weijak

Hey Gady! Im going to go over your submission.

Starting out by your organic sausages, it seems like you are doing a good job and drawing them solid and 3d, though you are sometimes getting to far away from the characteristics of the simple sausage, remember to always try to make both ends as balls of about the same size. Also, its great that you are changing the degrees of your contours/ellipses, though there is one key thing to understand here- A contour is the repesentation of how a cross section of the sausage is facing the viewer, as this cross sections face towards more the viewer, they will get wider, and as they face aways from the viewer, they will get thinner. Taking this into account, always think about how you want your different parts of your sausages to move in relation with the viewer, so you can then draw the appropiate degree for their contours! (See this diagram). On top of this, remember that sausages are just more organic cylinders, so as stated in this L1 video, remember that as this cross sections slide further aways from the viewer, they will get wider and wider.

• One last thing on your sausages, some of your contours are falling a little flat, this is normal at this stage, but is important that one of the characteristics of this sausages is that they are rounded. Its not a big mistake, its just that some of them need

that little extra push to appear rounded!

Moving on to your constructions I have to say that they are looking really good, it looks like you are making a good job on constructing solid and believable insects, while also capturing a likening. This said, there are some things that I want to draw attention to so you can keep on the right track.

The key thing I want you to take from this critique is this- Because the surface we are drawing on is completely 2d and we are trying to create and construct 3d drawings, it is really easy for us to draw lines that work against the illusions of depth that we are trying to create. Thats why its important that we force ourselves to stick to certain rules that instead, are meant to maintain the solidity of whatever we are drawing.

One of this rules is the key thing I want you to learn- and is that once you´ve put down a form on the page, never attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette its just a 2d shape that represents the 3d form, if you try to cut into it or extend it, you will not be also changing the form, you will just break the connection between the two and ultimately undermining the solidity of your forms.

Now, there is quite a couple of examples where this is happening on your insects, some more subtle like this one, and others not so subtle like this one. What is happening in these examples is that you are putting down a basic form to be the base of your construction, and then using it as a general guide where you cut into in the places where you dont seem to need it.

Instead, what we do is we work additively, we start out by basic forms and then add new solid forms that will build on top of those forms you layed down and in this way, we also ramp up the complexity of our constructions by adding smaller forms. We then establish, how this forms relate to each other in 3d space, either by defining the intersection between this forms (like the form intersections exercises from L2) or by convincingly wrapping this forms around each others silhouette like this!.

This kind of construction can be seen in practice in this bettle horn demo and also, this ant head demo. This said, I can see that you use this kind of method on this bettle horn, and Im pleased that you have since it means that you will probably understand it pretty easily!

Another thing that its somehow connected to what we´ve just talked about is that Im seeing that in quite a lot of your constructions your going really lightly on your basic forms and then using more like a clean up pass as you add more stuff to the construction. There is two reasons why this is discouraged: First, by using a softer line quality on your basic forms, its easier for you to take them as general guides rather than the foundations of your construction, and second, thats not how line weight its supposed to be used- Line weight its a really specific tool we have in our hands to clarify how our 3d forms overlap to each other in localized areas. By appyling line weight all along the silhouette of your constructions, you are just undermining the effective use of that same line weight where in other areas is showing how two 3d forms relate to each other. So, as a rule of thumb, wait till the end of the construction and then apply line weight, not on long lines, but on the places where you see that your drawing needs clarification, remember that the clearer that this forms relate to one another, the easier it will be for a viewer to fall in your illusion.

Now lets talk about legs, it seems like you covered a variety of approaches to them, though Im pleased to see that you mainly used the sausage method stated on the lesson. Now, the cool thing about this sausage method is that it can both capture the 2d fluidity of the legs, while also being 3d and solid, though it is a little hard to believe that they can sustain much weight while being just sausages strapped to one another. Thats why, I want to encourage how you build on top of some of your legs with smaller forms to create a better and more realistic instect leg, like in your beetles and wasp. Here is a demo from Uncomfy himself where he is doing the exact same thing, now the reason this is important is because it really builds up to what you will be doing on your next lesson ( you will not be doing exactly this, but a more simplified version of it!)

To sum up, you did great on this lesson, try to revisit the topics presented in this critique since they are key for moving forward, Im going to go ahead and mark it as completed! Keep up the good work.

Hi Cynsh! I think you made some improvements on the areas I asked revisions for, though as always there are a couple of things that i want to draw attention to.

First, on your cylinders around arbitrary axis, it seems like you made some mistakes relating how foreshortening manifests itself on cylinders, on this first page, Elodin helped me out and marked how this ellipse degree should be, by drawing a box around it. Remember to always balance the two shifts (scale and degree) that happen on the ellipses. Here are some correction on the same topic, but on your second page.

Now, I advise you go back and give a couple of reads all what I explained about foreshortening in cylinders, since its really important for you moving forward.

