Eyeballs! I have eyeballs!. It almost slipped my mind that the character needs teeth! and a tongue. Also the hands need to align well with the forearm so I had to rotate it and realign vertices for deformation.
Most of these blog posts take time to post because I'm working on other things but as I make progress I can post a screenshot so I have added a 'Last Edited' date to my blog posts because I frequently update it by going back and adding more content.
When the hand rotates the vertices on the forearm move with it creating a twisting motion. The hand must be placed in a position where the palm faces downward and is flat. This is done for rigging the hand. It's the same reason why the character stands in a default position called the T-pose when there is no animation or movement.
I'm not spending a lot of time on the eyeballs because most of it is about shading which is another world of work that touches on color, shading, material, texture, and all about surfaces. This also has to do with hair and skin which are the most important because of the character.
For now I will focus on modeling the teeth and a tongue before I work on a hairstyle. I always want to jump immediately to the next thing but I end up finding things that need work before I move on. Deciding what to spend time on is difficult because If I'm not happy with the outcome of something then I will spend more time on it until I know it's what I want. Consequently spending more time on something doesn't always equal better results. I'm not afraid to trash something and start over if it's not good enough.
The smile is extremely important. It's like the soul of the character. At its most basic level giving a character life without personality is a smile. That's the challenge.
I started with some basic cubes that I shaped into teeth. I worked around the teeth to form the gums. Then I began editing the inside of the mouth and added a tongue.