senj

Hey Cyberkitty,

I appreciate the effort to stick to the critique recommendations. The sausage forms are clear, just missing those contour lines at the joints. The additional forms are also on the right track with conveying their spatial relationship as they press against each other.

I can see why you might have conflicting feelings about the method itself since it doesn't completely reflect how rigid the legs are. We favor the sausage in order to capture the gesture of the leg while retaining similar volume to the branches. The branch method tends to make it much more difficult to rein the curves and overall flattens the leg construction. Although we're stuck with using sausages, we can still alter them to fit our scenario.

I'm not sure if you've done the Puma informal demo, but it presents a similar situation in which the reference does show a "stiff" leg. Since we can vary the amount of bend, DIO solves this with individual sausages that are subtle in curvature but still convey that the leg itself is straight. Sort of like a balloon tube, we can choose as much or as little to bend the sausage. Getting this method down takes some practice to get comfortable with; like you mentioned, it's possible you might not be used to it yet.

Our goal with these animal constructions is not to create a 1:1 copy of the animal reference. References act as a source of information to pull certain features and apply them under the methods we've learned. As long as you're attempting to adhere to the lesson instructions as much as possible, it's totally fine if the end result isn't 100% anatomically accurate.

All in all, I think you understand the Lesson 5 concepts well, so I’ll go ahead and send you off to the 250 Cylinder Challenge. Keep up the good work.

Hello Potat, I’ll be critiquing your submission today; if you have any questions, feel free to ask below. With that said, I’ll go ahead and review your submission.

Lines

You start off the lesson well with your superimposed lines; the lines remain fairly consistent between each line. Fraying begins to occur as the lines get longer, nothing to worry about; that will improve with practice. Next up are your ghosted lines, which wobble slightly a bit but are fairly accurate for the most part. Nice work.

Ghosted Planes & Ellipses

Now onto the ghosted planes and ellipses. Clear planning of your lines is present, and you seem to be very accurate in each line. The ellipses shown are confidant and are clearly drawn over more than once. Additionally, you reach all four edges of the plane most of the time.

Table Of Ellipses & Funnels

Moving along to your table of ellipses, consistent lines are present, and all ellipses are drawn through at least twice. Ellipses are slightly loose, but that’s a normal occurrence that’ll tighten up with practice. Your funnels have little to no tilt and you understand the importance of the central minor axis. Nice execution on your ellipses overall.

Plotted, Rough, & Organic Perspective

Starting from plotted perspective, the back corners are slanted, but don't be worried; this is pretty common and as you progress towards the 250 challenge you’ll learn where to estimate back corners. Your boxes within the rough perspective remain in one-point perspective, and appear to have clear planning for each line. Line extensions are correctly taken from each corner of the box using a ruler and reach the vanishing point fairly accurately. Pressing ahead, your rotated boxes have clean lines with little space between them. However the diagonal boxes don't rotate as much and appear to converge towards the same VP. Don't be too worried about it though, I recognize the difficulty of this particular exercise and you'll get more opportunities during warm-ups to work on it. Lastly, your organic perspective boxes hold consistent lines, and you show clear intentions with the ghosting method. As you progress through pages 1 and 2, you begin to experiment with box orientation as you develop spatial reasoning. Next time try exaggerating the scale a bit more, the box size doesn't really increase dramatically as the path approaches the viewer. The hatching is generally good but be mindful with the confidence, lines on a few boxes appear a bit more wobbly.

Overall great job, you understand the importance of line confidence and met the goals for each exercise.

Hey Kat, Good news is that you’re hitting your mark on the placement of the forms much better. It’s also great that you’re putting more effort into the shape of the cast shadows. When we’re conscious of the projection of cast shadows onto the forms below, we can convince the viewer that the individual forms exist in the same space as one collective pile. My main concern is still the lack of line weight, which can really affect how someone can automatically distinguish which forms are in front or behind. I share your sentiment about cast shadows, and admittedly, it's something I still struggle with myself. (my Lesson 2 submission was a train wreck.) Lesson 2 itself packs a lot of concepts to digest in one go; going back to read/watch topics relating to cast shadows sometimes offers new pockets of information that might have been missed during the first visit. Overall, I think you're taking steps in the right direction here.

