The next skull is very similar in design but jawless. https…

Good rendering 😎👍

hard/soft edges:
https://bico.media/296ff189e2bfae535cddd9950878a5af36d6ef6040f17729f6174c32ce502791

Anatomically speaking when you remove the jaw from a skull and rest it on a flat surface the eyes look down. Our sculpture cant be looking down. I ended up elongating the upper jaw and rotating the face to look more up. No screengrabs from that stage :(

I tried to maintain the style established in the first skull, hard/soft plane changes.
https://bico.media/c96b0abe8fc702e5330fe0d5fe958c43a6aa12f97250a1ed61b5879aedb0f3fc

I often tested several materials in Mudbox to ensure no modeling oddities were missed, this one had nice specular effects, generally looked cool :)
https://bico.media/85da4e11a10eb77effe693ea051eb41e033e262e3d21030172b90293a23af2cf

Yes, the mandible does a lot of work (aesthetically as well as physically) for our appearance & function of form. The maxilla serves as a keystone around which the mandible & eyes may leverage to move. Keep up the Great Work!

One of many notes to the carver using their sample:
https://bico.media/21ad1b49473a7b0760d552cdc39662cbd8374f5f07eb2df07f84c344f7bc0446

Aaahh! I did find this variation on the 'jawless' looking down, a sample produced by the carver using the initial (with jaw) model. We couldn't have that.
https://bico.media/1e20f2e4fa49b11c459c151d223ae518ff28e023c6f3a1eb20295bed12b080ca

final product, carved
https://twetch.app/t/c2eff4bbec645567fe5736226e5780eae25233884129e36010a304834b8feb5b