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4:14 PM, Sunday July 26th 2020
Hello! Here is my critique. Let me know if I say anything wrong or unclear!
- Lines Section
For the Superimposed Lines exercise, your lines seem neat and confident, and there doesn't seem to be evidence of fraying on both ends. Having no fraying on the starting point suggests that enough time was taken to place the pen at the beginning of each line. Well done!
In the Ghosted Lines exercise, the lines seem to arc just the slightest, but are otherwise smooth and confident. Arcing lines can stem from not using the shoulder pivot to draw, however it can also simply be a natural tendency. I would suggest consciously arcing a little in the opposite direction you tend to arc in. Doing so will level out the line, and eventually may allow you to associate the movement with drawing a straight line rather than an arced one. Addionally, there seems to be a small amount of overshooting in your lines. Although overshooting is not considered a big deal at this point in the course, the written content for this exercise suggests "lifting your pen off the page the second you hit that end point" as a solution to this issue. However, it may be worth mentioning that overshooting may also improve simply with time and practice.
- Ellipses Section
For the Ghosted Planes and Ellipses in Planes exercises, the lines remained confident with only a small amount of overshooting here and there. The ellipses are smooth, fluid, and confident, appear to have been drawn through two or three times, and fit mostly within the bounds of the planes. Well done!
On the Table of Ellipses exercise, you did a great job with drawing ellipses of varying sizes and degrees! However, many of the ellipses appear to overlap primarily the boundaries of the frames. Although this may only be an issue of accuracy, it's worth suggesting to practice ghosting through ellipses several times before putting them down on paper. Doing so will help you become more familiar (and in turn, confident) with the particular ellipse you want to draw.
For the Funnels exercise, the ellipses fit mostly within the boundaries of the funnels, so well done there! There seems to be one funnel (top right) where the minor axis (the line cutting through the horizontal middle of the funnel) is not properly aligned to the ellipses. In order to keep it aligned, it may be easier to draw the arcs of the funnel first before splitting it in half by the minor axis. This way, as long as the ellipses are drawn correctly (aligned and within the bounds of the funnel), they will be split into two equal symmetrical halves by the minor axis— which is ultimately the goal of this exercise. Additionally, you may want to practice drawing ellipses with degrees that increase as they move outwards from the middle of the funnel; however, the written content for this exercise lists this as optional.
- Boxes Section
For the Plotted Perspective exercise, the boxes appear neat and confident, and the depth lines converge correctly towards their vanishing points. Well done! The only suggestion I have as of now is to increase the size of your boxes so that you can take full advantage of the paper and gain more from this exercise. Additionally, it may be worth mentioning that you are allowed to overlap the boxes (as in one may be in front or behind another).
On the Rough Perspective exercise, the lines appear fairly confident. Although it may be difficult to do, the width lines of the boxes should ideally be parallel to the horizon while the length lines perpendicular to the horizon. You do a great job of this, for the most part! Just remember that this particular exercise is done in 1 point perspective, meaning that two of the vanishing points are so far off the page that the corressponding lines for one vanishing point effectively become parallel to one another. Additionally, while the convergences may be off, mistakes while estimating perspective are normal, and doing so will continue to improve with time and practice.
On the Rotated Boxes exercise, I would suggest making your work larger so you can take advantage of the full paper. Also, don't be afraid to make your work large enough so that it covers the squares drawn on either end of the axes— remember that these squares are meant to represent a full 180° rotation, which is ideally what you strive for in this exercise. Additionally, the most visible faces appear to be getting larger as the boxes rotate outward while they should be getting smaller. Remember that these boxes are meant to be identical to one another; you can think about it as they are rotated versions of the box in the middle that has set vanishing points far off the page. So a face that is turning away from the viewer would appear smaller, since its vanishing points are now getting closer. This concept is visualized more clearly in the written content for this exercise: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/rotation. Additionally, some of your boxes don't appear to actually be rotating, which is a common mistake also related to the movement of vanishing points. This mistake is explained in the written content for this exercise as well: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating. Also, try to keep the gaps between the boxes fairly consistent in order to infer the placement of neighboring boxes in 3D space more effectively (which is also explained here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/guessing).
Finally, for the Organic Perspective exercise, you do a great job with having the boxes follow the swoopy line guide! I would suggest increasing the size of the boxes closer to the viewer and adding line weight to their outer forms so that the illusion of depth can be achieved more clearly. Additionally, try to use more shallow foreshortening on all of the boxes for reasons explained in the written content for this exercise: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/step5 and in good detail here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/G3SI84C/7/foreshortening. It may also be worth mentioning that some of the lines tended to diverge rather than converge when facing away from the viewer, however estimating perspective may become easier with time and practice and when you tackle the 250 Box Challenge.
Next Steps:
Any suggestions I make for improving your work (for example, ghosting through ellipses several times before putting them down on paper) can be implemented into any warmups, if you so choose.
I recommend that you move on to the 250 Box Challenge. Good luck!
8:13 AM, Friday July 31st 2020
Thank you! Appreciate the detailed feedback. I'll make sure to keep those points during warm ups.
6:18 PM, Friday July 31st 2020
No problem!
The Art of Blizzard Entertainment
While I have a massive library of non-instructional art books I've collected over the years, there's only a handful that are actually important to me. This is one of them - so much so that I jammed my copy into my overstuffed backpack when flying back from my parents' house just so I could have it at my apartment. My back's been sore for a week.
The reason I hold this book in such high esteem is because of how it puts the relatively new field of game art into perspective, showing how concept art really just started off as crude sketches intended to communicate ideas to storytellers, designers and 3D modelers. How all of this focus on beautiful illustrations is really secondary to the core of a concept artist's job. A real eye-opener.