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I need help evaluating my boxes for the 150 box challenge. I don't know how to do it.

2:32 PM, Monday August 5th 2024

Hello, everyone! It's you're favorite neighborhood wannabe cartoonist here!

I have a question about the 250 box challenge. A core part of the challenge, is that after you draw your boxes, and before you start a new page, you have to evaluate how you did by doing line extension. That way, you know what you can do better on for the next page. The idea here is that you improve with the knowledge and experience as you work through the 250 boxes.

You know the drill.

But the the thing is, I'm unsure of what I should be evaluating here.

Here's an example of me extending the lines for one box.

Other than realizing that a lot of my lines are off, I don't know what exactly else I'm looking for here. So I don't know what I can improve on. The only feedback I have for myself is "try to do better next time." Without knowing how to go about doing that.

So what should I be paying atention to when I'm evaluating this boxes? How do I know what adjustments I have to make? Am I thinking about this the wrong way?

Please help me out, thanks.

1 users agree
8:21 AM, Wednesday August 7th 2024

I just started the 250 box challenge, so I'm super interested in others answers as well :) For me, I realized that I'm not ghosting very straight, so my VP's have been a bit off. Other than that, I've been trying to get an overall idea of how much off my lines are from converging at the intended VP, or if there is any divergence, and then seeing if I can shrink my general gap by being more accurate with where I place my corners.

0 users agree
2:50 AM, Saturday August 10th 2024
edited at 4:31 AM, Aug 10th 2024

Hey WYJIF,

I'm just getting started with the 250 box challenge, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I think that the non-converging green line mentioned by HEAVENCORNER is related to the back corner and by extension a red herring as mentioned in the challenge text and videos. That errant green line will fix itself If you can improve the accuracy of the rest of your converging lines.

For example, the purple extension lines are converging in two distinct places. They should ideally all converge to the same point.

You could test this by drawing a Y and its vanishing points and then using a ruler to draw as accurately as possible lines from the endpoints of the Y back to their respective vanishing points. Where two lines cross/intersect, a new corner is formed. You can then use the ruler to draw from each new corner back to it's associated vanishing point.

As for improving accuracy, I think it's probably just a matter of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again".

Good luck!

Here is an example of what I am talking about. Hope it helps! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mZf49M6jJdZ5y-SOWT7wBfm3XviChq7L/view?usp=drive_link

As you can see, even with a ruler it is extremely difficult to draw a perfect box. You might remember a similar issue from the plotted perspective exercise. And, ultimately, inaccuracies this small probably don't matter all that much unless you're doing high precision drafting, in which case you'll have high precision tools to help. Even with the back corner plotted here I'd be hard pressed to identify an issue without the aid of the line extensions. And if the box were drawn to only have front faces showing (no back corner), you could probably get away with a lot more before anyone noticed.

All this to say that accuracy is important, and certainly there is room for improvement in all of our works. But have you considered that drawing accurate boxes may not be the primary intent of this challenge? Have you considered how the shape of the Y determines the overall shape of a box? How about the box's rotation in space? Does the distance between the Y and it's vanishing points impact it's size or rotation? What about optical illusions? Sometimes it's difficult to tell which face of the box is in front of another once the box has been fully drawn. Are there tools we can use to help alleviate this issue so that we have more control over what the viewer sees?

Food for thought.

edited at 4:31 AM, Aug 10th 2024
0 users agree
5:50 PM, Friday August 9th 2024

Hello, Wyjif!

From what I can see in the image you sent, you seem to be extending your lines correctly. As the challenge stated, your extension lines always must move away from the viewer, starting at the central point of the Y and moving backwards in space; in your example, that is the case.

As for the important part, i.e. what you should be evaluating, you have to check if the lines are converging to the same vanishing point — not diverging, not parallel, and meeting on/around the same place. For example, you can see that three of the green lines seem to join around the same spot, while the bottom left line meets the bottom right one much earlier. Keep that in mind as you move to the next pages. From experience, you'll find yourself repeating mistakes like this, and the extensions will help you realize it and course correct throughout the challenge. As you know, for the first fifty boxes, your vanishing points should be marked onto the page, which will make your life easier. Use the ghosting method with abandon, of course, and don't give up.

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Rapid Viz

Rapid Viz

Rapid Viz is a book after mine own heart, and exists very much in the same spirit of the concepts that inspired Drawabox. It's all about getting your ideas down on the page, doing so quickly and clearly, so as to communicate them to others. These skills are not only critical in design, but also in the myriad of technical and STEM fields that can really benefit from having someone who can facilitate getting one person's idea across to another.

Where Drawabox focuses on developing underlying spatial thinking skills to help facilitate that kind of communication, Rapid Viz's quick and dirty approach can help students loosen up and really move past the irrelevant matters of being "perfect" or "correct", and focus instead on getting your ideas from your brain, onto the page, and into someone else's brain as efficiently as possible.

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