pinkapricorn

I apologize if my confusion is causing hassle for you. I felt it reasonable to understand the instructions before attempting to follow them. I agree with you completely that we should always aim our our lines aimed at vanishing points going away from us and the guide you linked to makes perfect sense to me. Same with parallel lines being a no-no. I agree totally. This wouldn't be perspective if if we made parallel lines actually look parallel. Things get smaller as they go away from us. The parallel would happen when I tried to have just slight foreshortening. I'd THINK they were coming together at a really gentle slope but somehow I'd always be fooled when I went back to extend the lines and found they were parallel. However when I would go to a lot of foreshoretning, sometimes I would get a ridiculious amount with vanishing points like an inch or two from the box, but at least the lines weren't parallel. I'm assuming the latter is more desirable.

What I don't know is if I'm interpreting correctly how I am supposed to act on this information. I'm thinking that I should play it safe with the foreshortening and always use lots of it and stick to Y's orientations I'm good at, so I won't get confused and think the lines are converging one way when it's actually the opposite--the up views get me the most with this. I often converge them thinking we are looking down.

If I can get this confirmed, I am will start on the revisions immediately. And if you find more problems with this time, happily do more revisions so long as I understand what is being asked of me.

Huh. That's odd. I thought I saw that about 5 times as I've looked ahead to the other lessons lots of times when I was trying to dream of what it will feel like to have beaten them. I was excited when I read that there is a challenge where you trust us enough to let us use digital. I wonder why I thought it was 25 wheel challenge? I'm going to attribute it to brain fog and the fact that I often visited that challenge after looking at the other later ones as well.

Anyways thanks for the clarification. I won't make that mistake again.

According to the lesson 7 overview we can't use digital, so no matter what you're stuck with it now. On the 25 wheel challenge, though, I think you're right that being able to use lazy nezumi is nice because you can focus on just learning how to make the wheels without getting distracted by getting the lines where you want. You're not learning how to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. That's my impression anyways. I've not touched any work in Drawabox beyond lesson 2.

"Yes, I've completed the 25 wheel challenge traditionally. Right now I'm doing lesson 7 which is a very big struggle for me traditionally. The problem is that I already have 3 ellipse guide templates, but I still can't get the right degree for my box to fit my proportions."

I feel your pain. I'm uncomfortable all the time because I have a baseline level of unrest that almost never goes away. I have to be careful with tasks that increase that anxiety because if it takes me beyond my threshold of tolerance, my brain shuts down. If I keep pushing, I could have a panic attack that worsens my cPTSD as my brain learns "here is something else to add to the list of things I can't do" and "doing this could kill me." Of course I know it can't really make me die, but my brain thinks so and I get a trauma response to the activity when I try it in the future. Fun stuff. But it helps me A LOT when I can break a big, scary task up into little parts even though I can't get credit from Drawabox for all of it. Since it literally is the difference between being able or not able to do the homework here, it's worth it to me.

I couldn't even do the 250 box challenge the right way the first time I saw it. To build myself up I ended up falling back on a drawing skill I already have: I'm pretty good at drawing from observation. I set up boxes in Blender and rotated them all kinds of ways and drew them from observation. My brain saw I didn't die and it started thinking, "Hmm... maybe not ALL box drawing is deadly. Maybe I feel safe doing it like this." Then I let myself sort of do the challenge but drawing the boxes in pencil where I could have the comfort of erasing. It took a long time but finally I got where I could emotionally handle drawing the boxes with feltliners following Uncomfortable's instructions to the letter. I was able to do the whole challenge in 3.5 weeks and I wasn't stressed by it at all. I spaced it out where I was doing about 65 boxes a week and no more than 25 a day. (Granted I've been asked to do some revisions but I think the teaching assistant might have misunderstood my understanding of what I was doing and I'm in conversation with them about it.)

So I dunno. I'm just sharing my two cents. You're on the last lesson. You might be able to tough it out. If not, though, I see no shame in building your confidence doing easier but related drawing assignments. And on that note maybe it could be worthwhile to just practice with the tools before trying to move forward with the homework?

Hello there Tofu.

