Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

8:35 PM, Sunday August 15th 2021

L2-KAWAMEKI.pdf - Google Drive

Google Docs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13OkCnSOryLGVGe7kljVTn4CMRudWYwge/view?usp=sharing

Hello!

Hope the TA in charge of the critique is having a wonderful day :)

This lesson was really nice, and dense in content. It was especially difficult at some points (dissections :sweats:) but I think we gave it our best attempt. You may see some mistakes we attempted to correct, which we shouldn't have and will be more careful next lesson, and we hope you won't mind those corrections too much. The most excruciating part about the lesson was having to wait 2 days to submit it because I was too early for the 14 days countdown haha

In any case, thank you for the critique as always!

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10:18 AM, Wednesday August 18th 2021

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

  • Starting off with the arrows section you want to be making sure you're drawing confidently to keep your arrows as smooth as possible, accuracy will come with mileage. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

  • Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise you're doing a good job keeping your forms simple, plenty of people tend to over-complicate them. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

  • In the texture exercises (more so in your dissections) you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

  • It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work but your line work does get a bit messy at times here.

  • While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you show that you need a bit more time becoming comfortable with thinking of how these forms interact in 3D space and how they'd wrap around one another. I recommend trying to stack your forms perpendicularly rather than trying to keep them headed in the same direction to help make wrapping them around one another a smoother task. Your forms here get a bit too complex which makes the overall task more difficult, I'd like you to try simplifying your forms a bit more in the future. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to the next lesson.

That being said, remember that the 14 day waiting period between submissions is there not only to prevent the people critiquing your work from drowning in submissions but also to make sure you take your time and put in your best effort. While your submission is looking solid there are definitely spots you could have spent some more time. Your organic intersections do feel a bit like you rushed towards the finish line and your form intersections could have used more time and come out tidier.

Learning any skill is a lengthy journey, don't burn yourself out from trying to rush to the end.

Anyways, keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
10:44 AM, Wednesday August 18th 2021

Thanks for the critique. I see places where I can improve indeed. Especially in terms of cleanliness of the outcome for the last two exercises. Will be specifically mindful of that during warm-ups, thanks!

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