Moving on to your boxes with cylinders, I think that you are doing a good job on constructing boxes that have at least one pair of faces proportionally square. However, I really found it weid when I saw your third one, it seems like you choose the most awkward faces to draw your ellipses, and so it didnt come out as a cylinder at all. Here I just drew over that one box and added the ellipses on other planes and it worked much better. Remember that drawing proportionally square boxes its a matter of practice and observation, though in this case is also taking into account that we need those boxes to fit cylinders, so we have to choose the most square planes to put our ellipse there.

I think that you showed some improvement on this revision so Im going to mark this challenge as completed! keep up the good work.

Hi! yeah the texture part of this challenge is really sneaky to be honest. Im glad you are finding this critiques useful, as you said they are new for me, though Im learning a lot from them, and wanting to critique your work makes having to learn about them much easier!

Good luck!

Hey goodboy! Im glad you are prepared to get roasted, cause I aint holding back :)

I think that as a whole you are doing good job on this challenge, regarding the solidity of your wheels, they are indeed solid, and I specially like that you are making the most of your ellipse guide- You are not only using it to mark each side, but also you are capturing the subtle inflation and compression by adding several ellipses in the middle, which you are then taking advantage when drawing the tire treads.

Regarding the purpose of this challenge, Uncomfy kind of sets a trap here- By this stage, students have basically forgotten about the principles of implicit textures presented on lesson 2, so instead of takling the tire treads that way, instead people try different explicit and constructional approaches. To be honest, its completely our fault that we blindly trust the same man that made us draw 250 boxes.

Taking all this into account, it seems like you started doing a explicit approach, like your second wheel (sorry for mentioning that one, but I told you I aint holding back), but then by your forth you started to make the shift, and your sixth I like you started being more bold with it. However, regarding this one in particular, while it shows that you are trying to go on the implicit path, you are not using cast shadows, but form shadows, I recommend to go back to this video that differenciates the two, and also its advised to go back to that section of the course to refresh our memory on all this. I think that your 10th weel is going on the right direction since it seems like you are using cast shadows.

On the ones that have more subtle grooves, like 4, 8 and 11, its not that noticible, its more on the chunkier trims where this is seen. Like in your 20 you are really doing the right thing, though some of those cast shadows are a little rough, i know how hard just drawing the cast shadows is when all you have been thinking this past lessons is implicitly constructing different objects, but a good approach is this one, while this is perfectly applyable to the more shallow textured wheels we first talked about, a similar approach could be made to those with bigger trims, were you first mark down the contours of the shape that the cast shadow is forming, and then filling it up. Again, this is pretty tough, but you are heading on the right direction.

Now I want to go back to the more constructional part of this challenge, I honestly think you did a good job taking into account that you just had one degree for your ellipses, while in some of your wheels I get this sense of stifness, Im not really worried since I have been reviewing your work for a while now and I know for sure that you know how the degrees change in a cylinder. This said, you did some really cool stuff with that ellipse guide, I specially like the inner part of your first wheel and also the inner part of the number 16.

As I said, you did a good job on this challenge, so Im going to go ahead and mark it as completed! Keep up the good work and good look on the final stretch.

Hi Cynsh! Im going to go over your submission.

Starting out by your cylinders around an arbitrary axis, it looks like you are doing a good job aligning your ellipses to their minor axis, although your ellipses started a little wobbly at the beginning, you made up for it later! As always, there is still some things that I want to talk about.

First off, the convergence of a cylinder (and other forms) is represented on two ways. its reflected on the change of scale between the two ellipses, where the closer one is bigger than the further one, its always visible on the shift of degrees of the ellipses, where the further ellipse always has a wider degree than the closer one. This two "shifts" help the viewer understand how a cylinder is converging, though they need to work together. Here I picked a cylinder where these two "shifts" are communicating two different foreshortenings- On one case, the sizes of of this two ellipses are pretty similar, while the back one is smaller, its not a drastic change, this tells the viewer that the convergence is shallow. However, when seeing the change in degrees between this ellipses, its way more drastic, where the closer one is really narrow, and the back one really wide, this is communicating the viewer that there is a lot of convergence happening on the ellipse. In this cases what it ends up happening is that the illusion of depth gets broken. To be honest, you are doing an overall job on this area, though I wanted to pick one of the cases where it didnt work out to explain this, so you can apply it more consciously!

Another thing that called my attention is that as you move forward with the challenge, some of your cylinders started looking a not so much as 3d representations of circles, but more like tappered circles. Take for example this cylinder you have drawn, see how it looks more like a deformated cylinder, that is wider on one direction than the other. The thing to remember here is that ellipses are representations of perfect circles in 3d space, while we are never going to be able to create an ellipse that perfectly represents a circle because we are not machines, we need to always strive for it. This happened quite a lot on your later cylinders around arbitrary axis and is also we have been dealing on your sausages where you are sometimes making ellipses flatter than what they should. Dont worry too much about it, the key thing to remember is what I have been saying about ellipses representing perfect circles in 3d.

