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4:21 PM, Wednesday October 20th 2021

Hey Mars, I'll be your TA today so let's get started.

You got a lot of good mileage in with your superimposed, but you're still lacking a bit of confidence. This also continues in your ghosted lines. Keep practicing using your shoulder to make your marks and to ghost as much as you feel you need to so that you can execute confidently. So I don't keep harping on it - it is a common thread throughout all of your work so we will need to keep improving that line confidence.

Your ellipses are showing some good glimmers of confidence here, meaning it's definitely in you, it's just a matter of repetition/mileage. Your ellipses in tables are struggling moreso because of the extra constraints they have, but you are still being mindful of trying to keep orientation consistent and everything packed in space to leave no room for ambiguity. Your ellipses in funnels aren't too bad, just the draw through passes could definitely be tightened up. I see you didn't post your ellipses in planes, but that's ok because I was going to assign a page of that for redos so we'll talk about that later.

Your plotted perspective is fine, but when hatching make sure to do it neatly and not scribble - it would be better to leave it empty rather than haphazard hatching. The same goes for your rough perspective boxes. The orientation of your rough perspective boxes is good - horizontals parallel to the horizon, verticals perpendicular, and depth lines converging appropriately. Your line work is showing signs of improvement here.

As we move on to the rotated boxes I'm glad to see you pushed through and did the best you can. All we want for our students is that effort, since it's expected to be way over your current abilities and it's just to introduce these new concepts to you. That being said there are some key things I want to point out to further cement key concepts

Adjacency - Your adjacent lines are pretty far apart so you can't properly utilize them as perspective guides. This is a really useful technique so make sure you're understanding it and can properly leverage it.

Rotation - Your boxes are not rotating but rather skewing and shifting over, so give this gif some more attention and try to internalize how the rotation is driven by the vanishing points moving along the horizon.

Scale - Your scale isn't bad here. Definitely bigger vertically than horizontally. The reason drawing big is important is because it gives your arm room to fully use your shoulder and it gives your brain room to work through these spatial puzzles.

Watch out for that sloppy hatching though - each line should be ghosted and executed confidently. They are no less important.

Good start on your organic perspective boxes. You are exploring the space well with lots of boxes and motion in them. Your sense of perspective is still young, but will improve with mileage of the box challenge. You did a good job when you overlapped your forms and scaled them down. These two things cause the brain to perceive the forms as occupying a single space and sells the illusion of depth on the page, respectively. These two things really are key to the illusion of three dimensions on a two dimensional plane of paper.

Next Steps:

Before I mark this lesson as complete I want a page of ellipses in planes and a page of rough perspective. I want your focus to be on line quality here. You don't need to do a ton of boxes in each frame, but be reasonable. Remember: it's all practice. When that's done post it here as a reply to this comment and we will go from there.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:00 PM, Wednesday October 20th 2021

Thank you so much for your feedback! It's definitely helpful.

Sorry about the Ellipses in Planes exercises-- I didnt realize I'd missed uploading them. If you'd like to take a look at my first crack at that exercise, I uploaded it here: https://imgur.com/a/p2mZIXL

Though I imagine it will demonstrate the same issues as the other two ellipses exercises.

Line confidence/stability is definitely an issue for me-- it's actually why I sought out a program like Draw a Box. I'll do my best to continue working at it!

I'm definitnitely struggling with the concept of rotation, since it looks very similar to shifting/sliding to me. I tend to have trouble distinguishing the two unless I have the VP's as reference points. For the rotated boxes exercises, would it have been better to try and indicate where the VP was moving along the axis, so that I had a better idea of how to distinguish a box's rotated position vs one that's just been shifted? Or is it best to try and figure it out without a literal reference point?

When submitting the new assignments for review do I submit them as a reply here, or separately? Does it cost another credit to have the new exercises reviewed, or are they considered as part of the 1st submission?

Thanks again, and I'll have that one page of Ellipses in Planes and one page of Rough Perspective to you soon!

1:40 PM, Thursday October 21st 2021
  • You can try rotating boxes both with and without explicit vanishing points. Whatever helps you learn! There are times when I will still plot things out explicitly or go really in depth on something to better internalize it for future use.

  • Please submit your redos as a reply to my original critique. Redos don't cost credits unless it's something really huge that would merit another full size critique and you would be told that ahead of time. So no worries here - just a few pages for me to look over won't cost you any more credits! :)

Looking forward to seeing your redos; I'm really pleased with your outlook and attitude towards improvement!

8:48 PM, Tuesday October 26th 2021

Finally finished up those exercises. I admit I still feel like I'm still struggling with line quality, but I did try to be more confident in 'going for it', even if accuracy was a bit of an issue.

https://imgur.com/a/ytvfwpV

Thank you for lending your time and assistance!

12:15 AM, Thursday October 28th 2021

This is better, but keep trying to be mindful when you make each mark - your hatching is still pretty sloppy.

I will be moving you on to the 250 box challenge so that will be a good time to stretch your patience, and never be afraid to take breaks rather than get rushed and sloppy.

Next Steps:

Move on to the 250 box challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
2:46 PM, Thursday October 28th 2021

Will do! I'll try and be more minful of those smaller marks going forward.

Thanks again!

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