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10:14 PM, Thursday April 8th 2021

Starting with your organic intersections, there are just a few things that caught my eye here:

  • Your sausage forms tend to have one end larger than the other, and the smaller end tends to be pointier. While this isn't a huge concern for this exercise, it is always better to focus on simpler forms, which means adhering to the characteristics of simple sausages (two equally sized, circular ends connected by a tube of consistent width).

  • I suspect that you may not be thinking quite as much about how each form rests on the pile below it, while you're drawing the form itself. The silhouettes don't entirely wrap around the forms beneath them, and instead it looks like you're focusing more on using the cast shadows to help convey the relationship between the forms. The shadows are certainly pulling their weight, but it is extremely important that you focus on how to design the silhouette of a given form in order to fully capture its relationship with the other masses.

As a whole, I think your work throughout this lesson has improved a great deal, from beginning to end. Your earlier ones - like this bear for instance - shows a lot of hesitation in the linework, a lot of uncertain marks, and definite issues in observing your reference, causing some oversimplification.

As you progress through the set however, I can see clear improvement in all of these areas. Your linework gets more confident and purposeful, you're thinking more about how the different components all fit together in 3D space, and your use of construction helps produce more solid results. I'm especially pleased with this hybrid - though you probably could have done more with its hands.

Where your organic intersections didn't demonstrate a really clear understanding of how the silhouette of each mass would change according to the structure it was being attached to, you definitely showed development in this area throughout your animals. I can see that here you're designing those silhouettes purposefully, thinking about how and where they would curve inwards in response to contact with another structure, or where they'd curve outwards where nothing is present to push in on them, as shown here.

That said, I think this could be improved when it comes to the forms you add to your animals' legs. On this horse you kind of just dropped somewhat arbitrary shapes on top, and didn't really factor in how the silhouette would respond to wrapping around the leg structures. Furthermore, there's a lot more you can do when building on top of the sausage structure, as shown with this ant leg and this dog leg.

Now there are still some issues with linework that I want you to be aware of. They're minor, but looking at this horse, I'm seeing areas where lines start or stop arbitrarily, suggesting that you're not necessarily taking the time to plan and prepare (using the ghosting method) ahead of time. This also results in more gaps (like the horse's ear), and places where you end up doubling up your lines. Slowing down, and taking more time to plan will help eliminate this sort of waste.

When it comes to head construction, you're definitely using a lot of different approaches - some of them are better, with the individual components of the head being more grounded against one another, creating the impression of a 3D puzzle - but in other cases, you just drop the eye socket wherever, leaving it floating relative to the other components (like the muzzle, the brow ridge, etc). It's really important that wherever possible, you define how your forms relate to one another, as explained in this head construction breakdown. Even though it's currently in the informal demos section, once my overhaul of the course material (which is currently still back at Lesson 1) reaches lesson 5, this is the approach I'll be pushing in the main lesson.

One last thing - when it comes to feet, I think you tend to be a little too willing to leave them in a fairly simplified state. I'd like you to take a closer look at them in your references (working with higher-resolution references always helps in this regard) and determine where you could add on additional forms and structures to build out the other major elements.

Overall you're definitely moving in the right direction, but there are enough little issues (mainly the linework and the oversimplified legs) that I think could definitely be improved upon by just investing a little more time in your drawings. So, I'm going to assign just one animal drawing as your revisions. I want you to invest as much time as you reasonably can into each and every step of the construction.

Next Steps:

Please submit one more animal drawing. As mentioned at the end of my critique, I want you to take as much time as you can, investing it into each and every mark. Use the ghosting method, observe your references as closely as possible to find all the forms you can break down and explore, etc.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:27 PM, Thursday April 8th 2021
edited at 10:27 PM, Apr 8th 2021

Thanks for critique. But i need to note that "I'm especially pleased with this hybrid - though you probably could have done more with its hands." In that part it wasnt a hybrid, but a Jerboa the references album include photo of it. I think thats something that can affect your opinion. (For negative for me >_ >)

edited at 10:27 PM, Apr 8th 2021
3:28 AM, Friday April 9th 2021

Either way, it was well constructed!

8:39 PM, Sunday April 11th 2021

Ok.. here it is https://imgur.com/a/1mHJHtf together with ref photo

Lets.. just ignore that tail ;- ;

6:52 PM, Monday April 12th 2021

So there are a few concerns I have with this revision, which I've marked out directly on the drawing.

  • There are a lot of signs of general sloppiness in areas of the linework - a lot of places where there should only be one line, I can clearly see multiple that overlap slightly, but diverge and wobble as well. There's no good reason for there to be multiple lines - for example along the edges of the additional mass on the cat's back.

  • On the back legs, you didn't really pay enough attention to your reference when placing your additional masses, and didn't consider how the silhouettes of some of those masses ought to wrap around the structure. The front leg was definitely better, although you kind of "smoothed" them out a bit too much, so make sure you're maintaining some of their volume instead of just mushing them into the same structure. You want the additional masses to have some individual impact on the leg's silhouette.

  • Don't just draw toes by adding lines on the original foot form. Construct them as their own forms, especially in a case like this cat where the toes are very distinct.

  • When drawing the head, starting with a smaller cranial ball can help avoid situations where things get a little more "smushed". The cranial ball here wasn't so big that it couldn't be dealt with, but it was definitely on the larger side and may have made things harder.

  • The structure laid out in the informal demo I shared previously should be followed more closely to lay down the basic structure. Here you seem not to have followed the same kind of eye socket shape, and you focused a lot more on adding more complex masses instead of just laying down the basic structure.

Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, your reference image is really low resolution, and that can make things a lot harder to distinguish and identify. Always work with high resolution images wherever possible.

I'd like you to take another swing at this, taking care to address all the points I've raised here.

Next Steps:

One more animal construction.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:04 PM, Thursday April 15th 2021
edited at 10:10 PM, Apr 15th 2021

https://imgur.com/a/VbNQFIx

Added two images from progress additionaly

edited at 10:10 PM, Apr 15th 2021
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