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7:43 PM, Tuesday September 26th 2023

Starting with the cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, for the first hundred or so you were demonstrating a notable issue regarding the relationship between the ellipses at either end, and which one you'd fill with hatching. As noted in the instructions, the ellipse closer to the viewer is both larger in its overall scale, and narrower in its degree, than the ellipse on the far end (which conversely would be smaller in its overall scale due to the convergence of the cylinder's side edges, and wider in its degree).

For the first hundred, it was unclear which side was meant to be which, as you got these relationships mixed up. As we can see on this page for example, the ellipse with the hatching (which I premise was intended to be closer to the viewer, based both on the hatching and the arrow heads on your minor axis lines), was generally drawn smaller than the opposite (farther) end. This quite directly contradicts the core principle of perspective, that as things get farther away from the viewer, they generally appear smaller. Instead, the far end should still be proportionally wider, as it is now, but the overall scale should be smaller (which is unavoidable if we have the side edges converging in that direction).

Now, after that first hundred, you appear to have picked up on this problem, and corrected it. We're fortunate that you did, as this would have resulted in some significant revisions. I would still recommend that you reflect on why exactly you were making that mistake - mistakes are of course normal, but this is one that would have had to do with a core principle of perspective that should at this point be fairly solid.

The other point I wanted to call out in regards to this part of the challenge is that your linework suggests (and this may answer the previous question as well) that you are not taking as much time as you should be in your work. That is to say, you appear to be rushing. I'm not seeing signs that you're properly applying the ghosting method to each and every freehanded mark, resulting in side edges that while being mostly straight do waver in ways that suggest a slightly hesitant execution, rather than the confident one that the ghosting method requires. I do see the start/end points that are hallmarks of the planning phase, so you're at least applying part of it, but it is very important that you remember the overall purpose behind the ghosting method - to break a complex task into distinct, simple stages, each with their own priorities.

As an extension of that point, make sure that you're also engaging your whole arm from the shoulder when executing your ellipses, and that you're ensuring that you're drawing through them two full times and not stopping a little short. That's something we see from students when they get a little careless, going through the memorized motions but not necessarily considering what choices they're making and what actions they're taking throughout the course of their work.

Continuing onto your cylinders in boxes, along with the similar signs that you could definitely be investing more time into each individual mark (specifically the planning/preparation preceding their execution), I am also seeing another significant concern.

You are frequently extending one or more sets of lines in the wrong direction. For example, 204 and 205 on this page both have their red lines extended towards the viewer rather than away from them. Similarly, 220 on this page has its blue lines extended incorrectly, as does 225 here, and on 226 here the red and blue lines both appear to be incorrect. There are many others, suggesting that this is not just a once in a while issue, but rather a more significant concern. These notes from the box challenge explain the concept of lines being extended in the wrong direction, and the section below that one explains an approach you can use to guarantee they'll be extended correctly without requiring you to understand the underlying concepts. I will note however that the expectation is that the student will have incorporated the freely rotated boxes with line extensions from the box challenge into their warmups, so this issue coming up here does raise questions about whether you've been iterating on the previous concepts and exercises as you were meant to.

Continuing on, I also wanted to stress that you should keep your line extensions - that is, which belongs to which larger set - consistent. There are situations where a box can end up coming out so narrow that the minor axis ends up oriented towards a different vanishing point than the one it's meant to. We can see this in 221 on this page for instance, where the minor axis would match up roughly with the red contact point line. From what I can see the (blue) minor axis lines were never actually drawn, and the result is that this case appears to be entirely correct, even though the minor axes are nearly perpendicular to how they should be oriented. Make sure to actually draw the blue line in, so that the error is obvious and difficult to overlook. That is ultimately how this exercise works - we draw boxes, we draw ellipses in two opposing faces such that they touch all four edges of their enclosing plane, and then we apply our line extensions. Any discrepancies in the alignment of those line extensions from their corresponding sets from the box's edges are signs that the proportions of those opposite planes are not quite square in 3D space, and so we can make adjustments to bring them more into alignment for the next set. If however we aren't aware of the mistake, then we aren't in a position to address it.

Going back to the point about your linework feeling rushed, I did take a look at the timing behind your submissions, and upon realizing that you submitted pretty much as soon as the system would have allowed you to (in regards to the cooldown between submissions), it becomes rather clear that you did in fact rush and neglected to uphold your end of the bargain - that is, what is expected of all students in their efforts as they work through the course, if they choose to take advantage of the heavily subsidized official critique track. I urge you to review this video, but the jist of it is that it is each student's responsibility to take as much time as they require to do the work to the best of their current ability. That means giving yourself enough time to review the instructions, and in giving yourself as much time as you require to execute each and every mark to the best of your current ability. As explained here it's pretty common for students to modulate how much time they spend on a given mark based on the complexity of the overall task at hand. In this course however, we insist that every student do the opposite - that regardless of how complex a task is, or how much time you have to complete it, each mark still gets as much time as it needs, and everything else extends off it. The outcome is usually that the work takes more time, but that's pretty much how we can offer feedback as cheaply as we do - by putting the bulk of the labour on the student. To that end, my feedback becomes a lot less valuable and useful if you're not already pushing yourself to your limit.

