I need some help making a course adjustment in the 250 Box Challenge.

5:04 PM, Friday April 17th 2020

Link to current progress

I figured that with all this extra time in quarintine I would try picking up the pen and learning to draw again. Went through lesson 1 pretty smoothly though its taken a little while. I am now working on the 250 box challenge and I am really not happy with my progress. As shown in my attached album, I am struggling with the basics, even just getting my boxes to have consistent vanish points. I have been working from a reference 3d cube which has been really helpful and Ill link here if anyone is interested:

https://www.khanacademy.org/computer-programming/interactive-3d-cube/6436122472742912

To get back to my main point though, I have gotten about a tenth of the way through the challenge but I don't think that continuing with my current course will allow me to get anything out of this course. Don't get me wrong I like these lessons, I just think I am missing something.

3 users agree
6:03 AM, Saturday April 18th 2020

Firstly, don't use a reference cube for these since it's very easy to end up relying on just copying it rather than working through the 3D problem you're trying to solve.

Secondly, you won't be able to see any progress from 22 boxes. It's a very gradual thing that comes from taking your time and assessing what your check lines are telling you that you keep messing up. I'll tell you now that when Uncomfortable or the TAs assess a box challenge, they don't care about the individual mistakes or boxes. They care about the gradual trend of improvement and the mistakes you consistently make - 22 boxes does not a trend make.

No one that takes their time to think through what they're doing in the box challenge comes out the other side without improvement. It's great for mileage of your line confidence, great for gaining a basic understanding of how your lines interact in 3D space, and it's great for just drawing boxes which pretty much every object you could ever want to draw can be broken down to.

It's up to you if you want to continue. There are a lot of resources to help you if you want to continue - such as already critiqued box challenges and the Discord server. There have been thousands of students before you with exactly the same challenges and doubts, so you're not alone, just make sure you're following the 50% rule because the box challenge can and will burn you out if you don't.

0 users agree
6:07 AM, Saturday April 18th 2020

When drawing a box in a 3 point perspective, when you draw the first 3 lines that will recede each to its own perspective point, make sure the have more than 90 degrees between them https://imgur.com/GLxiR8s.

The fourth line and up that you will draw, each of those lines needs to take into account all 3 perspective points, first its own so you know where it should go, then the perspective point of the other two in order to know where to stop https://imgur.com/GgJPRo1. That is tricky, and since you should draw everything without using a ruler and without drawing each receding line, it's a matter of doing the boxes "trying" to think in this way for each line https://imgur.com/mRCP0u2, https://imgur.com/hVy2BxQ, -then- when you have finished the page and are drawing the receding lines to check for mistakes, for each line ask yourself; what was wrong? Its own point perspective? Or did it stopped before or after the point in which the other perspective lines recede?

Next time you draw remember what mistakes you made and try to draw the same boxes fixing the mistakes.

Now this is just the way I think when drawing the boxes, and it's by no means perfect, I'm still struggling with it.

0 users agree
12:56 PM, Saturday April 18th 2020

Firstly, drop the visual aid. You need to let your eyes and brain do the work. That is how you will improve even if it is hard in the beginning. You need to be actively visualising not letting some software do it for you.

You are drawing the boxes all kind of the same. They are also small, I made the same mistake on my attempt.

I have attached a link to my effort ( which I just found out I passed with ). Early on I was drawing small.

I struggled till about box 100 when it started to click, by 200 I was starting to really get it.

So draw bigger, vary the dimensions of the sides of the box. And, and this helped me, start thinking terms of 3 sets of 4 parallel lines.

https://imgur.com/gallery/R0WFWj2

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