Shoulder!

This area receives the most stress of all the joints - it swivels in almost every direction! What a nightmare :)

Once you figure out how to build this area, it's easy!

I always begin the shoulder area by roughing in the torso first. In my mind, I need to establish two lines to build a successful shoulder:

- The magenta line represents the opening I leave on the torso to extrude the shoulder from

- The blue lines defines the bottom of the pecs, and flows into the bottom of the shoulder

Once I've established these two criteria, the rest of the shoulder simply falls in to place.thes

Below is a step-by-step of how I do it:

Step 1- Establish an area to extrude the shoulder from on the torso (odd number of sides). It's important to keep this shape neat and orderly, with verts spaced as evenly apart as you can get them (but don't forget about maintaining that blue line!).

Step 2 - Extrude once, and shape

Step 3 - Extrude again, and shape. You now have a basic shoulder structure to build upon, and build from! There's now a tidy opening where you can extrude the rest of the arm as well.