Now the animal construction, as you could probably guess I'm looking for how you're applying these 3 things; 1. Torso Sag, 2. Simple Sausages, and 3. Additional Forms. I think you've satisfied all three so I'll just be offering some advice in situations where you might not have been fully attentive. You'll find it here.

All in all, I think you understand the Lesson 5 concepts well, so I’ll go ahead and send you off to the 250 Cylinder Challenge. Keep up the good work.

Hey Vega, I'm happy to see that your cast shadows look much better here, wrapping around the contour of the form below. It's clear you're thinking about the placement of each sausage with the concept of gravity in mind. One last tip: keep that sag consistent on both ends of the sausage. Hugging the mass contours as much as possible will help support the illusion of mass.

Line confidence still presents as an obstacle to overcome. From your arrows, it's evident you are capable of achieving smooth lines. It might be beneficial to adjust some techniques, like the speed of your arm motion, but I'm sure you'll improve as the exercise gets more comfortable to complete during warm-ups.

All in all, I think you understand the Lesson 2 concepts well, so I’ll go ahead and send you off to Lesson 3. Keep up the good work.

Hello Vega123, I’ll be critiquing your submission today; if you have any questions, feel free to ask below. With that said, I’ll go ahead and review your submission.

Organic Arrows

Your line quality proves to be mostly consistent within both pages. There’s a bit of wobble when you cross over past the 2nd overlap so make sure you’re ghosting the entire curve to avoid hesitancy when you need to move your pen in another direction. The direction of compression on your arrows is clear; the width of the arrows gets smaller as they grow further away, which conveys proper perspective. Hatching lines tend to wobble or lean in some sections so make sure that all instances of exercises are receiving the same level of line quality.

Organic Forms

Starting on your forms, sausages clearly show the intent of a tube with two spheres on opposing ends, but they still have some bulging or pinching at the ends. Try to aim for the width of sausages to remain consistent throughout the entire length and to round off the ends as much as you can. I’m seeing a tendency to use sausages only orientated away from the viewer, I’ll share this image here of the variation of orientations you can use for future warm-ups.

Organic Forms with Contour Ellipses

Ellipses on sausages are clearly drawn through at least 2–3 times across all forms. Some wobbly lines take shape on the follow-through action, so as a reminder, remember to keep the confidence strong for all ellipses. The degree shift could be pushed further as multiple ellipses on the mid sections look like they repeat themselves more than once. I suggest starting out by limiting the number of ellipses per sausage to 4-5 and evenly spacing them out. This allows for degree shifts to be a lot more distinguishable.

Organic Forms with Contour Lines

The degree shift is somewhat difficult to gauge and appears to look the same across the entire length of the form. In addition to the stiffness of the contour lines making the roundness of the form appear less convincing. Reasonably so, it's a lot harder to convey degree shifts with contour curves. Fundamentally, contour curves are separated by the difference of only showing the visible part of the ellipse. The degree shift should be approached in the same way as the ellipses; the degree shift of the curves will change as they progress through the sausage. Try to consider the half of the curve that is not visible and how it would change depending on the degree. Similar advice as the contour ellipses: 4-5 curves, so you're given the chance to plan out how the openness of the curve will change. I’ve added an example here on one of your sausages to demonstrate.

Texture Analysis and Dissections

Starting with the texture analysis, it's clear you’re getting a grasp on how cast shadows operate on the crumbled paper. You’ve done great to blend the black bar on the paper but the other 2 transitions are a little weak, they’re still fairly easy to point out and don’t really contribute to showing how the texture gradually changes from dense to sparse. On the other end of spectrum, all 3 texture frames seem to abruptly cut off at roughly the same spot. Pure light will blast away most of those larger cast shadows but there should still be some shown in the small cracks of the texture.

Now onto dissections. Unfortunately, textures fall into explicit outlining to bridge the gap in solving the rhythm of cast shadows. Specifically the jackfruit, wool, strawberry, and brick textures. We want to use detail density to our advantage in order to describe the same abundance of forms without having to go in and actually draw each individual bump. This is tied to the 3rd step in the texture approach where we design the cast shadow based on the 3D forms noted in the reference. All other fine details should be filtered out. It's fairly easy to fatigue observing textures across two pages, but try to enforce the concept of implying forms as much as possible. As a last pointer, make sure you’re taking those opportunities to break past the silhouette. It helps on textures such as the brick and wool sweater to pull off the illusion as it wraps around the sausage.

