Lesson 6: Applying Construction to Everyday Objects
5:15 AM, Sunday December 13th 2020
I came across a recurring problem where my object was lost in the hase of construction lines. Should I make it bigger?
Thank you for your time. And stay safe.
Overall, your work throughout this lesson is quite well done. There are some small issues I'm going to call out, but as a whole you're approaching the construction of these objects in a way that is well structured and thought out, and your results generally feel quite solid and three dimensional.
Now, the matter of things getting "lost" in a forest of lines is totally normal, especially in these last two lessons, and it will indeed be challenging at times to keep track of which lines are which - but it's something that does get easier with experience. For example, given just how many of these kinds of things I've looked at over the years, it doesn't look like a forest at all - your coffee maker stands out entirely clearly to me, and my eyes are able to parse out the lines that are relevant to the construction.
What I do want to ensure however is that you don't attempt to do anything to make those lines less noticeable, to draw them more lightly (in conjunction with any kind of clean-up pass), or to use dashed lines. Draw them as you normally would, and allow yourself to get used to the forest. I did notice that there were a number of places where some of your lines appeared to be more "broken" or "dashed", like on the elliptical base of this cone, but I don't suspect that was intentional. It looks more like your pen was having some issues. If it was intentional though, just be sure not to do that in the future.
So as I mentioned, there are a few issues I do want to point out before we mark this lesson as complete. To start, the most basic thing is just keeping on top of your freely rotated boxes. That coffee maker drawing, for instance, definitely has its basic box elements getting smaller towards the top (which is closer to the viewer). It's very good that you continued with the construction despite this (hopefully you did notice it on your own) - once you make a mistake, there's not much that can be done, so continuing with the drawing is the right course of action. The result was still quite solid, making that upwards convergence feel like a weird, but intentional design choice on the part of the coffee maker company.
Another issue comes down to how you approached the handle on this toaster oven. You pointed it out yourself, but you may not be aware of precisely how it could have been handled better. To put it simply, you skipped some steps, jumping into the relative complexity of the handle far too soon, with nothing to help bridge the gap from simple box to complex handle.
As you can see here in this mug demo, it's important to break that initial box down much further and pin down the specific curves you want to draw first as simple straight lines. I also talk about this kind of approach here in the lecture notes.
Aside from those major points, your work has come along quite well, and I'm happy with your results. I definitely think that getting some more practice in with your freely rotated boxes will be well worth the effort, just to sharpen your skills in this basic, but critically important skill. Still, your work here is looking good so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto the 25 wheel challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 7.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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