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250 Box Challenge

2:37 PM, Tuesday March 22nd 2022

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Hey, I know I'm posting just before your break that you have mentioned in the community post, so feel free to critique it later. I'm just posting it now, because I want to spend my credits before I get 2 credits next month.

Anyway, just finished the 250 boxes, took me about a month and I definitely feel that I have improved. First I did around 5-6 boxes a day and the last few days I pumped out around 50 boxes each day, because I really wanted to finish this haha. The only thing I still have trouble with is sometimes finding the front facing plane to crosshatch.

Also I wanted to ask about the warmups before doing the challenges in the future, I haven't found any official lessons on this particular subject so I just want to know what warmup exercises should I do and how much?

Anyway, thanks for the incoming feedback, this has been amazing course, I already feel that I have improved a lot and I'm excited to continue the course.

Best regards,

Saulius

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2:40 AM, Thursday March 24th 2022
edited at 3:09 AM, Mar 24th 2022

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Not only does the challenge help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. 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:

  • By the end of the challenge you're doing a good job of drawing the lines constructing your boxes smoothly and confidently.

  • When hatching you're taking the time to space each line evenly which shows that care and thought is being put into each line. This helps your boxes appear solid and tidy rather than rushed.

  • Line weight isn't a requirement of the challenge so it's nice to see you're applying it anyways. Most people need to build up some mileage before they feel comfortable applying it so I always recommend starting early. The sooner you feel comfortable the sooner you see better results, just remember to keep it tidy and subtle.

  • You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

  • At times you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes (Boxes 160, 180, 183, 187, 189, 192, 195 and 196 are some examples). This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction and your boxes becoming distorted because your lines are actually diverging from where the vanishing point would actually be. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you place your vanishing points and line extensions more consistently. Here are some more examples if you need them.

  • 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.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds off concepts in the previous course material so if you move forward with un-addressed issues you end up just creating further issues on top of them.

I'd like you to draw 15 more boxes please. Focus on placing your vanishing points and extending your lines consistently in the correct direction.

When it comes to warm ups they were discussed here, you should be rotating through previously completed exercises.

Once you've completed your boxes reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready I'll move you on to the next lesson.

I know you can do this and look forward to seeing your work.

Next Steps:

15 more boxes please.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
edited at 3:09 AM, Mar 24th 2022
2:21 PM, Sunday April 3rd 2022

Hey!

I'll be upfront and say that I don't think I'm ready to move on after doing these extra 15 boxes, but I still decided to share so you could give me some insights on what I'm doing wrong.

I managed to solve the first problem, I think I fully understand where to extend the lines now.

But I'm still struggling with lines converging in pairs when I try to make them less parallel and more converging to a vanishing point. Sometimes one of the lines go way off.

I struggle the most with last three inner lines, one of them is usually way off. And I don't fully understand why that happens.

Although, when I try to draw a box and make it more parallel and have less foreshortening, I usually end up fine like I did in the past.

Anyway, let me know what I should improve upon, thank you!

https://imgur.com/a/40Ie9a8

4:13 PM, Sunday April 3rd 2022

There are times where we will ask for additional sets of revisions so that's not an issue, we generally assign the amount we think a person will need in order to address an issue and so that they don't burn out.

Your revisions are actually a good example of this, the main issue I that I wanted you to work on was that your lines were extending in the wrong direction and that has been addressed here.

Your lines do converge in pairs at times still but this is something that pretty much every single person suffers from (they also tend to make their lines a bit too parallel sometimes). These are things that are fixed with mileage once they've been pointed out so it wasn't an issue that I felt needed additional revisions.

As for the inner lines not always being accurate that comes down to the fact that at the end of the day we're still human, we will make mistakes and don't have machine like accuracy. Since we draw the inner lines after the outer ones any inaccuracies we've already created get amplified in these final lines. While you should try your best to makes these accurate it's also completely understandable that these will appear the least accurate. If we want to create perfect boxes we have rulers and digital tools to help us, the goal of the exercise wasn't to create perfect boxes but instead to develop our understanding of 3D space and to learn how to achieve as close to "perfection" as we can.

You've accomplished that goal and your understanding is much better than when you started. I have no issue moving you on to the next lesson so I'll be marking your submission complete.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups and good luck in lesson 2!

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 2.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
6:58 PM, Sunday April 3rd 2022

Great! Thank you, I will move on then!

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