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7:19 AM, Sunday July 12th 2020

Hey! Let’s take this one exercise at a time~

Your superimposed lines start off a little wobbly, but improve considerably by page 2. They’re also properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory- nicely done. The ghosted lines are in a similar boat, but though they improve by the time you reach the ghosted planes exercise, and even more so by the end of the submission, they’re still a little lacking. Remember that our #1 priority is confidence. If it’s in pursuit of it, it’s perfectly fine to be inaccurate. Outside of that, my only other recommendation is to plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of the planes.

In general, your ellipses look good, if at times a little loose. To fix that, spend a little longer on the ghosting phase, not moving past it until 100% comfortable in the built-up motion. Let’s talk specifics. In the table of ellipses exercise, your ellipses are smooth, rounded, and of a constant degree/angle in a frame. There’s a little tail at the end of them, however, usually an indication that the student is flicking their pen off at the end of their rotations- try lifting it off, instead. The ellipses in planes are fairly rounded, despite the added difficulty of having to touch all 4 sides of the plane- nicely done. I notice that their rotations have a harder time matching up here, however. This is entirely normal, and, as you might expect, fixed by ghosting more. Solid job on the funnels exercise. The minor axis doesn’t always cut each ellipse in half, but this seems to be as a result of the construction of the funnel, more than anything else. See if you can spend a little longer on that step, next time, and perhaps even try using a tool for it (a plate, maybe?)

Starting off the box section, the plotted perspective exercise looks good, though I notice that, here, and everywhere else in this section, you missed the instruction to split your page into multiple frames. Try to be a little more attentive to the example homework next time, please. It being an official attempt at the exercises, it’s a good indication of how your page should look like. As a result of this, you haven’t had a chance to practice the rough perspective exercise to the extent that it ‘clicks’- the convergences, in particular, are still a little off. Don’t feel obligated to stick to your original points. Ghost each one until you’re satisfied, then commit to it. I notice that the line quality is a little lacking in this exercise, too. It’s expected, considering the difficulty of this exercise, but this is exactly why we remind students that, really, all you’re doing is drawing a line from point A to point B. There’s things in-between, certainly, but the act of drawing a line is no different from what it was in the ghosted lines exercise. That single line is your unit of work, so remember that, and try not to get overwhelmed by the big picture. The rotated boxes exercise seems to have been a bit of a struggle. I’ll commend you on seeing it through to the end. Ultimately, that’s what we’re after. The main issue is that the boxes, the further off ones, especially, aren’t snug enough for the neighboring edges to serve as guidelines. They don’t quite rotate, either, but this is expected. Really, the only thing to critique here is the line quality (which is a little messy.) When applying line-weight, try to be subtle- a single, superimposed line will do, usually. Finally, the organic perspective exercise looks great. Save for the occasional diverging line, the boxes look good: their foreshortening is shallow, and consistent, and their increase in size subtle, and believable. They flow quite well, as a result of that. Nicely done.

I'll be marking this lesson as complete, so feel free to move on to the box challenge.

Next Steps:

250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
1:31 PM, Sunday July 12th 2020

Eep. Sorry about the rough perspective exercise, but thank you so much for the detailed critique. I'll revisit these exercises one day. ????

9:39 AM, Monday July 13th 2020

Hopefully every day, as per the instructions in this section~

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The Art of Blizzard Entertainment

The Art of Blizzard Entertainment

While I have a massive library of non-instructional art books I've collected over the years, there's only a handful that are actually important to me. This is one of them - so much so that I jammed my copy into my overstuffed backpack when flying back from my parents' house just so I could have it at my apartment. My back's been sore for a week.

The reason I hold this book in such high esteem is because of how it puts the relatively new field of game art into perspective, showing how concept art really just started off as crude sketches intended to communicate ideas to storytellers, designers and 3D modelers. How all of this focus on beautiful illustrations is really secondary to the core of a concept artist's job. A real eye-opener.

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