Form Intersections

Solving the intersections in different forms is pretty challenging on the first go, so I'm not too concerned about your ability to cross each object. As explained on the lesson page, it's more about how cohesive the page appears —the illusion that these forms exist in the same space. That being said, a majority of boxes seem relatively the same size, with a few outliers that lengthen in one dimension or another. Try to keep them equilateral as much as possible.

Organic Intersections

The drawn forms appear somewhat shaky, suggesting that you may not be investing the necessary time to build up the pile. The curvature of the contour lines is good but shows similar tendencies of hesitant line quality. Overall, the structure of a few forms gives away the illusion that they could balance on top of each other. In some cases, completely levitating above the underlying form. If we think of these forms as water balloons, it's much easier to judge how the masses will behave against one another. The cast shadows are mostly okay but are missing the floor shadow on both pages, which majorly affects the believability that the pile is grounded somewhere flat and solid.

Okay, I think that just about covers it. Before you move forward to Lesson 3 I’ll need these items below:

1 page of organic intersections

• Review the exercise text and video content, and observe how the sausages sag over each other.

• Take you time with the process, skipping over instructions here can create blindspots in later lessons.

Hello Cyberkitty, I’ll be critiquing your submission today. If you have any questions, feel free to ask below. With that said, I’ll go ahead and review your submission.

Forms drawn look consistent, and the usage of contour lines appropriately describes the 3D aspect. But the structure of a few forms gives away the illusion that they could balance on top of each other. The bottom sausage on both pages curls upwards and almost looks “frozen” to support the masses above. If we think of these forms as water balloons, it's much easier to judge how the masses will behave against one another. I drew over one of your pages over here to demonstrate that behaviour. Cast shadows generally project well onto forms below. In future warm-ups try pushing the light source further in the top left or right of the page for more of a challenge.

Animal Constructions

Line quality is fairly consistent between all constructions and it’s nice to see you’re being attentive with your ellipses to ensure they all are drawn through at least 2-3 times.

Cranium/Ribcage/Pelvis

The sausage connecting the ribcage and pelvis is conveyed accurately. This relationship is important to establish the gesture of the torso but also to create a strong solidarity for additional forms we choose to add later. There’s a few inconsistencies with the ribcage missing the ellipse connection to the cranium. I’m seeing a few instances where you do include them like on the deer, leopard and horse constructions but then returning back to a floating cranium for the other constructions. Uncomfy covers that portion here in the wolf demo, ultimately it breaks down the illusion of the entire construction if we don’t define where forms start and end. I’ve drawn over your deer and bird constructions to demonstrate.

Leg Construction

There’s some deviation from the sausage method with a variation of procedures used to construct both hooved and non-hooved legs. Most notably on one of your deer constructions where an ellipse is used as a joint to connect the thigh and lower leg. Or on the wolf constructions that tend to resemble long cylinders. Remember the aim for the sausages is to be as simple as possible. Elodin seems to have mentioned the usage of simple sausages in your Lesson 4 critique so it’s mostly a matter of transferring that into your Lesson 5 constructions. Step 3 of the donkey informal demo is a good place to see how we should capture the rhythm of the animal leg with a chain of sausages.

While we’re here, I’ll include the boxy method of drawing paws introduced here. You may have seen this from the puma demo informal demo, in short we use the silhouette of a box to represent the paw instead of ellipses or organic forms. In this example here, I’ve taken your leopard to implement both methods. Try to use these methods in your constructions going forward.

Head Construction

Looks okay for the most part, I think you’ve done well to create the footprint for the eye socket and muzzle but get stuck somewhere along the way and ultimately fall back to partial forms. Treat the additional forms such as the brow ridge and cheeks as puzzle pieces and arrange planes around the cranium to fit them accordingly. The moose and tapir head demo’s present a good strategy in tackling building forms.

Additional Forms

In a few of these constructions you slip into drawing flat 2D forms or will have drawn forms that are incomplete with no defined association with the form it sits on top of. DIO offers good insight into the difference between 2D and 3D application in this example here . This sort of habit is similar to the floating head issue mentioned earlier. I took your deer construction to highlight those partial forms in blue and then how you want to approach those 3D forms in red. Just to emphasize, make sure every individual form is fully drawn through and wraps around the underlying forms to convey their solidarity.

