The video I used wasn't a tutorial, but a timelapse. What I did, was follow along with every step he took and move he made in the video. I wrote down all the steps I took in a Word document of 2,5 pages and to really capture the process, I made 44 screenshots while sculpting Poliwag. 

I added a UV Sphere and sculpted that a little bit. I mainly used the Grab Tool for the entire sculpt, and a little bit of the Inflate Tool and Flatten Tool. Then I added a line of Vertices, and used the Skin Modifier and the Subdivision Surface Modifier to create the tail.

After that, I added a plane and with the help of the Subdivision Modifier, I shaped it to look like Poliwag's tail flap. I then also sculpted one feet with the Grab Tool and Inflate tool, and duplicated it to the other side. I also sculpted the tiny mouth. After all that, I added a Solidify Modifier to the tail flap to make it a bit thicker. 

The eyes took a bit longer to make. I used the Mirror Modifier, which took a while to get under control. I then used the Boolean Modifier to carve out the eye sockets. Smooth that out and then place an UV Sphere into the eye socket to create the eye.

After some last small adjustments, it was time to give Poliwag some color. The person in the video used Vertex Paint to color in the Pokémon, but that didn't really work out, and I couldn't figure out why. So I decided to make a render, and send it to the teacher for feedback. 

The teacher really liked this little creature. He advised me to give it some color anyway, so it's even cuter. He also suggested adding some kind of platform underneath Poliwag, so you can see that it's floating. And I needed to make multiple renders of that with different camera angles. So that's exactly what I did.

To make the pupils black, I added in an extra UV Sphere and shaped it like the eyeball itself.

I think I learned quite a lot with this first sculpt. I discovered a couple tools, like the Grab Tool, and found a way to work with them. I also tried out a bunch of Modifiers, which I've barely worked with in the past. I used the Skin, Subdivision Surface, Mirror, Boolean and Solidify Modifier, which are quite handy for sculpting. I also used the XYZ-Mirror function, Proportional Editing and Remesh function a lot, which all made sculpting and creating objects in Blender a lot easier. I experimented a little bit with the lighting and camera angles, but not as much as I would've liked to. 

I did find the video quite hard to follow, I guess I should've known when searching for videos to follow. I couldn't even see which buttons he was pressing, so sometimes I didn't even know what he did, and missed out on some important steps, which caused some Modifiers to not work properly sometimes. That made it quite frustrating, but it's a learning point, and I'm gonna tackle my next sculpt differently. I'm still quite happy with the end result. Giving him some basic colors was a good tip from my teacher, it did indeed make Poliwag look cuter. 

By the time I finished Poliwag, I only had 1 week left. In the past 8 weeks & the Christmas vacation, I focused on the 3D Game Project, because I thought that would be most important. But the teachers cancelled that deadline, and I hadn't worked on my personal learning goal at all. So unfortunately I had to rush this project, but now I know what to do differently in the next terms.

Because I only had so little time left, I decided to switch up my plan. Instead of moving on to the 'medium' sculpt, I looked up some more of the easier Pokémon sculpts. I'm also gonna approach this sculpt differently. Instead of following along with the video and copying the video step by step, I firstly watched the entire video, took a few notes on how he made the Pokémon, and then tried to do the entire sculpt by myself, with the knowledge I gained from sculpting Poliwag.

Of course I captured the entire process step by step in a Word document of 2 pages, and took 78 screenshots while making Milotic. 

I started out with the head. I used the Grab Tool to make the snoot. In de video, the guy duplicated the head and then squished it to make the fin on top, but I figured it would be easier to just sculpt the fin out of the head with the Grab Tool.

I already had a plan in mind for the body/tail. I wanted to use the same Modifiers I used for Poliwag's tail. I had a little bit of trouble making the body/tail, because it was way bigger than Poliwag's little tail, and inflating the body to it's right size messed up the vertices. So I found another way to do it. 

