EQAnthem

Thank you for another amazing review.

It is good to know that I have executed the concepts of the 25 Textures to a solid degree, although there is obviously room for improvement per your critiques.

It is also unfortunate that I lost sight of the gradient section. I will have to review the contents before I do more texture studies.

Onto the 100 Treasure Chest Challenge!

Thank you for the reminders and information about the implicit textures. This is great information. The concept of designing the texture based on the reference was what I needed to hear.

I'll be sure to review them and make some progress on the 25 Textures Challenge before I really sink my teeth into Lesson 7.

Thank you for taking the time to look at my Lesson 6 submission. Your opening statement about dispelling unnecessary anxiety demonstrates your experience as a teacher. It is as you if you read my mind.

It bothers me immensely that my linework, an extremely important fundamental, is this unsatisfactory, especially since you made the same critique of my linework back in the 250 Cylinder Challenge. I believe the issue might stem from not spending enough time in the planning/preparation phases, as I do recall attempting to apply the ghosting method in the Form Intersections.

I will have to review the ghosting method, the concepts, and remind myself to apply them more deliberately in my warm up. I do draw boxes as warmup, but seeing the poor execution of subdivisions, I will have to increase their frequency.

Cylinders with parallel edges look like that because I tried to give little foreshortening to them, but instead made the aforementioned mistake.

I would like to explain what happened with the vitamin bottle, since you found it a little intriguing and the explanation might help someone else in the future.

This was the first drawing where I applied an orthographic plan and I put the plan on the face of the box. I found that putting the orthographic plan is fine for blocky/rectangular objects, but doing this with a cylindrical object caused problems. Primarily, it was difficult to estimate the vertexes of the ellipses if the orthographic plan was on a face of a box. I only have one vertex point I was sure of. To make sure I had more points to get the vertexes and the co-vertexes of the ellipse, I was forced to project the subdivisions of the orthographic plan to the other visible faces of the box. This combined with my poor execution of putting subdivisions in respects to VPs lead to me offsetting the cap with the rest of the bottle.

Putting the orthographic plan in the center plane of a box gave me much more confidence for centering components of an object. I applied this to later cylindrical objects: the coffee mug and the cartridge. This helped with the cartridge in particular, as the bullet looks concentric with the casing. Now I know that the edge points of the center plane of the orthographic plan are the vertexes, allowing me to better plan to apply the ghosting method to the ellipse.

Your comment about the milk carton cap is a revelation. Putting a box and then putting the cylinder inside would have helped make the cap come off perpendicular to the angled surface.

I am glad that I completed Lesson 6, but I cannot shake off this anxiety that something is fundamentally wrong, as if there are cracks in the foundations. Perhaps it is the aforementioned linework deficiencies that trouble me so much.

Regardless, I'll keep pushing on through Drawabox for experience and practice. Time to draw some wheels.

Thank you for giving me the advice to think about as I move forward and for the great amount of time and thought in this critique. The official critiques across the various lessons are gold mines to look back on.

Hi Uncomfortable,

Thank you again for another great official critique.

Apologies for wasting your time on critiquing such a poor submission. I will not make excuses. I did not see and notice the demo about the mouthwash bottle nor the mug demo which served to be an example of drawing clear curves. Thus, I did not meet the basic standard of making use of all the resources that is available.

I do not see the situation as cruel. Rather, I am greatly ashamed and disappointed in myself for how awful the submission was and for not fulfilling my responsibilities as a student. You opted not to cancel my submission but rather require a full redo because you care about the TAs who work at Drawabox and you have a genuine interest in the skill development of the students here. Ultimately, a full redo of this lesson, looking back at your critique, and reviewing the entirety of the Lesson 6 official material will be for my benefit in the long term.

A full redo of the homework is in order and this time I will select simpler objects to obtain more benefit from the exercises. I hope that my next submission will demonstrate proper understanding and execution of the Lesson 6 material.

Hi Uncomfortable,

It's nice to receive an official critique from the very creator of this course.