Texture/Fur

Not much to say here, I can tell you’re being deliberate with your strokes for the most part.

Alright then I think I covered all the major points with your submission. But before I send you off to the cylinder challenge, I would like to see the items listed below to make sure you've understood the general feedback:

1 page of any hooved quadruped

• For the leg construction, start off with simple sausages and use additional forms to build up the accompanying masses.

Hello Pixelbusterx9, I’ll be reviewing your 250 Box Challenge today.

First off, congratulations on completing the first hurdle of Drawabox. It’s definitely a long marathon, but the quality of work between the start and end pages really demonstrates overall improvement. Now let’s begin with the critique.

Before I continue with the specifics, I’ve noticed your tendency to abandon 1-3 box attempts every other page. Remember from Lesson 0 that as a student, your sole responsibility is to follow the instructions to the best of your ability. There’s no expectation for the submission to look good or even decent. Try to resist the temptation to restart anew at every major or minor mistake. I’ll link the Lesson 0 video here so you can review how we should approach lesson homework.

Things you did well:

• Clear experimentation of box size, foreshortening, and orientation. This is a positive habit to carry forward and helps progress our spatial reasoning.

Things you could improve on:

• Shallow boxes come into issues with 2-3 sets of lines being parallel, ex.) Box 79, 142, 188. Resulting in divergence towards the vanishing point. Here's an example displaying how the lines diverge the more we lengthen those parallel lines. Whether it's gradual or quick, all lines should converge. It may be difficult to judge gradual convergence on shallow boxes, but we want to be aware of angles when estimating to ensure lines aren't parallel.

• Hatching overall looked a bit wobbly, it’s probably the most apparent on Box 220 when you’re tasked to draw over a larger area. It seems to be a symptom of choosing accuracy over confidence. I suggest looking back on the principles of mark-making in Lesson 1 where it’s established that smooth lines above all else is our main priority. It’s okay to sacrifice some accuracy by overshooting or undershooting your line as long as it’s smooth.

• Construction Lines & Line Weight; There is some improvement in line quality towards the end but I can sense some lingering hesitancy is still at play. Take your time with the execution to focus on confident lines.

• The line extensions on boxes were drawn in the wrong direction pretty frequently. Particularly on 1 set of boxes orientated above the viewer, ex.) Box 82, 123, 154. This might be partly due to the accidental inclusion of 2 point perspective. As we’re using 3 vanishing points to check against, we should try to only apply a 3 point perspective approach to avoid confusion. In the future, try to review the instructions consistently as you progress through the lessons in order to catch these mistakes from slipping through the cracks. Line extensions will always start from the initial Y from the center of the box. I’ve done an example here on Box 154 to demonstrate.

Incorrect line extensions can diminish how we’re able to gradually improve our spatial reasoning skills from error checking. I’ll need 20 additional boxes before you move on to Lesson 2 to ensure you’ve understood the core principles mentioned in this critique.

Hello Kat2000, I’ll be critiquing your submission today. If you have any questions, feel free to ask below. With that said, I’ll go ahead and review your submission.

Organic Intersections

Now, before heading into the cast shadows themselves, I’ll walk through an issue with the forms. As you’re likely more than accustomed to by now, the aim for the sausages is not only to be as simple as possible but also to describe the weight behind placing each individual sausage onto each other. Both pages suggest you have a good sense of how the forms should build up. However, the mass of forms almost seems not to interact with the structure below, almost giving off a “frozen” effect which ultimately breaks the illusion of the sausages cohesively lying on top of each other.

Let's take a look at this leaning structure here , the form seems to be leaning against the 2 stack to the right but nothing prevents the mass from falling forward. If we think of these forms as water balloons, it's easier to judge how the masses will behave against one another. In addition to the choices of placement we decide to make. In the future, I suggest taking some time to consider how the forms should obey the laws of gravity in a convincing way to the viewer. One final point to add about the contour lines, you seem to use the same method from the organic forms with contour lines exercise. At this step here, our approach with this exercise is slightly different in our intention to add volume with a variation of contour lines along the surface.