I then started working on the eyes. For this, I used the same technique as with Poliwag's eyes: the Mirror Modifier. I finally figured out how it works, so I made the eyes. I did skip the Boolean Modifier, and just placed the eyes on top of the head, because for some reason that Modifier wasn't working right. 

For this next part, I wanted to combine both Modifiers I used for the body and the eyes, so the Mirror Modifier and the Skin Modifier. But I found out that you can't mirror a single line of vertices, so I decided to just make one and then duplicate it to the other side. I had trouble making the two objects flow smoothly into one another and make it look like a whole, but I also had that problem with the head & neck. I still don't really know how to do this, but it's not too bad.

Then it was time to work on those long, pink hair flaps. I figured the easiest way to make those, was to cut a circle in half, and then extract one half of the flat edge of the circle. I used the Solidify Modifier to make the plane thicker, just like with Poliwag's tail flap, and then curved it nicely around the eye. I duplicated it to the other side, and changed the direction of the flow of that piece of hair to lay nicely over Milotic's body. 

The last thing that was missing, were the tail fins. But that was easy to make, because I only had to make one, and then duplicate it a few times. For the smaller circle on the inside, I used Inset Faces, and then Extruded those faces outwards. I had to make the inner circle a separate object, so that it would still look good after using Shade Smooth. 

As an extra challenge for myself, I wanted to separate the body from the tail, so I could give them their proper color. I knew the body was very subdivided already, so it was pretty easy to make those triangle shapes for the border between the body and the tail. I used Mark Sharp to mark the border, selected the entire tail, and then Separated it. 

Just like Poliwag, I also gave Milotic some pupils, and then it was time to give every object a color. Then I used Shade Smooth on everything, gave Milotic a platform to rest on, added a light & camera and made some renders.

I found it quite easy to sculpt Milotic after gaining all that knowledge from sculpting Poliwag. I used all the same Modifiers, and used the same tricks like Proportional Editing and Remesh while sculpting her. I also thought it was pretty fun to experiment on my own and make Milotic all by myself without following a video step by step. I think you learn more from figuring things out yourself, and finding solutions to problems. 

One of those problems was the Skin Modifier, it was tricky to add such a thick layer of skin on this big of an object, but I figured out a way to do it by trial & error. The one thing I also still struggle with, is joining multiple objects and the making them look joined and flow into one another. For some reason that wasn't working with Poliwag, and I still couldn't figure it out with Milotic. 

Because the deadline was already very close, I had no time left to ask the teachers for feedback. But I used the feedback I got for Poliwag: add color, a platform for the Pokémon to stand on, and make multiple renders.

All in all it's been a good learning process. My goal for this term was to experiment with sculpting in Blender, and that's exactly what I did. And even though things didn't go as planned, and I didn't work on this project as much as I wanted, I'm still pretty proud of what I managed to accomplish. I found out that sculpting is actually quite fun, and I think I'm gonna continue making more silly little Pokémon in my free time. 

For the next term, I'm definitely going to have to switch things up a little bit. This was my first term in a DDM class, so I found out what works and what's important. And with the things I learned, I'm going to work even harder on improving my 3D skills for the rest of the year. I need to make a better planning, and work on both this personal project and the new project we have to work on in the next term. I also already know what I want to explore more of in Blender: good lighting. I want to improve the renders I make, and also experiment a lot more with the lighting, because I think you can make a render quite spectacular with the right lighting. You can also show different vibes with different lighting settings, so I want to explore that a bit more next term. 

...

Even though we didn't have to hand in this project, I'm still going to show some process pictures on this page, because I put quite a lot of work into it. I ended up with 51 low-poly assets, all colored in and I even drew a simple material for some of them. I was ready to build the game with all the assets I created, but then it unfortunately got cancelled. Looking back at it now, I'm pretty happy they cancelled it, because all the files of my game in Unity have completely vanished. But when I have some spare time left, I'm still going build my own little game with the assets I made.