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10:52 AM, Wednesday February 3rd 2021

Hi there I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.

You're making good progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, below I'll be listing some things that will hopefully help you in your future attempts at these exercises.

  • Your arrows are looking mostly confident which is great to see, you do have the occasional bit of wobbling but with more mileage you'll become more consistent. Remember that you want to keep the width of your arrows flowing consistently as they widen/narrow when getting closer/further from the viewer. I'd also like you to experiment more with foreshortening when trying this exercise again, by utilizing it in both the arrow itself as well as the negative space between the arrow's curves we can create a stronger illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

  • In the organic forms with contours exercise the majority of your forms are kept simple and confident. There are a few spots where you get a bit too complex and your confidence wavers, just try to remember that our goal in this exercise is to create forms where both ends are the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. I'd like you to work on trying to shift the degree of your contours more as well. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

  • In the texture exercises (mostly in the dissections) you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here, I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

  • If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, you're on the right track but right now this exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. your forms here are looking solid and like they belong in a cohesive 3D space, good job.

  • In the organic intersections exercise you're off to a good start but could wrap your forms around each other a bit more, currently they tend to be leaning against one another. Your shadows are also hugging the form creating them rather than being cast on to the form/ground below. This is a great exercise for building up your understanding of how these forms would interact in 3D space as well as developing your understanding of light and shadow before moving on to more complex pieces so keep experimenting in your warm ups. I'd suggest pushing your light source to the top left or right corner as well, it tends to be easier to work with than directly above. Once you've done so try really pushing your shadows so that they cast and once you get the hang of it experiment with other lighting positions as well.

Overall this was a solid submission, you have a few things to address but I believe you mostly just need more mileage. I'll be marking your submission complete and moving you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck!

Next Steps:

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups.

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
8:27 AM, Thursday February 4th 2021

Thank you for your critique, I'll keep practicing!

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Rapid Viz

Rapid Viz

Rapid Viz is a book after mine own heart, and exists very much in the same spirit of the concepts that inspired Drawabox. It's all about getting your ideas down on the page, doing so quickly and clearly, so as to communicate them to others. These skills are not only critical in design, but also in the myriad of technical and STEM fields that can really benefit from having someone who can facilitate getting one person's idea across to another.

Where Drawabox focuses on developing underlying spatial thinking skills to help facilitate that kind of communication, Rapid Viz's quick and dirty approach can help students loosen up and really move past the irrelevant matters of being "perfect" or "correct", and focus instead on getting your ideas from your brain, onto the page, and into someone else's brain as efficiently as possible.

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