KiroCosmos

Reminds me of when you play an old school game that is really hard; back in the NES era you would gradually get better, but then you reach a point where you suddenly are kinda rubbish, which is just before you get really good.

I think it is you getting so used to ghosting lines that you are starting to subconsciously do it, which causes you to have a few hiccups. Work through the bad phase, or take a small break. Whichever seems best for you at the time.

I am assuming that we are just trying to establish rough ratios or perhaps measurement could be used to establish the orthographic views of some objects.

This is correct. The focus is not on accuracy, but rather precision - that means deciding what proportions you're going to aim for ahead of time, but not strictly requiring them to be entirely correct. There will likely be situations where you fudge things a bit - taking something that is 39/50ths along the length of a given dimension, and deciding to put it at 4/5ths for the sake of simplicity. As long as that is a decision you've made ahead of time, in your orthographic plan, then that's entirely fine.

They are by design fairly different exercises, with the form intersection vehicles just being an arrangement of primitive forms in the general likeness of a vehicle (but still just like doing the regular form intersections exercise), and the actual constructions involving starting with a bounding box, subdividing, etc. and then building up more specific forms within that structure with a focus on precision. So you really wouldn't be in a position to reuse them (although if you were, the only benefit there would be decreasing the workload, which also means getting less practice out of the lesson) - so no, you should not be doing that.

Hello, my name is WoodPanda, and I am one of the community members who will be critquing your work.

Let's start with Lines

Super Imposed Lines: Starting off with Super Imposed Lines, I can tell you are drawing them with a lot of confidence, and fluidity. Genreally in Drawbox we value confident markmaking a lot, so you did good on this front. However one thing I wanted to point out is you have fraying on the begining end of your line. Usually, marks splitting of at the end is normal, because it's hard to keep a consistent trajectory, but we should always have our pen at the same starting point.

Ghosted Lines: You are placing points and using the ghosting method which is a good sign. It also seems your marks are confident are for the most part straight. It seems like right now you are at Level 2. It is smooth, confident, and mostly straight, but sometimes you miss your point. This is of course expected, and as we do more extercise like theese we build up are ability to be accurate, but remeber confidence always comes first.

Ghosted Planes: You are placing dots, and using the ghosting method, so that is a good sign. They are confidentally drawn, and I see no wobling. One thing I do want to call out however is it seems that sometimes it appears that your ellispe is only given one pass. Genreally in Drawbox we want to draw through our ellispe twice, and no more, and it is a motion that will help you signficantly. You didn't always make this mistake, but I figure it's something to keep mindful moving forward.

Table of Ellispes: Okay, so it seems like your ellispes are confidently drawned through twice. I have no comment

Ellispes in Funnels: Seems like you are splitting the ellispes in half using the minor axis, and mostly drawing through them here. Good job

Rough Persepctive. It seems like you are still using dots, ghosting your lines and drawing confident, which is pretty good. You are also drawing through your form like you had X ray vision, and show good understanding of how the VP works. Sometimes your line confidence falls short, so just make sure you are using the ghosting method and planning your strokes.

Plotted Persepctive: Okay, your line quality is amazing on this, and you seem to get how the vanishing point works in this type of persepctive. THere are thigns I want to call out. You seem to have crosshatch 2 different planes of the boxes, and usually in drawbox we use our crosshatching to show which one is facing the viewer. I would just stick to crosshatching one. You also sometimes postion your form really close to the VP sometimes, which there is nothing wrong with that. It's good you are praticing it, but try to have a lean more towards shallow forshortening, which means the forms you draw our falling somwhere in between the 2 VPS. Other then that great work.

Rotated Boxes: You seem to have a strong understanding of 3D space, and I can tell you are thinking about how the boxe rotates as the VPS slide along the axis so good job. Lines are also nicely confidentally drawned.

Organic Persepctive: You are doing a good job of making ur boxes shrink as they get further away from the viewer, also good job on line work. Sometimes you have sort of wobbley lines, but it is no problem. I can tell you are getting the point of the extercise.

All in all nice work for Lesson 1, and good luck in the rest of the lessons.

I will mark this lesson as complete.