I'm going to need a little more guidance before I can start the re-dos because every time I honestly attempted to make all the vanishing points be going away from me but sometimes I would get confused thinking my box was going away from me in one direction then realize later that I'd got it backwards. This was more of a problem with the boxes we are looking up at. I think I overcame it with the looking-down-at boxes.

On the topic of parallel lines, I'm not sure what to do differently unless you want me to use a lot of foreshortening every time. When I'd try to make it more subtle, somehow I would often end up with parallel lines. It was a frustrating problem but I thought if I kept trying, I'd get where I could get the convergance just right. It has yet to resolve itself, though. I don't know what to do.

Watched it. The baby yoda part had no impact on me--I'm an old school Trekkie--but overall I thought it was well done. I know the lecture material for lessons 0-1 pretty well and I could tell you more-or-less understood them.

Did you go digital for the 25 wheel challenge? If you didn't know, that one actually allows you a choice of tools and digital is one of them. It will be cool to actually do a Drawabox assignment digitally and get to turn it in. Until then, though, I'm content with the feltliners. It was a long, hard emotional road getting there--I have complex PTSD which keeps my nervous system on overdrive--but I made it to where I can emotionally tolerate using a tool where I can't fix my mistakes.

I just think it just will be cool to have Uncomfortable actually allowing me to do some of his coursework in digital haha :) I live in Photoshop and love my Wacon Cintiq.

My hope is nobody even sees that I deleted this message but if you do the reason was because I overshared and had lots of post-posting regret. This forum is not an appropriate venue for opening up about mental health issues that are so scary to talk about. In fact I'd probably best keep that out of public altogether.

Thanks again for your input. It is highly valued. I'm paying for all my critiques to support your work. And I see what you're saying in your response. So with that one little guideline in mind, any configuration of lines is fair game. Gotcha.

I finished my 250 box challenge and submitted it for paid critique but I'm still wondering about things I experienced duringthe challenge, things that we're not judged for but I want to dig deeper into. Like do you consider it a pro or a con the fact that a lot of times when I lay down a Y, what the box is going to look like immediately appears in my head? When I start drawing the other lines, I already have a mental blueprint--albeit fuzzy--for where they are going to go. I'm still carefully pointing my lines toward where their respective Y line is going, but the boxes that appear to me like this I seem to do a lot better with. With less familiar Y's--namely those that produce a box we are looking up at or have odd proportions--it seems easier for me to get fooled. I think I am aiming my lines correctly then when I draw out my convergances, I notice not everybody is playing on their respective team!

What are your thoughts on this phenomenon since it is not voluntary? I realize you have aphantasia and thus probably no personal experience to draw upon but perhaps you've talked about this with people who can see images in their head. A lot of Y's I simply can't look at as just lines on a page. I see their box. I fully believe the 3D illusion that I am selling here lol

When you say draw boxes randomly, do you mean put down random Y's without any thought to if the three lines make sense together? Just throw them down on the page, draw the rest of the lines, and see what you get?

Yeah I don't think it is mentioned anywhere in the lessons. I have just looked at a number of people's box submissions and noticed that few people pushed themselves to create the variety in height, width, and length that I've been making since box 125. I wanted to make sure I'm not getting into territory that could make me fail the challenge before I've completed all of my boxes--65 to go. I saw one person--albeit who broke very obvious rules like extending their lines the wrong way--get asked to create 50 more boxes and I was like, "Oh no! What if I've gotten too creative with this challenge and I'm no longer doing it according to Uncomfortable's vision?" So I figured I should check.

Yes, variety is what I am going for. When I was still using a Y generator, most Ys I got were for something fairly cuboidal and it got to a point where it just felt repetitive. So once I was making Ys on my own I decided to introduce some pretty flat boxes as well as tall narrow ones into the mix and now I feel like I'm being adequately challenged once more. I also figured out how to think up Ys for boxes I am looking up at, so that's adding challenge and variety as well. I really am being creative with this and enjoying coming up with as many boxes and views as I can.

On another note, what are your thoughts on re-attempting a box I seriously struggled with? It acceptable to try again when drawing the next box? If not, how about doing a few other boxes then coming back and taking another crack at it? Thoughts?