. In fact, I have yet to bestow a grade lower than an A this week.
Week 3 continues our 3-week character building production. Specifically we're going to look at pursuing an animation friendly version of our character - both how and why we would do this. See you tomorrow at the Live Event! Don't forget to RSVP.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #2 (Mar 12, 2018): Week 1 is done! Thanks to everyone who submitted by Sunday. It's been a lot of fun seeing your caricature work and concept art choices.
Week 2 begins the 3-week process of building a character based on the concepts we choose. Don't forget to RSVP to the Live Event tomorrow - See you then!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #1 (Mar 5, 2018): Class is in session! Today officially begins the BC2-1803 class. Please check the syllabus below for Week 1's focus and assignments. Begin watching the pre-recorded courses if you haven't already and begin looking for a cool, stylized character design for creating in 3D this month. The first Live Event is tomorrow at 2pm EST - SEE YOU THERE! 😎
Welcome to the CGCookie Class: Creating Stylized Characters with Blender! This class is designed to teach you everything you need to know about building stylized 3D characters. If you’re diligent in watching all content and hitting homework deadlines, by the end you will have a modeled and textured stylized character! It’s an intermediate-to-advanced class which means you’ll do best by having some experience with Blender and 3D modeling before committing to this class.
This is the second "Class" format where Citizen members are invited to focus together on a particular topic/skill for a month. Participation looks like this:
WHEN? The class will take place from March 5th through March 31st
Abstract: Stylization is any deviation from realism. Thus it’s a broad spectrum from slight liberty away from reality to extreme abstraction of reality. This week we're going to sift through various examples of stylized characters, noting their qualities, and categorizing a spectrum of stylization.
Goal of the Week: Train your eye and mind to stylize your perception. Practice simplifying and exaggerating reality. Loosen up your sculpting approach (gestural sculpting).
Pre-recorded course to watch: Art of Sculpting: Caricature Chapter
Week 1 Live Event (Already happened and archived!)
Homework:
Abstract: Story plays a big part in stylization. Not necessarily ‘narrative’ but background, personality, and purpose. The success of a character is strengthened by its developmental arc. The best artists create characters that are more than the sum of its pixels; more than the sum of its brush strokes and polygons; more than its final render.
Goal of the Week: Develop a story for your character; one that can fuel your creative workflow for the rest of the month. Then channel that story into the first stage of sculpting.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 2 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: At this point a decision needs to be made about our character sculptures: A) Leave it as a sculpture or B) optimize it for ‘production’. Leaving it as a sculpture means it’s a static sculpture that can be painted, rendered, or 3D printed but not animated. Optimizing it for production means you turn your sculpture into a model that’s easiest to work with up to and including animation. If you opt for optimization, this week is mostly a technical and problem-solving task. We need to both retopologize our mesh and also neutralize it if the sculpt is posed.
Goal of the Week: Understand the concept of “production-friendly” and practice retopology.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 3 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: Like Dorothy, our characters have so far lived in a black and white world. This week we’re leaving Kansas and adding color. There’s many methods for creating our character texture(s) including hand-painting, baking maps that accent the painting process (great for the less painterly character artists), as well as photo-sourcing. There's also a couple different formats: Vertex Colors and UV/Textures.
Goal of the Week: Get comfortable with painting textures.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 4 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
This thread is reserved for CG Cookie Citizens that are participating in the "Creating Stylized Characters with Blender" class. Its purpose is to serve as central communication for all participating Citizens (excluding Hobby plan Citizens) to ask me and each other questions and to post homework. As the instructor of the class, I will be monitoring this thread on a daily basis (especially Mon-Thurs) throughout the month of March to review homework and answer questions.
Free members are welcome to observe the thread but please respect that communication is reserved for Citizens.
Sorry for the late reply 
purpleant - I've got some catching up to do in this thread. I like your character bust! It reads quite true to the art and the hair is well done; really helps to sell the likeness. Only thing I wish was there was some color to represent the eyes and soe geo for the teeth/tongue. Those seem important to me for establishing full likeness.
Is this part of your week 2 homework; the conceptual sculpt?
While I agree that this doesn't feel overly exaggerated, I totally see Jean Luc Picard in there. The squinty/slanted eyes are great, the forehead slope into the nose feels recognizable, the expression, the hair... Nice job getting a likeness without exaggerating much. I agree with Grady's note about the jaw line missing the corner(s) below the ears.
In achieving a good likeness but without much exaggeration, you've earned a solid B+ in my book 👍
This thread is getting lonnnnng. It's [painfully] obvious that we need a custom system for classes to be built into the site ASAP. Perhaps a thread per week.
