I would like to point out to people DamianFairus’ scene. Although he posted it after my own, it was his that inspired my rockwork. Simple yet effective: take a cylinder and stretch it apart.
I added on top of his technique my knowledge of loop cutting so that I would have more segments to play around with. Then I applied that to a sphere and made Mr. McTaggard’s beard. The lamp that I used in this project was a teaching lamp I had used to show him a few tricks for him to use for his own lamp: the same featured in his scene and his first modeling project.
This is the instruction lamp:
