Making BJD/ZBrush Confidence

I actually picked up blender for the first time and on my third attempt I got what is now my first ever bjd sculpt! You can see them here
The process isn't actually as complex as you might think it is. I went into this with very bare minimum blender experience, and I was able to come out with something I'm truly proud of! A good place to start is learning the basics of blender, but then you can move on to this amazing series which basically single handedly taught me everything I needed to know about making a character.

Of course these tutorials are for animation, so just sculpting is going to be a little bit easier on you. Instead its the joints you might have some trouble on but even those weren't too difficult to figure out.

I also made a small compilation of some blender tips for sculpting bjds when using the program for the first time in this thread so I hope that can help you too

Remember, the internet is your best friend! Whenever I had an issue most of the time the internet had a solution. One last thing, remember to always save multiple back up files! I can't stress that enough, every time I made a major change to my sculpt I would save it as a brand new file just in case I realized I made a mistake way back so that I can return to that older version. Trust me, it's saved me more times than I can count. Good luck!

 

I've never used zbrush but blender is perfect to start with, just pick a tutorial and have at it. And since it's free there's no reason not to try
You likely noticed already DoA has a separate section for doll making in the workshop, you can find my centaur prototype and many other doll projects there.

If you're curious how the finished product might look, there are some really cool free full BJD dolls on thingiverse that you can open up in blender (and print, if you want).

In blender I think it's most entertaining when making something and then animating it, because it usually goes wrong in a hilarious way. If you ever start feeling frustrated with the learning, try doing a different tutorial or something small and silly. It might seem completely unrelated but everything you do in the program is going to help with learning the controls, and you might find something new that you end up using a lot.
Have fun and google a lot!

 

I prefer sculpting in zbrush over blender, but both programs are good. I like zbrush UI a little more, though other people prefer blender's. Blender does have the nice perk of being completely free (and can do stuff like animation). Zbrush has the best discount (though still a big chunk of money) when they have zbrush summit, I think.

I didn't have a lot of sculpting experience (I took a class on Maya over 10 years ago and made a spaceship that looked terrribbbllleeeee. I've taken a few classes with clay sculpture but I was never super good with clay and that was also about 10 years ago. Save me, symmetry tool!!!!!). I am mostly a 2D artist.

I went from sculpting this potato to this doll head in a little less than a year. Just staying chugging with it instead of screaming that 3D is too hard and not trying again works.



I wanna sculpt a body next because not enough people making chubby boy bodies and I need one.