A brief look at the modelling of my orcs head, and a nice in-depth look at how I did the UV mapping, and painted the different textures for his head.

Well, this is how I made the head for my Moria orc.

As with any project, I started off by getting loads of reference. I was originally going to make an Isengard orc, but in the end rather decided to go with a Moria orc simply because the Moria ones look a little grosser!
So I captured tons of frames from my Lord Of The Rings DVD and used these not only as a modelling reference, but also to grab colours and get an idea of what sort of qualities their skin has. However, because all the orcs we see in the Fellowship Of The Ring are, in fact, people dressed up in orc suits, it was a bit difficult to rely completely on these for texture reference, since the heads we are seeing in the film are actually just latex masks, although they are very well made ones. So I improvised a little here and there ;)