To clarify, I wrote "Good?" for 123 mainly because the true minor axis of the two ellipses aligned closely with the orignial minor axis. Having the ellipses be symmetrical and align with the intended minor axis was something I had trouble with and thus I thought I was making some progress when I saw the results of 123.

The parallel edges originated from my attempts to draw cylinders with subtle foreshortening. Due to inaccuracies with the ellipse, the edges became parallel.

I'll have to keep in mind marking the points for the sides of the cylinder for the ghosting method. I tried to apply the ghosting method for the cylinder sides, but the lack of explicitly defined points led to inaccuracies, hesitations, and wobbly lines as you've pointed out.

As for the boxes, the challenge was certainly making two opposite faces that are proportionally square. The back corner is a good litmus test to how well I did, since any anomaly arising from it is a symptom of incorrectly positioned corners.

I do have a question. One thing that I realized is that I can only draw boxes reliably using the Y-Method, which means I can only draw boxes where the viewer is looking at a corner. If I try to draw a box where I'm looking at an edge like this example, then I start to have trouble. Is this an issue and is there a method to drawing a box in that orientation? Perhaps I'm missing something simple like how I did with drawing explicit points to apply the ghosting method for the cylinder sides/ or something that the course covered already.

Thank you for the review. Hope the 250 cylinders fueled your life force. Every box and cylinder makes you stronger, after all!

Hi DIO,

Thank you for this additional information.

I will take more care in observing the length, direction, and flow of the fur in the future. I will also keep in mind how the fur interacts with the 3D form.

I knew I was forgetting something. Cast shadows play an important role in textures and fur is no different.

Hi DIO,

Good to see you again.

Key takeaways:

• Think more about line weight and shadows.

• No precarious forms in organic intersections.

• Ribcage needs to take more space.

• Look at reference a lot more.

• Sausage construction for legs.

• Add "internal" masses.

• Boxy forms to attach "toes" onto the paws.

• Smooth curves at the "corners" of additional masses.

• Additional masses and the original mass all spatially interact with each other.

• Pay attention to the pentagonal eye socket approach in the demos to see how it comes together.

One nagging question I have. How was the fur texture? Did they communicate implicitly that the animal had fur or was it distracting and didn't communicate the "furriness" of the animal at all?

Overall, I'm happy to know that I am doing well.

250 of "X" again. Here we go.

Thank you for your review once again.

Hello DIO,

Drawabox does it again with its great reviews. I'm glad to have such a thorough critique of my homework. It is also good to know that there is improvement and understanding of the material with nothing particularly alarming.

Key points:

• Draw through ellipses.

• Have more confidence with drawing the sausages.

• Better shifting of the contour lines.

• Be mindful of the marks that I make. Make marks that reinforce the illusion of 3D space.

• Use the outer lines of a loose ellipse.

• "Extend" off of the body with more 3D bodies/forms instead of drawing a 2D shape.

• Draw the sausage form once. Not twice.

• Sausages do not capture the full structure of the leg. Rather, they are the base where the details and additional mass arise from.

• For practice, draw the form in its entirety, even when it is behind another object. Use line weight to differentiate what is in front of what.

• For the textures, focus on the cast shadows. The color patterns are not a point of concern right now. Imagine if the subject was painted solid white or grey.

You are applying the 50% Rule the best you can and have the courage to share the results to the public. As Uncomfortable said, it is a tough rule to follow and I think many who go through Drawabox can agree, regardless of their experience or how far they are in the program.

NOT cringe at all!

I was not expecting such a great response, particularly the demonstrate you provided. Drawabox does not cease to amaze me with its quality.

So the solution was treating a single pod as a swollen branch and constructing it accordingly! That is incredible insight and I would not have thought of it that way.

As for the textures, I should tackle the 25 Textures Exercise when I have the time. Right now I am working on Lesson 4. Uncomfortable has informed me that I should spread these out on my own time and there is no "best time" to start. I will have to get started eventually. The extra depth from submitting the Texture Challenge for review sounds very promising. It is now a matter of practice and review.

Thank you for the great reply.