Tofu

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn.

• You're doing a good job of experimenting with orientations. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• It's not a requirement of the challenge but I recommend practicing applying hatching in your future work. It's a useful tool to learn and the only way to improve is to practice.

• I'd like you to experiment with proportions and rates of foreshortening more. Once you get into the new year you keep most of your boxes fairly similar, mix in some longer/thinner/wider boxes more frequently to see how your lines behave in different scenarios. As for rates of foreshortening, you show you can move your vanishing points earlier in the challenge so I'm less worried about you not knowing how to do so, but more so that you're not giving yourself enough practice.

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge. While your boxes are by no means bad (they're looking pretty solid so far) you did limit some of the benefit you could have gotten from the challenge by not experimenting as much as you could have. While we definitely acknowledge that the challenge isn't the most fun thing in the world (if burnout was what caused the hiatus), experimentation and giving yourself different things to practice (hatching as an example) does help alleviate some of that tedium, be sure to follow the 50% rule from lesson 0 and balance your course work with drawing for yourself as well to lessen the chance of burnout.

That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

If you haven't already I would recommend reading/watching through the updated box challenge. It may help reinforce/clarify any concepts introduced in the challenge which will only help you going forward.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn by the end of the challenge.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• Your hatching lines could be tidier. Just like any other line we want to take our time planning them using the ghosting method, space them evenly and draw them confidently.

• In boxes 179 and 209 you're placing a vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes, while the effect isn't super noticeable because your lines are fairly close to parallel, if you converged these lines more it would distort your box due to the fact that they'd be diverging away from their actual vanishing points.

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge. You improve a lot through the course of the challenge, there are a few occasional misteps like the 2 boxes I mentioned where you've extended your lines incorrectly but they're few and far between. That said it does seem like you took a bit of a lengthy break between lesson 1 and the box challenge, the course material has been updated since then so I'd encourage you to look through it as it may help clarify some concepts and will benefit you going forward. The new box challenge videos for example will show you how to consistently extend your lines in the correct direction using your starting Y.

That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• Good work drawing your construction lines confidently, this keeps your lines smooth and prevents wobbling.

• It's nice to see that you're drawing large, this will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and easily allow you to see any mistakes you've made.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening in your final 150 boxes. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• It's not a requirement of the challenge but I recommend practicing applying hatching in your future work. It's a useful tool to learn and the only way to improve is to practice.

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge. Overall this was a really solid submission, I'm glad to see that you're drawing as large as you are, people have a habit of drawing smaller and it can take a bit to get them out of that habit.

That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

• Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. Great use of foreshortening so far, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space as you can see demonstrated here.

• Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise some of your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work mostly confident here (some curves get a bit stiff) which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours, you place your contour ellipses on the wrong end (or sometimes they don't need to exist if that end wouldn't be visible) on some of your forms with contour curves. If this O is your ellipse, and this C is your curve, you always want your ellipse to be on the open side of your curves like so CO rather than on the closed end like OC (the bottom left attempt on your page with curves is an example your ellipse being on the wrong end if it makes it any clearer). That aside, you're doing a good job trying to shift the degree of your contours so far, be sure to keep experimenting. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

• In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

• It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons.Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work.

• While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you show that you need a bit more time becoming comfortable with thinking of how these forms interact in 3D space and how they'd wrap around one another. I recommend trying to stack your forms perpendicularly rather than trying to keep them headed in the same direction to help make wrapping them around one another a smoother task. Quite frequently your forms feel like they're drawn over one another rather than wrapping around the forms below believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• You're doing a good job of drawing the lines constructing your boxes smoothly and confidently.

• It's nice to see that you're taking the time to plan each of your hatching lines and space them evenly. This helps keep your boxes looking tidy rather than looking like they were rushed on to the page.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge

That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

If you haven't already I would recommend reading/watching through the updated box challenge. It may help reinforce/clarify any concepts introduced in the challenge which will only help you going forward.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

• Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. At times you don't overlap your edges when you should, this results in your arrows flattening out as you can see here. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

• Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise a couple of your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

• In the texture exercises (more so in your dissections) you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

• It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. Your forms mostly look solid here and appear like they're the same 3D space, a few appear a bit hastily done when their lines don't converge or when you choose not to draw through your ellipses which you should be doing for every ellipse.