For the cast shadows, a separate issue arises in how the shapes are unnaturally sticking to the forms. For both pages there’s a tendency to copy and paste the same shadow shape rather than designing the cast shadows accurately from the given underlying forms. Remember that cast shadows are not always constant; variation in position and light source can present new ways to design a cast shadow. Another factor that may be affecting the illusion might also be the overlaps themselves. At first glance it’s difficult to identify which forms are in front or behind. I highly recommend adding line weight over forms that are in front to demonstrate their “dominance” over other forms.

Animal Constructions

I found a few instances in which a few lines stop abruptly where they should pass behind existing forms. Make sure you’re always drawing through all your forms. Once again, line weight comes in handy to unconsciously push forms behind or in front of the viewer.

Cranium/Ribcage/Pelvis

In terms of the torsos themselves, they tend to miss out on the sag introduced here where the relationship between the ribcage and the pelvis is established. It becomes increasingly critical when we later add additional forms. It can make or break the solidity of the torso form. I took one of your wolf constructions to demonstrate how you could bend the torso a bit further.

Hooved Animals

The implication of hooves as 3D forms are a bit shaken in some areas here and start to push into the 2D boundary. I believe you were attempting to replicate the cloven hoof but, unfortunately, it flattens the overall form. Remember that our paper is equivalent to a window into 3D space, and we want to be deliberate in how each mark we make will imply they exist cohesively in 3D. Based on the reference itself, although the hooves are hidden in the grass, there's still an opportunity to make some convincing constructionsions using our own methods from the lesson. Here’s an example of a way to imply the form of the hoof without sacrificing the 3D aspect. Recall in lesson 4 where Uncomfy demonstrates how to convey changes on the organic forms surface.

Leg Construction

A common theme between your hooved animals is the base leg construction. Adherence to the sausage method tends to vary across the pages. I believe it's the most apparent on this horse leg here in which the sausage will contract and expand at the joints of the limbs, almost in a way to replicate the bone/ligaments in one form. Our goal with these animal constructions is not to create a 1:1 copy of the animal reference but to use the reference to blueprint our own construction given the methods we’ve learned (sausage method). We want to bend these references to our will, not the other way around. Take a quick glance at step 3 of the donkey demo done by Uncomfy of what we should aim for with limbs. Instead you want to stick to keeping the sausage as simple as possible for the first iteration of the construction and to use additional forms to add those complexities such as ligaments, muscle, tendons and so on.

Here’s an example of what that could look like (simple sausages in red, additional masses in purple) For the hooves, I took a similar approach to boxed paws and imply the different planes that exist on the hoof. (Deers notably have cloven hooves, so I chose to use 2 separate forms instead.)

Head Construction

For the most part, I think you’re applying the correct approach towards the muzzle of most animals, especially with the bulldog, horse, and owl constructions where the best course of action is shown to be applied to additional forms. There's a few instances where you slip back into 2D forms. Here on this construction the rabbit the nose and mouth don't really explain the changes in the muzzle planes. Although some forms may not break the silhouette we want to ensure we're taking similar steps to explain their solidarity. This recent squirrel demo by Uncomfy that shows off how you should be thinking about breaking down these forms.

Additional Forms

These are done okay. I think there are a few areas where you get stuck solving how to wrap some of the forms that are not as obvious, resulting in flat shapes that don’t completely convince the viewer it exists cohesively with other forms. In this image here, the additional mass of the deer glute appears to come off a bit flat. Covering large areas of existing forms with only one mass can pose a challenge in conveying proper 3D form. Whenever you can, try multiple additional masses to convey spatial relationships. In this example I've started out with the mass marked out in red and overlapped with the blue mass. Notice the transition of each mass, we want to avoid arbitrary sharp corners or curves.

Before deciding to place an additional mass, interpret the 3D form of where you’re placing the mass and how it might change as it comes in contact with surrounding surfaces. Here's a simple example made by DIO to help you think about designing additional forms.

Texture/Fur

For the handful of times fur was added to the construction, they were used appropriately to the silhouette with intention. Good work.

Alright then I think I covered all the major points with your submisson. But before I send you off to the cylinder challenge, I would like to see the items listed below to make sure you've understood the general feedback:

1 page of organic intersections

• Build up the sausages one at a time pausing each time to consider the behaviour of the mass.

