3DTotal: Is ZBrush just for the finer details or do you do any of the major “sculpting” with ZBrush? And are you using Sub-divisional poly method in Lightwave? Do you cover these packages and techniques in your training?
Lee: I do all major sculpting in ZBrush 3, my technique for the
 
    static images I do is a constant swap between Lightwave Modeller/Layout and ZBrush with bags and bags of reference photographs, constant tweaking and sculpting to match reference plates and photo reference. I use Displacment mapping in Lightwave. All of those packages and techniques are covered in the tutorials and more.

3DTotal: If you could sum up the most important elements to get right in producing photo-real characters I what order would you place them?
Lee: The face shape and expression are very important. The eyes are the secret to fooling your audience. I have worked on models in the past that look lifeless until the eyes and most importantly eyelashes are introduced but the icing on the cake really is the hair, if you can pull that off your job is complete. Of course skin shading is important but that all depends on your lighting. I used to use a plug-in G2 to pull of realistic looking skin, it doesn't have real Sub Surface Scattering calculations is just mimics them and that has been great to use but now with LW 9.3 new nodal material system and the realistic built in Skin shader, it is a joy and so easy to setup up.

3DTotal : That’s a very interesting answer, makes a difference to the usual “it’s all down to lighting and texturing”, can you give us a little more information into your method for creating the eyes?
Lee: The eyes inherently are the simplest thing to create, basically just spheres with some fancy texture on but the trick is
    in scene setup, lighting, reflection, slight SSS and some tiny spec. In most of my images I tend to use area lights and flat luminous planes to help light the scene. The next trick is to get good looking eyelashes, this either makes or breaks the model, then the added thin layer of liquid between the eyes and eyelids finishes the model off perfectly, this can always be given the same material as the cornea of the eye, transparent and reflective. See the free model provided. You need G2 and FPRIME to render correctly.

3DTotal: I see you have started teaching others your skills and selling training material at http://www.infinite-tutorials.com, why have you decided to do this and what are the main benefits
students can hope to learn from your training?
Lee: I decided to start selling my work and some tutorials on line because I came to realise that it's now so easy to distribute learning material over the internet and I had been getting so many requests from artists around the world for advice and tips that I thought this would be a good way to share my experience and knowledge base. I realised there was an interested
    when I was receiving allot of attention over at CGTalk. A few threads I had started were getting over 100,000 views, so I figured it might be time to setup my own company and create the learning material myself. So far the interest and sales has been phenomenal, people from all over the world have contacted me and bought various things from the shop. Artists from Japan, India, Spain, USA even Australia and the customer base is still going, the shop is fully automated so all I have to do is create the content.