Lesson 5: Applying Construction to Animals

7:22 AM, Sunday June 1st 2025

Lesson 5 - Google Drive

Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FXrWJD0c1g9UIl6Jv7gxXZxbUZ8KajIB

Please do not hold your punches, i am more than happy of revisiting thsi lesson if it is not done correctly. Thank you to whoever critiques it :)

2 users agree
6:53 PM, Wednesday June 4th 2025

Hi there Paradosso, happy to see you finally made it through lesson 5. Now I'll be honest, having helped you through your work in Discord, I already know that you understand the core concepts of the lesson what you've submitted is quite competent. That said, I'll try my best to see if there's anything we missed, just keep in mind that it may come across as nit-picky.

Organic Intersections.

Okay, looking through here, the first thing that jumps out to me is that the sausages here are creatively formed, with tapered ends and spheroid forms. The excercise page here recommends avoiding anything too complicated, though I'm unsure of the exact reason here. At lesson 2's level, I imagine it's more about keeping things simple.

For the most part your cast shadows on these pages turn out just fine, but I did point out a couple where the shadows could have followed the form a little more. Generally speaking they will follow the contour of the receiving form pretty closely, taking into account any bend or change in the surface of the added sausage becoming part the shadow shape. That said, it's tricky when the added sausage runs opposite to the orientation of the base sausage. Either way, I think your work here is just fine and it'll improve as you continue to work on exercises like this one.

Now the one thing about organic intersections that I discovered well after I completed this lesson is that there is to be no cutting into the sausages as they're placed on top of each other. It's a recent-enough discovery that I'm still surprised after completing this exercise that way for so long. It'll probably take a good while before you get the hang of it (about 5 months in here T_T) but try your best to minimize the gap between where the added sausage meets the base sausage.

Construction as applied to Animals.

Getting into the bulk of the lesson here. Now many of these constructions are quite familiar to me already! I hope you agree with me when I say that your improvement over the course of the lesson was steady and measurable. I'm especially pleased with how your organic forms have improved. There's several examples (Damascus goat and Dugong) where you found yourself layering multiple forms in order to get the mass just right for your construction. The application of these forms can be such sticking point in this lesson, as it's difficult to determine what bump is made by what type of form. A good rule of thumb here is to keep the outermost surfaces as uncomplicated as possible while letting the additions do the work of conveying the contours of the base form as it droops over the sides. This is demonstrated in a diagram showing complex and simple curves of added forms.

Naturally you stuck to using sausages as your base forms for your limbs, and I'm happy to see that. In my own critique for lesson 4, DIO referred to the sausage constructions as an armature after pointing out that I was trying other construction methods. I don't think you have a problem with that, but I'll share that bit because it's great to keep in mind:

The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms.

Lesson 5 adds complexity to this by suggesting a larger mass for the thigh and shoulder joints, but the idea is still the same. Creating a solid base goes a long way to creating a convincing 3-dimensional construction. Incidentally you picked a very challenging pose for one of your weasels, where the lil' guy was facing right and then twisted to look left on the page. When I looked at this one, I wasn't sure if every limb needed to be shown in order to convey a solid animal. I did find that identifying a foreleg and adding that to the form itself helped significantly with helping solidify its orientation in space though. That said, it's a very well hidden limb, and if I was in your position with L5, I'm not sure if I would've been able to spot it, so I know you tried your best on this one.

Last thing I wanted touch on is your texture work. You've been working like crazy since Lesson 2 to complete texture after texture through the challenge, plants as bugs. That said, I'm happy to see you applied a light touch to your work in this lesson, as it helped improve the visibility of the underlying forms. I'm especially fond of this Capybara.

So I think with Lesson 5 complete, I think it's safe to say that you're ready to move on. 250 cylinders await you if you haven't already started that challenge.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
6:22 PM, Thursday June 5th 2025

Your insights are always very helpful, thank you so much for taking the time to rate my work :). I must say this lesson was really difficult and i decided to lay off texturing this time because i wouldn't want to hinder my progress on something as important as construction just for a pretty effect. I wish you the best and thanks again for everything ;)

  • Paradosso
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