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8:40 PM, Wednesday February 9th 2022

Thanks for the kind words! That video does actually look familiar - I'm always glad to see that people out there are talking about Drawabox, and that it's helping to grow the community as a whole.

Regarding the cactus, basically what I mean is that altering the silhouette as we do for the leaves only really works when dealing with an object that's already flat. If it's not already flat, doing so will make it seem flat. So when you have something with volume to it - for example, the trunk of a cactus which is more of a sausage or tube, to build out the bumps on it, you'd actually introduce new forms and wrap them around that structure, as shown in the informal demo I'd linked there.

Looking at your branches, the newer attempt is definitely much better, although I would still encourage you to extend those edge segments fully halfway to the next ellipse as shown in the instructions I linked to you before. You seem to be a bit inconsistent in this, sometimes extending halfway, but often extending far less. This extension provides us with a healthy overlap which can in turn help us achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from segment to segment.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
10:17 PM, Wednesday February 9th 2022
edited at 10:17 PM, Feb 9th 2022

Thank you! One query I just thought of:

Are there assigned times for all the challenges, as was the case for the 250 box challenge? Or should we approach them when we feel the moment's right? Just checking as I want to fully complete the course, and suddenly realising I have all the challenges left to do at the end would be a bit of a backlog!

edited at 10:17 PM, Feb 9th 2022
12:12 AM, Thursday February 10th 2022

So the box, cylinder, and wheel challenges all come up at specific points in the course, but the texture and treasure chest challenges are done more at the student's discretion.

For the texture challenge, generally it's better to spread it out over a longer period of time while doing other lessons in tandem (so instead of doing all 25 rows of texture analyses one after the other, doing one or two per week would be far more useful). Also, given that it is just an exercise initially introduced at Lesson 2, you should definitely leave it for after that.

The treasure chest challenge is generally done at the end of the course, if at all, but it is primarily dependent on concepts from Lesson 6, and does have a list of prerequisites.

Neither of these two optional challenges are required for the completionist status, though. Only those that are part of the course flow itself are needed to achieve that.

Next Steps:

erally* done at the end of the course, if at all, but it is primarily dependent on concepts from Lesson 6.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:11 AM, Thursday February 10th 2022

Thank you for clarifying! I'm going to do a bit of the texture challenge before jumping into Lesson 4, just three pages, so that I've at least got a start on it.

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