Most, if not all, of the exercises from Lessons 1 and 2 have links at the bottom in the "student-made recordings" section to videos where ScyllaStew has recordings of her working through the material. I often find that she gives a very good example of just how long this work can take, to help those who may be rushing get a better sense of whether they're holding themselves to an unreasonable standard.

Speaking from experience, you are only rushing the lessons if you are not following the lessons (and the 50% rule). In other words, there is no specific amount of time each exercise should take, but make sure that you are really understanding what the lesson is and doing it as correctly as you can. That may mean you have to take your time on observation or rereading the lessons before continuing. Some of the excercises are very straight forward and quick and others take time. Lesson 2 is a great example. Organic shapes with contour lines is not that time consuming but the texture exercise and dissections should take you a lot longer. I have rushed things at times and it really shows up in my submissions. Also, you may personally find some exercises more difficult (or easy) than others. Everybody is different.

Although this is my first time critiquing a submission, at the least I can identify mistakes that would had helped me when doing the 250 box challenge.

For the ghosted lines, asides from the mess, you did really well, although some lines do wobble slightly, you will get the hang of it quickly and executing a line will be the least of your problems later on.

For the ghosted planes you did well, although there are some ellipses that you weren’t as confident and try to fix.

I advise you to not “fix” anything like if it were a sketch, although I don’t see it that mistake often, you will definitely feel the urge to fix a line later in in the course, is a tough habit to break out of and it takes a bit of time, but you should be mindful about it.

With the table of ellipses and funnels, the only things I notice is some sharp angle from some of the ellipses, that only come from using the wrist,

Not that using the wrist is the absolute worst, but with bigger ellipses , is better to use the elbow or shoulder, asides from that, you did a good job.

In the entirety of your submission, your plotted, rough and organic perspective are were some of your problems are most apparent, asides from the rotated perspective, which I will get out the way, you did an AMAZING job at it.( the top half that is).

For the other 3 pages, the perspective aren’t the problem I will be focusing, as the 250 box challenge is there for a reason, the main problem are the lines and confidence.

For the plotted lines ,like I said at the start of this critique, you tend to try and “fix” the lines and the issue is more prevalent than in the earlier exercise.

I advise you to stray away trying to fix any lines as it hurts your confidence in making lines, you can see the mistakes I mentioned especially in the backcorners of your box

Although is a hard habit to break out of, I personally still struggle with it a bit, that will be an issue that will get worse the more mentally challenged you will be with more difficulty stuff.

There is also the issue with curved, wobbly,and scratchy lines. You can improve and those 3 line issues by thinking of yourself as a swords man and the pen as your trusty blade (not so trusty once the pen dries up). Swinging your blade at the direction you want to strike at with only a single stroke, you may not be perfect at first but you will get better at it the more you do it……….

And yes….. if you ever got to read uncomfortable unsolicited advice, i got the swordsman advice from here: https://drawabox.com/comic/1

That is all the critiques I can conceive as of now,

I apologize if I ever sound like I am nitpicking , I just wanted to make this as in-depth as I possibly can, most of the issue you will probably just fix naturally if I told you or not, but still brought it up to make you aware of it.

If I have one last thing to say before finishing this is when doing the assignments, try not to have multiple different assignments in one page like you did with the ghosted and super imposed lines.

If I had to give you praise, I am still amazed with the rotated boxes.

And with all that said you have finally reached the conclusion of this seemingly never ending critique

(Apologies if there any spelling mistake)

Be sure to go through Lesson 0, if you haven't already. This video from Lesson 0 Page 3 explains how the exercises in this course are to be used, and answers your question in detail.

You should just post what you made, otherwise you get hung up on it and begin grinding at the assignments which isn't the point.

You will use the lessons later as warm up.

Grinding is effectively just doing the same task over and over without any clear, objective end point. "Until I do it better" isn't objective, because it is entirely subject to how we feel about our work. Conversely, doing something a specific number of times, or for a certain number of days/hours, or allowing a third party to decide whether we should go back and do more (which we get by having others critique our work, which while still being subjective is at least not tainted by our own biases) provides us with a clearer point at which we can stop and move on.