Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.
Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. 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:
Good work drawing your construction lines confidently, this keeps your lines smooth and prevents wobbling.
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.
Seeing as how line weight is not a requirement of the challenge it's nice to see that you're applying it. It's a useful tool but one that most people need some mileage with before they feel comfortable applying it. Getting an early start like this will help you see better results sooner.
Things you can work on:
You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.
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.
Overall while you did make a few mistakes your boxes are improving so far and with more mileage you'll continue to become more consistent. That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.
I will quickly note that I chose to overlook the fact that these were completed a year ago and not demonstrative of your current abilities. If you've completed lesson 2 already it's expected to be completely fresh work from here on out (so you're asked to redo it all if previously completed).
Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 2.
Mr. Tofu!
Thank you for reviewing my box challenge and letting me go through with the lessons!
As much as I wasn't thinking about your first remark I felt the second every step of the way.
For some reason I just couldn't figure out how to make that third line converge especially at a very distant
vanishing point. I either under or overshoot it. I got lucky few times but that never felt controlled.
I noticed on other reviews that there's always several approaches that work differently with everyone.
Do you have any additional (on top of the tutorial ones and demos from youtube) tips on making it click?
That being said if I figure it out by myself I'll note down my observations and share what worked for me.
You may find some insight from watching how ScyllaStew approaches her boxes, you can find her approach here.
Other than that ultimately remember that perfect boxes aren't the goal, this challenge is just meant to help improve your understanding of 3D space. While you can (and should) strive to improve your boxes don't get hung up on the results so much that you prevent yourself from moving forward.
Oh yeas I watched those :) I find those essential.
I understand your worry there. I do make myself move on with the tasks.
The reason I was asking is my mind works in formulas and when I understand
things better I do them better. I make analogies and look for dependances in everything.
When I find the right ones it just clicks in my head and it becomes effortless.
Perfect analogy here: is when Neo sees the Matrix :P
I find it mostly through practice but tips and tricks often speed up the process so I was curious if you knew any.
Thank you for responding and for your time. I really appreciate what you guys do :)
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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