All that said, I'm going to assign some revisions below. The revisions themselves are assigned based on the issues with your cylinders in boxes, but their quantity is increased on the basis of your rushing - so in the future, refrain from doing that.

Next Steps:

Please submit an additional 75 cylinders in boxes, being sure to have every box's lines extended in the correct direction.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:10 PM, Tuesday September 26th 2023

Oh, man. You know what I did? I was so concerned with varying the configuration of my boxes that I spaced out on the part of the instructions that said the boxes should be square. In 204 and 205, for instance, I was imagining looking down on boxes whose lower end was wider than than the top end (even though it was further away). I know that would never happen if the ends were squares in perspective. I'll be sure to keep them all square in the redo.

I'm still confused about 221, though. In this case I marked the minor axes with the short red line (it might be hard to see, but I used short red lines throughout to mark the minor axes). I thought the minor axis was always the line through the shortest/narrowest point of the ellipse. If that's the case, I'm confused about how it would be going in the direction of the blue lines; I thought that was the direction of the major axis which I marked with the black line going through the middle. If you could help me understand this, I'd really appreciate it.

In terms of the lack of precision, I really struggled to get the ellipses in the boxes correctly. I kept reminding myself to draw from my shoulder and draw confidently, but it seemed like I could never get the ellipse lines from the two times around to coincide. I've been practicing the warm up exercises including fitting ellipses into tables, but it seems like when I'm putting the ellipse in the box my arm takes on a life of its own and goes haywire the second time around. Do you have any advice about how to get better at this other than to keep practicing?

Thank you for the feedback, and I apologize for wasting your time with the non-square boxes.

7:09 PM, Thursday September 28th 2023

Upon closer inspection, I can see the separate red lines in 221, but there are still two concerns with this:

  • The colour being the same can at a glance lead to them bleeding together, and making the significant discrepancy for the minor axis to go unnoticed in the manner I described previously. This is less dire, given that you'd be aware of it being a separate line when drawing it.

  • More significantly though, while in the first section of the challenge we identify our minor axes in this way (just drawing a short line), that is not what is instructed for the cylinders in boxes. For this section, we have to extend those lines as far back as the boxes' edges, so we can compare their trajectories and any discrepancies in their convergences as easily as possible.

As to your struggles with ellipses, ellipses (especially those with wider degrees) can be quite difficult to control, but one of the biggest issues that comes up there do indeed have to do with whether or not the student's engaging their arm from the shoulder. The shoulder pivot allows for gentler shifts in trajectory as we go around the ellipse, but when we draw from our elbow, the motion tends to become much less predictable. So while I understand considerable effort was put towards drawing from your shoulder, this may still be the issue at hand.

If possible, I would recommend having someone film the motion of your arm as you draw your ellipses. If I can see how your arm is actually moving, that may help me confirm that you're drawing from your shoulder correctly, or if that is indeed the source of the issue.

7:22 PM, Thursday September 28th 2023

Thank you for this feedback. I will find a way to get some video my arm when I'm drawing ellipses and send it to you when I have it.

I think your birthday is somewhere about now, so happy birthday! Hope you're getting to do something fun. :)

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8:43 PM, Sunday October 29th 2023

Hi, Uncomfortable -

Here are 75 more cylinders in boxes. When I started making all of the box ends square, my problem with not being able to draw the ellipses got a lot better.

The line work doesn't look as neat as I would like, but I definitely didn't rush this time through. I hope these are better than the last batch.

Here is the link to the images: [https://imgur.com/a/bbp5dF4]

6:36 PM, Monday October 30th 2023

Overall your work is definitely much improved, and headed solidly in the right direction. I do have a one small thing to call out, but all in all, nice work.

The main point I wanted to call out are situations where the box can be drawn with proportions that are off more dramatically that the line extensions themselves can actually make us think that everything's correct. We can see this in cases early on like 10 and 12 where the front face is quite stretched in one dimension. It's also present later in the set - for example, boxes 71 and 75. In all of these situations, the minor axis of the ellipses that are drawn into those planes end up pointing down a completely different axis than they should.

This can end up going unnoticed especially if you're picking the colour for a given line extension based on the direction in which it extends, rather than the direction it's supposed to extend. So for example looking at 71, you identified the minor axis lines in red, because they were heading downwards and converging towards the same VP as the other red lines. But in truth, the minor axis line should have been converging in the direction of the blue lines. Going forward, if you always ensure that the minor axis lines are drawn in the colour of the lines which go down the length of the cylinder, from one ellipse to the next, you will make it a little easier to notice that "hey why is my blue line converging with these red lines?"

In fairness to you, there are cases where you actually did approach some in this manner - for example, 52 shows the minor axis lines drawn in red, like those running lengthwise through the cylinder, even though the minor axis lines are pointing towards the green VP. That's how you should approach them all, so as to keep a closer eye on things that may be amiss.

So! Keep that in mind, but I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto Lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:24 PM, Monday October 30th 2023
edited at 9:25 PM, Oct 30th 2023

I thought I responded to you, but I'm not seeing it, so if this is a duplicate response, I apologize.

Thank you for the feedback! Your explanation totally makes sense. I actually got a little confused when I was marking the boxes you're referring to, so now it makes sense why that might have happened. I will definitely pay attention to it going forward.

edited at 9:25 PM, Oct 30th 2023
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In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.

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