• While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you show that you need a bit more time becoming comfortable with thinking of how these forms interact in 3D space and how they'd wrap around one another. I recommend trying to stack your forms perpendicularly rather than trying to keep them headed in the same direction to help make wrapping them around one another a smoother task. Currently your forms are mostly drawn over one another and left floating rather than wrapping believably around the forms below.You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they start to cast on the form below rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile. Quick final reminder that you should be drawing through all of your ellipses, you neglect the small ones on the ends of your forms here as well.

Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

• Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

• Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise you're doing a good job keeping your forms simple, plenty of people tend to over-complicate them. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

• In the texture section you're demonstrating good observational skills by being able to separate and clearly focus on the cast shadows formed along your reference. You're doing a good job of transitioning your gradients from dark to light as well rather than having sudden changes. Before moving on to the next section I'd like to quickly point you to this image which shows that when working with thin line like textures we benefit from outlining and filling the shadow's shape rather than just drawing a line. We get much more dynamic and interesting results this way. Remember that each texture is it's own challenge so be sure to experiment with different types when practicing this exercise in the future.

• It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons.Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work.

• While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

Overall this was a very solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will continue to improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• You're doing a good job of drawing the lines constructing your boxes smoothly and confidently.

• It's nice to see that you're taking the time to plan each of your hatching lines and space them evenly. This helps keep your boxes looking tidy rather than looking like they were rushed on to the page.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening in your final 150 boxes. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge. Overall your boxes are looking solid, just a bit small. Good work though, you're on the right track.

That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Before I get started, I wanted to address what you mentioned about working on uneven surfaces, getting distracted, and so forth. When it comes to the official critique, we ask students to do whatever they can to do the work to the best of their current ability, as this helps keep us from committing time to issues that simply arose because of the situation in which you did the work. After all, we can only rely on the work itself to tell us where you're struggling, and where you're not. This is important, as it allows us to provide the service at a subsidized rate, and when students work against that, it increases our costs by causing the feedback to take more time.

I have consulted with Uncomfortable and will be moving forward with the critique, but going forward you may consider continuing with Drawabox when you are back from your trip, so you can adhere more closely to the requirements of the official critique program.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• When hatching you're taking the time to space each line evenly which shows that care and thought is being put into each line. This helps your boxes appear solid and tidy rather than rushed.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening in your final 150 boxes. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• You have some noticeable wobbling occuring in your lines. Remember that line confidence is our top priority and that accuracy will improve as we continue to build up more mileage. Your surfaces may play a large factor in this as well, but I can only judge what is front of me unfortunately.

• In your second section of boxes and any boxes you try to push your vanishing points further away from you tend to push your lines too parallel to the point that they diverge. Remember that while we want our lines to be closer to parallel, there will always be vanishing points, they should always converge consistently towards them even if that convergence is very gradual.

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge. If you can address your diverging sets of lines and your line quality these will look pretty solid, I'm hopeful that most of this is caused by circumstances on your trip but they shouldn't be issues that show up in your homework that you're putting your best effort into.

That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

It seems you were already working on your box challenge when you transitioned into the official critique path, we typically ask for an additional 50 boxes from people have previously been working on the course but we'll let it pass this time. Just as a heads up and a warning though, you shouldn't be working ahead if you've already started lesson 2. Wait until you receive the go ahead from the person critiquing your work before starting the next section. Working ahead means you'll be carrying any mistakes you make currently along with you when they should have already been addressed. This will just result in further revisions and take long than if you had waited to begin with, and you'll be working to correct mistakes you've already addressed potentially.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn by the end of the challenge.

• It's good to see that you're taking the time to plan and evenly space your hatching lines. This helps keep your boxes tidy and makes them look more solid.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge. Your boxes started out a bit rough but by the end they definitely polished up and appear quite solid, good work.

That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

If you haven't already I would recommend reading/watching through the updated box challenge (it looks like you may have started before the updates). It may help reinforce/clarify any concepts introduced in the challenge which will only help you going forward.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.