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7:23 AM, Saturday November 27th 2021
Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.
Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.
Things you did well:
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You're doing a good job drawing your lines smoothly and confidently.
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When hatching you're taking the time to plan each line and space them evenly, this helps your boxes look solid and tidy rather than rushed.
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It's nice to see you're expermenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is a great habit to build because it helps form a more well rounded understanding of new concepts rather than just seeing improvement in one specific method. I hope you continue to experiment in the future.
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As you progress through the challenge your boxes begin to look more solid and consistent which is a sign that your sense of 3D space is improving.
Things you can work on:
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At times you're redrawing lines which is a bad habit to form. Part of the reason we uses ink is because we want to work with the mistakes we make. While it can be difficult to silence your inner critique just remember that mistakes are often what we learn the most from.
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It's not a requirement of the challenge but I recommend experimenting more with line weight. Most people need some mileage before they feel comfortable applying it so getting an early start will help you build up that comfort faster.
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It happens rarely but it's worth pointing out that you occasionally put your vanishing point between the viewer and the box and extend your lines in the wrong direction (the top right box on the secnod to last page is an example of this). This leads to lines diverging away from where the actual vanishing point is an boxes becoming distorted. Here's a guide that I wrote that will hopefully help you place your points and lines consistently if you're not feeling 100% sure of how to do so.
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There's room to experiment with rates of foreshortening more, you tend to keep your vanishing points far away and your lines fairly parallel. Try mixing it up more frequently by bringing your vanishing points in closer, remember experimenting is important while learning.
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There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.
The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.
Overall while you did make a few mistakes your boxes are improving so far and with more mileage you'll continue to become more consistent. That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to lesson 2.
Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 2.
The Art of Blizzard Entertainment
While I have a massive library of non-instructional art books I've collected over the years, there's only a handful that are actually important to me. This is one of them - so much so that I jammed my copy into my overstuffed backpack when flying back from my parents' house just so I could have it at my apartment. My back's been sore for a week.
The reason I hold this book in such high esteem is because of how it puts the relatively new field of game art into perspective, showing how concept art really just started off as crude sketches intended to communicate ideas to storytellers, designers and 3D modelers. How all of this focus on beautiful illustrations is really secondary to the core of a concept artist's job. A real eye-opener.