Going from a higher poly area to a lower poly area

[Ben.M]

So my model is too complex to do the re-mesh type of retopology, loses way to much detail in the mouth and in the fingers, so I am going to have to do it the manual way, and a part that is tricky is the going from a place like around the eyes (which has a higher number of polys) to a place like the cheek ( which has a lower number of polys). Is there any good advice for connecting the two without having too many xgons/ tris? or does it not matter that it is not all quads there? I could bring the lower poly area up the same number of edge loops as the higher poly one but that seems like a waste of topology. Perhaps I could re-do the eye using the faces already there from the cheeks. Any help would be great!

[ShapeLess_Stuff]

for me, i placed down all the loops around the entire models, like the neck, face, eyes, etc, then i just work from that and connect the loops together, adding more loops when i needed them.

Here are the references I used:

Hope that helps

[Ben.M]

Yeah that makes sense, I think it will most likely just come down to practice. Those reference images will come in handy, thanks!

[NP5]

The old 2.7 archived course has a ‘proper’ modeled head that covers the topology aspects well. As that is how you build the starting point for later fine tuning by sculpting in that workflow.
Section 8 Lecture 211.
Old 2.7 course directions.

There is another style of building the shape loop by loop and filling in the gaps.