Thanks for dealing with the 'beta-ness' of the current system. Suggestions are very welcome for what the official system could be.
And thanks for the assist with the timely answers 
stonewing 
oboshape mmalhomsi 🙇🏻♂️
Solid feedback from Matt. Even for a WIP sculpt, I think you're very much headed in the right direction. The crooked smile, generally round, potato-like head, big eyes - they're working well imo. I honestly think if you just continue to flesh out all the pieces (glasses, hair, ear details) it'll be a solid caricature.
A blacksmith and a well-known dancer - now that's a father to inspire us all! Nice work with your character's story 
silentheart00. It's evident to me that you really stepped into her world; got into here head. I hope this exercise has deepened Kilyn for you.
My one critique is not having a concept image to accompany the story!
ddarrinalder My suspicion is that you're not the only one wondering about the posed concept sculpt -> retopo & neutralize workflow. I'll take some time to explain that better during next week's stream.
Basically, this approach is what I learned working at Reel FX as a character artist. The crux is that to get approval in 3D from the art director/director, it's best to sculpt a super-authentic iteration of the 2D concept first. Then the art director/director can most clearly understand the 3D version, rather than interpreting a neutral 3D version. Once this initial 'concept sculpt' is approved, the technical phase of retopo and neutralizing (which the director/art director doesn't care about) can be executed. Oh and the concept sculpt by itself is typically much faster than sculpting neutral + retopo + posing.
My plan with my John Dunn concept sculpt is, once finished, I will focus on neutralizing the least extreme side of his body into an A pose (this will be his left side) Then I will retopo that neutralized side with a mirror modifier. Then possibly, for a final showcase render, I may quickly rig and pose the retopo'd model back into the original art pose.
swikni I'm glad the pose is feeling better! Yeah, it was definitely awkward starting out. I've learned that just being patient and trusting the workflow, in time the pose (and everything else) usually turns out ok.
Being diligent to address every part of the character, adjusting each part according to the art (also filling in the gaps by posing myself) and eventually I'll take a step back and think "yesss, it's coming together!"
Taking a quick break on my sculpt to take a look in here now that I'm home :D
As for my story for my character, he's an older, medieval style knight. After losing his family to what appears to have been a dragon attack, he began a career hunting them down. At long last, he thinks he has tracked down the dragon responsible. But years of battle have left his armor dented and his face and body scarred. When he finds the beast, he intends to slay it, but a curious gesture by the magnificent creature has him rethinking everything that he has been through.
Noooooooo...my heart hurts for you, mmalhomsi. So no autosave salvation? .blend1 .blend2?
Today's WIP of Mr. Dunne:
I've had to take some artistic liberties with the mask. It just didn't work the way it's drawn in the art, but I'll talk more about that on Tuesday's stream. The coat, and cloth in general, takes a long time to sculpt for me. I also had to figure out what the coat tails could be doing in the back.
But I feel that I'm over the hill with the sculpt overall, just need to polish off the waist area, arms and hands. Oh yeah..and the man purse..and the bunny mask...forgot about those.
that lovely ! i see that u r still avoiding hands ;) how much time u spend on it till now sensei ? and if u dont mind i have a question : i choose a concept that is not mine , and even if i aiming to keep my sculpt as faithfull as i can to the concept , my own style just pop out ( couldnt salvage any auto save by the way ! ) is that ok .? is it a artistic liberty ?
Hey, I had a similar problem a few days ago, turns out blender saves every 5 minutes to the TEMP folder, I hope it is still there!
Woow it's looking so good already! Kent in your last post you said you separated the head from the body and added a mirror modifier to get the facial features correct. I need to do that too, but my character's head is tilted and not facing straight forward, i think yours is too so how did you set the mirror modifier to mirror correctly?
BC2-1803 Homework Submission Week 1
Here it is, late and not particularly polished. I may come back to it, but if I'm going to participate I need to catch up. It's supposed to be Arnold; I was never quite able to capture the likeness, and eventually couldn't really see where to go next, so feedback appreciated. No internet at home yet, so I had to take a picture of the screen with my phone.
For my character, I am pulling from a book that I have always wanted to turn into a film (Till We Have Faces). I am choosing the priest of Ungit. Basically, I will be using pictures of Dhalsim from Street Fighter as concept art and trying to age him a bit and make him more gaunt and emaciated than muscular. Then give him some ceremonial garb that would befit ancient Anatolia and this bird mask:
I love how the silhouette of the coat resembles a fox tail. It reinforces the fox motif in my mind.