Redirecting edge loop

First, start with a positive thinking. This may sound like a cheap advice but if you think negative about yourself, you run into the vicious circle of a self-fulfilling prophecy (see also my post here). Your question is very general but maybe the "Mesh Modeling Bootcamp" by Jonathan Lampel (which I haven't followed yet but definitively will do) can help you, especially this lesson:

https://cgcookie.com/lesson/edge-loops-poles-and-edge-rings

For redirecting edge loops, I find the edge rotation technique often very usefull but I also have to try things out. If you have a question concerning a specific problem, post your file or a screenshot here and I as well as other people can have a look on it. I wish you all the best. And don't give up 😀!

thank you for your reply !

it's the course i choosed to follow, he seems to talk about it often in the course so yeah maybe at the end i'll get better at it.

yeah it's not the first time i give up blender this time i'd like to stick to it !

thank you again  for your help Ingmar Franz !

Hi bryandu83 also try this: https://cgcookie.com/course/introduction-to-retopology

And it really comes down to practicing a lot, struggling at first, but it will become easier..

What I tend to do when I have trouble re-directing an edge flow, to fill the problem area with an N-gon and the use the Knife tool to 'draw' the edges which I know I will need and then connecting the surrounding. Like duerer said: edge rotation can also be very helpful and CTRL+J to connect Vertices in combination with X > Dissolve Edges.

Remembering always that the edge flow goes from one edge of a quad to the opposite edge and stops at triangles or n-gons.

Depending on what you're making, it may be good practice to "draw" the "flow" you want over an image or on the model.  That way, you can easily erase and redraw how you want your topology flow to go before jumping into the modeling.

It will take a lot of practice to get into the thinking, too.  It helps me when I'm modeling to double check every so often how the topology is flowing and to see if I built it the way I wanted it.  

It's okay.  There will be a lot of flubs and struggling at first, but you're learning and trying things, and that's okay.  It's okay to fail as long as you learn something from the process.

thank you very much both !

i know it takes time and it's about practice, some people are having fun creating stuffs even if they don't know exactly what they are doing, and i think it's the best to get better, but i'm a person that like to understand before doing, because i'm always scared to make shitty art, so i do course and courses, it's called "deliberate pratice" i think in english ? but i never make my own stuffs because i'm never confident enough and then i get discouraged and stop because deliberate practicing is not the funniest stuffs.

my purpose is being able to create a manga type character that i can animate or pose and make cool artwork with it... i think i'm kinda good at sculpting because i'm a 2D artist so i have little anatomy knowledge and i don't know, sculpting is something that didn't take time for me to feel good with it. But then have to work on the retopology, texturing, rigging... and all those stuffs are more technical and i can't learn them all together to don't get lost.  eventhough i have already some basics about uv and texturing, to me the biggest part is good topology, it's a nightmare for my brain, but i will work to get used to it.

thanks again for your help !! i won't give up ^^

I find it most helpful to think of edges in terms of North and South (top and bottom pair) and East and West (side to side pair) it is then easier to fill in the information as to which direction my edgeflow is going and which way do I want it to flow...

then you employ the already stated techniques of how to change the flow...

one last item might be to take control of edge flow by removing a face or faces that need to be rearranged, that would be accomplished by selecting the face/s then "x/delete face"... (I find it easier to see what needs done with a clearer designation of the problem) then when edges are sorted out it's easy to put faces back in

I completely understand the fear of creating something of your own.  After all, you put a piece of yourself into the work, and you want it to be good.  But I also encourage you to face that fear.  It's very, very easy to follow a directed path because you have something to compare your progress against.  It takes a lot of courage to be afraid and say, "Screw it, this is what I want to make," and make it.  There are many, many bad sketches, models, artworks I made that I don't show anyone, but those bad experiments allowed me to learn and practice something new and made me better.  Go, make something, and learn from it.  It's a marathon, not a sprint.  We are all learning here, and it's okay to make mistakes.  You got this.

Yeah, i had this fear for 2D art too, i tried to learn everything (perspective, value, anatomy...) before doing my stuffs and it was quit boring to do courses and courses and never draw stuffs that i want ^^ and yeah we learn a lot more in perspnnal project, i think because there is passion in it and we face problems that we have to search to fix, it's too easy to follow tutorial i know ! I will try my best to fix this habit. yes good 3D artists are doing this for years, i should not rush and try to have fun! thanks !

Thanks Mark, yes this could be a good trick !

and i feel the same too, when i have lots of edges everywhere and i have to fix something, it's always easier to delete them and build them again in the correct way than fixing the old one. it get messy and my brain can't figure out sometimes so deleting is a good option. i realised this too xD