Moving on to your cylinders in boxes, it seems like the issue we have just talked about, translated a little into this sections of the challenge. The aim of this part are not the ellipses, the aim here is for you to develop your intuition when creating boxes whit more square proportions so they better fit circles. The issue that I think it happened here is that you are not fully understanding that these ellipses you have been drawing are supposed to be circles in 3d, and when you where drawing your boxes you wouldnt always aim to create a box with at least a pair of faces that are proportionally square so you when you fit your ellipses in there they would create a better cylinder.

As to take an example, check this one, I think we can both agree that thats not a cylinder, but more of a tappered one. Now, I want to clarify that I know that this is not an easy exercise, I also have a hard time creating proportionally correct boxes that can fit ellipses, but the reason that I wanted to point this out is that it seems like the issue wasnt your ability to create this kind of boxes, since you showed in quite a lot of cases that you are able to (221 and 225 are an example of some well done), but the issue was this missunderstanding that we have been talking about.

All this said, I think you did pretty good on this challenge, though I want to ask for some revisions, just to make sure that you are able to get past this deformed cylinders issue.

Hi! Dont worry, this course is made so you can keep at it at your pace, the important thing is that you are coming back to it! (if that goes in with your interests of course). Regarding cast shadows, once you understand that they follow the form that they are being cast on and set up an arbitrary light direction, it becomes a very mechanical thing that its easier to practice, so dont worry too much about it, you will get better at it with time!

I hope you are able to use your free time on things you enjoy, and good luck to you too!

Hi! Im glad you found the critique useful, looking forward for seeing your future work, good luck!

Hi Mushroom guy! Im going to go over your work.

Starting out by your organic arrows, it looks like you are doing a pretty solid job on them, you are confidently making them flow through space and also making them look 3d. I also like that you are making them bigger as they get closer and also the spaces between turns smaller as they get further away, though I would say that you are sometimes getting confused by those changes. Take a look at the first arrow Im showing in here, see how in one way you are making the arrow get smaller as it gets further away (which remember to be more gradual so its more believable), but you are also making the spaces in between turns progressively bigger the further they go back into space, while it should be the other way- the spaces between turns should get smaller as it goes back into space! In the other arrow, the space in the middle is bigger than the other ones, which breaks the illusion of that arrows depth. Looking at how you manage to do those arrows I dont have any doubt that when you understand this concepts, you will have no problem on appyling them!

Moving on to your leaves, it seems like all the confidence and flowiness of your arrows translated pretty nicely to this exercise, I specially like that you are building you details on top of your structures instead of cutting into them. Regarding some of the detail, remember that whenever you have to add a line as texture, add it like this, always thinking of cast shadows when appyling texture.

Branches are looking good, I can see that you are getting better at those transitions in between sections, I also like seeing that you are varying the degrees of your ellipses, this is a key element on creating a more solid illusion of depth.

Overall I can say that your constructions look really solid and 3d, there is of course some things here and there to bring up, but it seems like you are going on the right track.

First thing I want to talk about is something I saw in this hibiscus, putting a special focus on how you approach adding details to its petals. Remember to always try to avoid cutting into your forms, this is something you will have to take into account specially in future lessons since its key to maintaining the solidity of your constructions. When you construct a base form for your petals, you then have to build everything on top of it, respecting its form, when you cut into, or extend the silhouette of that form, you are not also changing the 3d form, you are breaking the connection between the 2d shape that is the silhouette, and the form, and ultimately undermining the solidity of your constructions. As for this example, its not really a big deal, since petals and leaves are really flat 3d forms and you seem to have a strong grasp on 3d so you are always treating them as still 3d, though its important that you still try to stick to this rule of not altering the silhouette, since the constructions will just get more complex and it will be up to you to keep them believable and solid.

I want to say that I specially liked how you approach this mushroom construction since you are constructing a base form and then introducing new 3d and solid forms that build on top of that form you have already establish and then ramping up the complexity by adding more forms. This wasy of constructing is called additively, and its how you will work here on DaB for your next lessons, so adding to the point we made earlier, see how important it is to always respect the solidity of the forms you have already build, since your next steps are going to be sitting on top of them and not taking them as mere guides.

Seeing this cactus construction, it calls my attention that you are using a darker line weight as almost a clean up pass, on top of your original forms. Avoid this. This adds to what we have already been talking about- all your forms should be drawing on the same line wight and value, once you have put down all your lines of your construction, then is time to bring that construction up from the mess with the use of line weight. However, line weight is not a tool you use to highlight larg areas (like a whole silhouette), it is a localized tool used to clarify how certain forms interact in 3d space in the specific places where they are overlapping. Here is a demo I did for another critique, where I expain how you can use line weight and cast shadows, after the construction is done, to bring up what you want to bring up of the construction!

So, as I said I think you are going on the right track, you did great on this lesson, just try to keep this things in mind moving forward. Im gonna go ahead and mark this lesson as completed! Keep up the good work.

No worries!

Good luck

Check if this one works!

https://imgur.com/a/JJm91Hb