Hello Brainducker, thank you for getting back to me with these extra pages, and thank you for sharing the references.

I do, in fact, consider redoing the same construction several times to be grinding. However, as you have already come to the conclusion that your time and energy would have been better spent on a single construction, rather than spreading it over several iterations, I will not belabour this point.

The additional masses on the underside of the badger are indeed a bit awkward, but something that gives me greater cause for concern is that your cast shadows are telling the viewer that both front legs are on the near side of the body. The left-most leg is on the far side of the body in the reference. This is a bit of an indicator that despite all the hours that have been poured into various iterations of this construction, that you were not necessarily thinking through every mark you made.

On a more positive note, these two additional masses came out really well, they're wrapping around the underlying structures in a way that feels convincing and helps to reinforce the 3D illusion, well done.

For the extension between the front legs, I can see you're thinking about this in 3D, but this isn't a complete form with a fully enclosed silhouette. I've drawn an additional mass for you here as well as highlighting in red a line that doesn't appear to be part of an additional mass, but more like a half finished thought or something that was abandoned.

It is good to see that you're making an effort to use the sausage method to construct your legs. You don't appear to be making use of these notes on foot construction that I shared with you previously.

I've marked in blue here some places where you appear to be extending the head of your badger with one off lines and partial shapes, which as we've been over a number of times, will flatten your construction. You're not quite using the pentagonal eye socket shape as previously discussed either.

Moving on to your fox head, you've done a much better job of constructing the muzzle than in your previous head construction attempt, and the eye sockets are more level too. In my last round of feedback I told you specifically to use the outer line of your ellipses as the basis for the construction to prevent stray lines going outside the silhouette, and to draw through the neck. Both these pieces of feedback appear to have been misunderstood or forgotten. You're not quite drawing the pentagonal eye socket shape shown previously. From what I can make out, you've drawn 4 strokes, making a round-ish quadrilateral. Pentagons have 5 sides.

Here I've marked an example of where the cheek had been extended with a partial shape, and showed how to draw it as a complete 3D form. I also highlighted some examples of lines that don't appear to have been fully thought out before they were drawn. I think you may have been trying to describe the forehead plane, but it's not really following what is shown in the informal head demo.

Here is a quick redraw, showing how to apply the first steps of head construction to your fox reference. In addition to what I've already talked about with the specific shape of the eye sockets, try to be more observant about which direction the head is facing. You've asserted your head as facing downwards, when the head in the reference is more level, perhaps even looking up slightly.

So! While there are some improvements here, there are also some issues which have already been called out a number of times in previous rounds of feedback.

While I cannot speak specifically to why these issues continue to arise in your work, (I don't know your specific circumstances, and It isn't any of my business) I can tell you that for most students who have issues arise repeatedly is that it comes down to how much time the student is investing - both in actually approaching the construction at hand, and in reviewing the feedback they've received. The feedback students receive is, by necessity, quite dense especially when there are a lot of points that need to be covered. This means that a fair bit falls into the student's lap to process that information, to take notes on it, or to do whatever it is they need in order to ensure it is applied. Due to the very low price of feedback we offer, it does mean that we can only do so much in ensuring that it is all applied.

This doesn't mean that you can't do this, or that there is anything wrong with you. However we are well over capacity for the amount of support we can provide an individual student for a single lesson within the very limited bandwidth of these written critiques. As the course itself undergoes a gradual overhaul, many of the points that I've called out and explained as part of the critique will be more seamlessly integrated into the lesson material, and that may make it considerably easier to understand, with many more specific demonstrations being available for each major concept. Once that overhaul of the lesson is complete (which unfortunately won't be for some time), you may have a more straightforward, easier time understanding how to approach this material.

Lessons 3-5 all focus on organic construction, and build directly on one another, but from here the course takes a pretty significant turn, so the problems you're encountering here won't prevent you from tackling the cylinder challenge (which is up next) and subsequent hard surface constructions, and benefiting from doing so.

So what I think would be the best way to move forward from here, is to give animal constructions a break for now, and mark this lesson as complete so you can go ahead and tackle the cylinder challenge and beyond. Before you complete the course I'd like you to come back and take some time to review all of the feedback you have received here and practice applying this information to your constructions independently. There is no need for you to submit any more lesson 5 homework for official critique, as I believe that the information you require is already at your disposal within the various rounds of feedback you have received. You can choose to post on Discord to request community feedback if you would like additional support, although as community feedback runs on goodwill it is not guaranteed.

Best of luck with the cylinder challenge, and thank you for all your hard work in this lesson.