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Many of the best-looking sculpts I've seen don't use the smear tool at all, just stamps with varying blend (remember you can't blend with smeared shapes).

I have to say, all of my earliest experiments and practice was with the Dual Shock because the Moves were frankly intimidating, and now that I've learned the Moves, it's unbearable to go back. Seriously. I use the DS4 for dealing with timelines, logic and tweak menus, and the odd super-close really fine-tune sculpt tweak, but I keep the moves nearby and I'll switch back and forth that way.

Also, the learning curve was really steep with those. I got flustered a lot early on, and the sheer amount of button-combo adjusting you have do to navigate your tools while moving your controllers in 3D space became utterly overwhelming at times. There were many moments through the beta where I just wanted to throw them and howl in frustration. This never happens anymore - It's become second-nature.

Part of that hurdle is mastering imp scale (clicking both moves on either side of an object that's roughly the size you want to "be") and then by doing a repetitive "ratchet-wrench" grip-and-rotate action to rotate either the camera or the object you're working with. The other common action is using both moves to pull yourself along a certain distance (like the "ladder climbing" in the tutorial). It feels weird at first, but it becomes second nature with practice, and this is used in conjuction with imp-scaling to navigate anywhere super fast. I know we're talking about sculpting, but mastering your camera is a huge part of sculpting because of the nature of working in 3D.

With the DS4, I rely heavily on gripping with the R1 button and rotating and zooming that way, but it feels far less powerful than the Moves, and still often frustrates me.

Also there's the entire concept of sculpting with shapes, tweaking your stamp forms, and using subtract to carve into shapes. I still sometimes just don't know how to functionally get a certain shape. Some of the "segment" options you can use can help this. And there's the "hole" option. So segment a sphere and you have a dome or a lemon-wedge quarter. Add a hole to a cylinder and you have a ring or a wheel in one stampable shape. Lots of possibilities.

Here's my advice: Put down smear for a while and experiment with using Stamp to create some simple sculpts by creating custom stamp forms (try tweaking your shape with form, segments, and holes before you stamp it). I practice by just sculpting stuff in my room. My camera. A bottle. A beer can. You'll get used to seeing the shapes that MAKE UP an object, and imagining how you would combine them and carve them to create an object. Go slowly and take your time getting one simple object just right.