Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:21 PM, Tuesday February 8th 2022

Lesson 1 Homework - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/BoKO3JT.jpg

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Hello ! :)

I have juste finished the homework assigned for this lesson and I already feel like I learned some concepts along the way, it's a great feeling ! Can't wait to go further with all this material :D

Back to the homework submission, I felt that I have issue in both the confidence and the accuracy of the ellipses section since they tend to be kinda wobbly and not even at all even though I ghosted through all of them several times... I really hope that will improve with practice :)

For the boxes section, while the plotted perspective is looking nice and sharp, the ones done without the help of a ruler are not looking that great and while looking back at them, it seems that I have issues with the point that are farther from the viewer.

I hope that you can help me point all the mistakes I made so that they can be improved upon thanks to your advices :)

Thank you for your time !

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4:37 PM, Wednesday February 9th 2022

Welcome to drawabox. Let’s take this one exercise at a time, shall we?

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. Your ghosted lines/planes are looking quite confident, also. I’m certainly glad that you’ve not (like most students), forgotten to plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of your planes. That said, a lot of the time you’ll be a little too conscious of these lines, and arc to meet them. Remember that the resulting line being smooth, and straight, is more important than it being accurate.

The table of ellipses exercise is a little mixed. Some of your ellipses are fairly confident throughout; others start off a little stiff, before stabilizing in a further rotation. Assuming that you’re diligently ghosting, as you say, then my advice would be to not stress about the result. Likely, you’re stiffening up in the little time there is between deciding to make contact with the paper, and actually making contact, causing your line to start off shaky, but then gain confidence as it goes along. One thing you may consider is closing your eyes as you execute. After all, the eyes shouldn’t guide the line, anyway – the muscles should. See if that helps; then slowly transition to opening them again. The ellipses in planes improve upon these issues, despite their more complicated frames. The funnels, too, look alright, but it’d have been nice if either the ellipses increased in degree, or their degrees were a little larger to begin with.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean.

The rough perspective exercise is not quite there yet, but I can see that you’re doing your due-diligence, from the many points on the page, and the result does improve throughout the set. Still, I’ll request that you not trade the back lines parallel/perpendicular for them heading to the VP. They should do both.

Solid attempt at the rotated boxes exercise. Some quadrants are stronger than others, but that’s perfectly fine, and even good, as it indicates that you’re constantly trying to improve upon your previous attempt. Really, the only issue here – the occasionally incorrect far planes – comes from our insistence that you stick close to the neighboring edges, right or wrong. As you progress through the box challenge, and develop an understanding of how they should behave, and why, you’ll be able to make some more informed decisions there, so hold out until then.

Save for some overshooting issues (I wonder if you’re plotting start/end points to denote the direction, but not the length of the lines, here – if so, it should be the latter!), the organic perspective exercise looks nice. The size and foreshortening of your boxes do a solid job of communicating the flow we’re after.

Next Steps:

I’m marking this lesson as complete. Onto the box challenge!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
7:51 AM, Wednesday February 16th 2022

Hello Benj, I hope you are doing well !

Thank you for your thourough critique on the homework lesson :)

I will do my best to apply your advices during my warmups to be at ease with those concepts, especially the ones about the boxes lines and the line plotting, which seems to be the "easiest" to fix among what you pointed out.

With the 250 boxes challenges, I will have plenty of time to apply all those ideas, thank you again for your help on this lesson :D

Have a great day !

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