Alias Maya is my current software of choice. Going from a lower end program to Maya is like being reborn. Going from Alias PowerAnimator to Maya is like a breath of fresh air. For such a "High End" program Maya is very user friendly and liberating. The amount of creative freedom it gives you is unreal. I never dreamed that I could model a human head like this one but Maya's NURBs modeler gives you superb control over organic shapes. There's really nothing you can't create and bring to life.

I modeled this head with some techniques taught to me by Carl Edwards and Jason Strougo. I then incorporated many of David Ratner's methods after reading his tutorial on the MayaRing. A mixture of both enabled me to produce the human head you see below. With blend shapes I then added phonemes and facial expressions. There's a really good tutorial about this on the Maya Assistant page. Click here to see it.

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