Lesson 5: Applying Construction to Animals

7:01 AM, Saturday January 29th 2022

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i actually thought that we were supposed to do 2 pages of hybrid, anyways finally finished lesson 5 after many months of break.

again to whoever is going to critique my submission, kudos to you. i very much appreciate the time and feedback that you'd be offering to my submission.

references

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8:16 PM, Wednesday March 9th 2022

Staring with the organic intersections, these are generally looking quite good. The forms slump and sag over one another with a believable sense of gravity. There are a few things I'd like to direct your attention to however:

  • The first thing that stands out to me is the way you approach line weight on your forms. Im seeing you being timid about it, resulting in a series of broken lines that follow along the form's silhouette. It helps to think of these as just exercises and not worry too much about being precise. When applying line weight, remember to only apply it to localized areas to clarify overlaps of one object over another.

  • Secondly, remember that the farther contour curves along the sausage's length should be wider - right now you're drawing them with roughly the same degree and it makes the sausages look like they're half filled water balloons

Moving onto the animal constructions, there is clear attention being put into your general construction and showing an understanding of the relationships that exist between your different forms, and defining them clearly. There's no instances where you're working in 2d space - that is the addition of partial shapes or one off lines. Everything is introduced through a new complete, self enclosed form.

Generally speaking, the design of those form's silhouettes are coming along quite well even though there are a few instances of unneccessary complexity. There are a couple small things, i've highlighted here. Clearly, you understand how to do this correctly, and that these were just little slip-ups, but just to cover all my bases, remember that all inward curves need to be caused by pressing against something specific and defined. So if it's like a dent just hanging there, without anything actively pressing it in, then that complexity will undermine the solidity of the mass you've drawn.

You're definitely off to a great start in the use of the additional masses along your leg structures, but this can be pushed even further. A lot of them primarily focus on the silhouette of the leg without as much consideration for the forms that don't directly impact it. There's value in exploring these inner masses - like a missing puzzle piece that helps hold together the ones that create bumps along the silhouette's edge. Here's an example from another student's work, as you can see, there's blocked out masses along the masses including the one fitting in between them all, even though it doesn't influence the silhouette. Thinking about it this way will help your further push the value of contructional exercises and puzzles.

Continuing onto head construction, it seems like you're following the head contrution demos closely, and as a result much of your heads are coming along quite nicely. There are a few instances where the eye sockets aren't quite fitting in with the muzzle form that's there.

One great example of this in on the capybara you drew. Compared to the other contructions, the capybara does feel quite a bit simpler and looking at other references, it can be a bit difficult to fit into the head construction approach shown here, due to the underying structure being obfuscated by the fur. The trick really comes down to making a number of smaller moves, one at a time, rather than trying to make a few big moves that capture a lot of things at once. For example, starting off with a smaller cranial ball allows us to start establishing structure, without being committed to a scale thay may not work properly. Drawing a huge cranial ball is a common mistake, resulting with the rest of the facial features being smushed down in comparison.

So be sure to start small and build up slowly with small, individual pieces and look back at your reference to see what it is you're trying to capture. Here's an example from another rodent- like animal. We're still starting with the same components but get into some unique case driven actions towards the end, especially the extra bulk in the back of the head. You can see more of this in the banana-headed rhinoceros.

And that about covers everyting I have to say. You're doing very well as a whole and working more on observation would help take a strong construction and produce even more believable constructions. I'll be marking this as complete but be sure to look over the points i've raised moving forward.

Next Steps:

250 cylinder challenge

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 4 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
2:23 AM, Thursday March 10th 2022

Thank you for the constructive criticism i'll be sure to keep in mind/ apply the points that you've raised especially the one where you said about starting small and building it all up slowly.

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