#001 Forsen

The Incident

Sometime in November of 2020 Sebastian Hans Eli "Forsen" Fors was banned. The reason for the ban, an image link sent by a viewer criticizing Forsens late Valorant obsession which in reality was a gif file featuring an explicit Horse situation.
Unfazed by this bait and switch, which is not unheard of for Forsens viewership being notoriously mischievious and all, Forsen removed the image as soon as it turned out to be TOS breaking content.

The explicit part of the gif was roughly present for one second, which resulted in him being banned for one month. At the time classified as an indefinite ban, this ban sparked controversy inside of the community.

Viewers and streamers alike wondered about the excessive duration of the ban, drawing comparisons to similar incidents where streamers have opened TOS breaking explicit content on their streams without facing public repercussions.
As Forsen was already banned twice earlier that year for rather bizarre reasons the progressive length of the ban made sense but due to the context of the incident, the community generally deemed the ban as excessive.
This incident was at the time frequently compared to others calling out Twitch for inconsistency and favoritism amongst their creators. "Context matters." was often ironically cited in this while assessing this situation.

Festival

Following Forsen ban his viewers we're left stranded.
Isolated and to each their own unsure of their streamers fate and after wandering various live broadcasts for a while, some of them have stepped up by creating a sanctuary in Twitchs' forgotten sections. Some playing games, some streaming content, over the long month of the platform suspension, the viewers entertained themselves and each other.

Witnessing this diversity of ingenuity, I came up with an idea of my own.
As a semi successful character artist I decided to do something in my element. Sculpting. I did likeness sculpts before, so I might as well do some now and on people that I derive entertainment now and again, for practice. They'll probably enjoy it if they see it and it'll be a great homage to them. Also, I could also reuse the heads as bases for prints and actual in game characters in the future. Something I always wanted to do.
And I'll start with Forsen as I basically watched noone elses but his stream ever since I discovered Twitch.

It'll be fun.

Setup

I started by gathering a bunch of reference photos of Forsen throughout his career as a live broadcaster and eSports professional. As the man is well known to be an antisocial person, keeping mostly himself, even way before the Covid situation developed itself, it was a bit difficult to get quality reference images of him, especially high quality ones.
So every time I discovered a semi usable picture, I was a bit happy.
Probably what a stalker feels like every day.

While scrubbing through the web, I also discovered a couple of cool pictures and put them on the reference sheet just in case they ever get removed for some reason. Additionally I added a couple of anatomy references but who cares about that here right?

Process

I dabbled in streaming and streaming tech a year before, so I already knew how to set up stuff and get things running. Didn't have any channel points unlocked yet because I wasn't a associate, which I hoped to get from this initial streaming push. Worked out splendidly in the end even with the circulating amount of fleeting viewers.
Now this enabled me to play around with all different sorts of integrations but the main thing is that I now have an infinitely scaleable voiceline component that plays stuff when something is redeemed.
->LioaranBoard

Not really worth discussing the nitty gritty of how I actually made the sculpt but I think it makes sense to break down a few key points. As this was my first sculpt in a while started from my favorite starting position. A ball. Massaged that until it somewhat resembled a head, remeshed it and starting from the lowest subdivision I moved the volumes around working my way up the resolution.
Once the proportions looked right I first added a couple of values around the eyes and the lips to make it all a bit easier to visually judge and added secondary details like wrinkles and stuff. At this point I also somewhat starting to break the symmetry. Nose, ears, eyes. And to completely honest, I also added the tertiary detail right then on layers. Unclean and all but you know what? Sue me. Placed it all by hand, using a variety of alphas gathered throughout the years.
As few things are right from the get go, I corrected some volumes along the way and also placed those on layers. Keeping stuff on layers makes it all less of a commitment. Can turn it on or off if you don't like it. Finally I rendered it all out as passes and comped it in Photoshop.
But that's about it. I think. Short and unprecise. If you got any further questions, find me.

Upload

I had a couple of ideas on when and how to publicize this. I did not really care if this was seen by Forsen or not, as in my mind I did it for practise. What I do wanted however was to start some sort of chain with this post, some method to get people to vote on subjects that I am gonna sculpt. The list of the people would be curated by me so I wouldn't need to worry about sculpting people that I dislike.
Putting this to a vote would mainly do three things. First, it'll give me an order on how to process this list of subjects. And second, it'll give fans some sort of choice and anticipation for a little bit of art and third, it'll peoples popularity against each other. A little contest, always pretty interesting. Not that it'll say anything about the actual popularity of the person, as I haven't thought of an actual plan to get people to vote on it. Only planned on plugging it with WIP posts on the respective subjects discord. Might think of something better along the way.

Results & Reflection

After posting and not looking at it a couple of days, I noticed a bunch of errors. Didn't hit the likeness very well when held to likeness standards and I needed to fix it. But you can't take back posts! So even though Reckful was the next subject, I decided to fix the likeness and expand on it, in a full body statue-esque sculpt for what has felt like months of a never ending cycle.

Click Here to vote on the current poll.
Click Here for full res pictures.