• Throw in parallel contour lines along the surface of the mass to create a stronger sense of volume. However, be careful not to go overboard as one too many could cause the form to look flat.

• Add line weight over forms that are in front to demonstrate their “dominance”. This next tip is not explicitly explained in lesson 2, however it’s good practice to avoid large gaps shown here and closely follow the contour of the form as you draw the overhanging end of the sausage. It should help avoid running into sausages that may look “frozen”.

• Save the cast shadows for last only after all sausages are drawn. Start from the bottom, working your way to the topmost forms to ensure the overlaps are consistent with no visual contradictions.

1 page of any hooved quadruped

• For the leg construction, start off with simple sausages and use additional forms to build up the accompanying masses.

• Account for the torso sag when connecting the ribcage and pelvis. It doesn’t have to be a major amount but just enough to noticeably describe the gesture of the torso.

Hey Elodin,

Everything was crystal clear, thanks for the critique!

Hello Laurada, I’ll be critiquing your submission today; if you have any questions, feel free to ask below. With that said, I’ll go ahead and review your submission.

Organic Arrows

The flow of the arrows proves to be smooth and consistent within both pages.The direction of compression on your arrows is clear; the width of the arrows gets smaller as they grow further away, which conveys proper perspective. Although, the line weight added to the overlap sections are quite harsh and done haphazardly when they should instead be subtle. Just to call back to lesson 1, when deciding to place down any mark on the page smoothness is key, even if it strays off the initial path (confidence first, accuracy secondary). Be mindful of how those extra strokes are added. The hatching lines also tend to wobble or lean in some sections so make sure that all instances of exercises are receiving the same level of line quality.

Organic Forms

Starting on your forms, sausages clearly show the intent of a tube with two spheres on opposing ends, a few cases of pinching or bloating but nothing major. Careful when placing the small ellipses that represent which side of the sausage is facing the viewer. Based on the way the ellipses are drawn, some of these poles wouldn't be visible.

Organic Forms with Contour Ellipses

Ellipses on sausages are clearly drawn through at least 2-3 times, and the degree shift is correctly made relative to the viewer. Next up on the alignment of forms, some ellipses here aren't quite matched up with the spine The spine (or more accurately the minor axis), provides the centerline for which we divide the ellipses equally into 2 parts . A misaligned spine could also contribute to ellipses being off, making it just as important to create a centered spine that crosses the midsection of the sausage for a good foundation.

Organic Forms with Contour Curves

The alignment is much better for the curves, but the degree shift is somewhat difficult to gauge and appears to look the same across the entire length of the form. Reasonably so, it's a lot harder to convey degree shifts with contour curves. Fundamentally, contour curves are separated by the difference of only showing the visible part of the ellipse. The degree shift should be approached in the same way as the ellipses; the degree shift of the curves will change as they progress through the sausage. Try to consider the half of the curve that is not visible and how it would change depending on the degree.

Texture Analysis & Dissections

Starting with the texture analysis, it's clear you're getting a grasp on how cast shadows operate. You've done a great job on strictly utilising shapes and thoroughly understanding the concept . In the future, I recommend pushing forward black/dense sections more so the transition is smoother. Aside from that, no issues. Good approach for the dissections as well, I don't have much to add there.

Form Intersections

Solving the intersections in different forms is pretty challenging on the first go, so I'm not too concerned about your ability to cross each object. As explained on the lesson page, it's more about how cohesive the page appears —the illusion that these forms exist in the same space. That being said, this is done well according to the instructions as all forms are grouped together. Now looking at the line work, there's some wobbliness with the line construction & hatching. As mentioned previously, ensure all lines are receiving the same amount of confidence.

Organic Intersections

Forms look okay here, with the occasional complex sausage. Once again, just a reminder to keep sausages simple and avoid awkward bends when possible. The use of contour lines appropriately describes the 3D aspect. But the structure of a few forms doesn't give the illusion that they could balance on top of each other. If we think of these forms as water balloons, it's much easier to judge how the masses will behave against one another. Cast shadows project well onto forms below. In future warm-ups try experimenting by placing light sources between ranges on the top left and right of the page.

Okay, I think that just about covers it, so I'll go ahead and send you off to Lesson 3. Keep up the good work.