250 Box Challenge
9:06 AM, Thursday August 4th 2022
Hi! I did the 250 box challenge, any feedback would be appreciated
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9:23 AM, Tuesday August 23rd 2022
Hey ZNorb! I am paperhat and I will be doing your 250 box challenge critique.
My critique will be divided into four sections:
Lines
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Your lines are generally drawn with confidence. They are straight and not arching.
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Your hatching has also straight, confident lines and looks very neat. You also always hatch a side that is facing the viewer, which correctly done. Good job!
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The biggest problem I can see with your lines, however, is your lineweight. It looks mostly scratchy and is not applied properly. Just to mention some boxes where this is the case: 1-5, 17, 34, 36, 40, 46, 66, 96, 155, 248. Over the course of the challenge it definitely gets better, but can still be improved further. This is especially a pity, because it gives your boxes a messy look. Now onto how to improve this issue. First, have a look again at those pictures visualizing how to apply lineweight correctly: https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb, https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/980a575e.jpg. As you can see it is very important to ghost all the lineweight lines! It also should be enough to add one more line as lineweight, it does not have to and should not be extremely dark in order to be noticeable (box 240 is quite dark for example, box 238 not as much but the weight is still noticeable). Be sure to include some superimposed lines (and of course more boxes :D) in your warm-ups in order to improve with your lineweight. One last thing that you did correctly is only applying the lineweight to the silhouette of the box!
Extension Lines
- You extend all your lines correctly. The only thing I noticed is that for box 26 you forgot a pair, but other that that everything is great!
Convergences
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Your lines are all converging and not diverging or staying parallel, that is very good! Your convergence also noticeably improves over the course of the challenge, especially the inner corner. That is awesome!
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Sometimes your lines are converging in pairs rather than sets (eg. 6,9,24,27,44,48,54,169,193). This picture shows what I mean by that: https://imgur.com/KSHwTwo . It might help if you think about the relationship of the lines of a set within terms of the angles the form respective to their vanishing point, see https://imgur.com/8PqQLE0 .
Orientations
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The orientations of your boxes are generally pretty similar and you do not really experiment with it (as far as I can see). This image shows the variety of orientations out there: https://imgur.com/Kqg6uMX
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Your boxes are also all of similar size and generally quite small. Especially around box 200 they get even smaller. Use the space the page gives you!
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The foreshortening rate of your boxes also stays quite the same. Especially at the point where your boxes get smaller (around box 200) it is extremely similar for each box. It is important to also practice boxes with very shallow foreshortening whos VPs are outside of the page and whos lines are close to parallel.
All in all you have done a great job here! However, I would like you experiment a bit more with differently sized, shaped and oriented boxes. So I am going to leave you a little bit of homework, this is also a great to get some more practice for lineweight. Good luck!
Next Steps:
- Do 15 more boxes that vary in their look. The majority should have shallow foreshortening.
12:44 PM, Thursday August 25th 2022
Thank you for the critique, I also did the extra boxes you said on next steps: https://imgur.com/a/h5M88aJ
2:44 PM, Thursday August 25th 2022
First up: Those look great!
Your lineweight is better and your convergence shallower. Sometimes you still have the problem of a line set converging in pairs rather than as a set (e.g box 264). You also could have experimented a bit more with the shape and especially angles of the boxes.
However, when you do some boxes in your warm-ups I am sure you will become more confident and thus experimental with your boxes.
All in all, as said in the beginning, this looks great and I will mark this challenge as complete! Wish you the best for lesson 2 (:
Next Steps:
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Lesson 2
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