Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

1:07 PM, Friday December 17th 2021

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/aFLO5U9.jpg

Post with 9 views.

0 users agree
7:51 PM, Sunday December 19th 2021

Hello Aksaa13! Overall you've done a pretty good submission, but there are a few important things I want to talk about, let's go through each exercise section by section:

Starting with your lines you're doing a great job committing to your lines and drawing them confidently even if they're going to miss then ending dot, which is just what we're looking for!

The main thing is that they do get a bit wobbly at times, specially at the starting and ending parts of each line, so try to loosen a little bit so they end up being fully confident. I've noticed as well that your lines are more consistently wobbly on the superimposed curves, so don't forget to loosen up and focus on confidence on those specially. Other than that you're doing a great job carefully planning and drawing each line!

Moving onto your ellipses they're confident just like your lines on the lines section, which is exactly what you're meant to do! The accuracy on them is good as well just like in lines, you don't get out of bounds of the ellipses normally which is great!

The main thing on them is that sometimes their shape gets a bit uneven, and some parts are a bit wobbly so try to draw a bit faster and to commit more to the ellipses. It doesn't matter if the accuracy gets a bit worse as that'll improve with practice.

This applies as well to the ellipses on ghosted planes, which I even though they are pretty confident as well, they're a bit wobblier than the others. You might be thinking that the centre of the ellipses is the same as the centre of the planes or that you should modify the elliptical ellipse shape so it touches the contact points, but this is not the case. Ellipses have to be symmetrical and have the same form regardless of where they are, so the only things you can change is how wide the ellipse is and which position it is in.

Lastly on your funnels sometimes you aren't aligning the ellipses to the minor axis. Make sure you always aim for the ellipses to be cut symmetrically by the middle line even if that means you need to ignore the initial curves. Pay also attention to the angle of the ellipses as well. They have to be cut symmetrically by the line, so they can't be tilted.

Finally in your boxes a few things:

-Overall your lines get a bit wobblier. Make sure you draw your lines as confidently as in the line section. The goal is always to draw them straight and confident, accuracy isn't a problem even when adding lineweight to a line. When doing the lineweight approach it like doing a superimposed line. Plan, ghost and draw as confidently as you can draw it, you did a good job even if the line misses the line you wanted to add lineweight to!

-Sometimes you repeat lines that were off. No matter how off a line is do your best not to repeat it, keep going as if it was correct as redrawing them will make the drawing messier and can encourage bad habits.

-On rough perspective you've done a great job planning each line, and you're making already some good attempts at the perspective, but you seem to have trouble at times keeping height lines perpendicular to the horizon line, and width lines parallel to it. I know it's hard, but make sure you always are aiming for it. You can check if the starting and ending dots are correct or not, and if you find that they aren't you can change them. You can put down as many dots as you want as long as it's before drawing the actual line, so give it a shot!

-On rotated boxes you've done a great attempt apart from the line issues I mentioned. Most boxes are rotated and all are kept close together, good job! The only thing is that some of the boxes on the outer ends aren't rotating, and that you haven't drawn all of the boxes, you're missing some on the outer ends, make sure you finish them!

-Lastly on organic perspective you're doing some good attempts at the perspective of the boxes already! They do have some issues, but that's not a problem as you'll work on them on the box challenge. For the boxes themselves I recommend to do more overlaps between boxes in future attempts as you haven't done many of them.

Remember when you do it that you can add lineweight to the parts of outer lines that overlap with other boxes to clarify which ones are on top and which behind, so give it a try next attempts you have at the exercise!

Overall like I said earlier you've done a great job, but before moving on I want you to do 1 more page of rough perspective and I want you to finish the rotated boxes exercise that has some boxes missing. Make sure you don't repeat any line on the rough perspective exercise and try to loosen up a bit so the lines are more confident. Good luck!

Next Steps:

-1 page of rough perspective

-Finish the page of rotated boxes you already started

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:35 AM, Saturday December 25th 2021

Your advice was extremely helpful. Here is the link to the revisions.

https://imgur.com/a/oJiD0jq

8:07 PM, Sunday December 26th 2021

Good improvement! On rough perspective you aren't repeating lines anymore, and your lines are overall confident. There are still a few lines that get a little bit wobbly though, so try to loosen up a bit more so they end up fully confident.

On rotated boxes you've also crossed some lines that were off or repeated some lines, so try to always remind yourself not to repeat lines or cross them or anything similar. Try to think about each line as an individual exercise.

That said, overall you've done a pretty good job so I'll mark this as complete!

From now on you need to do warmups before every session, so don't forget about them! And make sure you ask any questions you might have. Keep up the good work and good luck on the box challenge!

Next Steps:

250 box challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
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.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.