Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

3:09 PM, Wednesday October 20th 2021

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HI Everyone

Here's my exercises for the lesson 2 !!! I did my best and hope I get your opinions and learn how to improve

2 users agree
12:51 PM, Wednesday October 27th 2021

Hi Arahel85! I'll be reviewing your homework. Let's see:

Organic Arrows: While it seems like you did understand the flow in space (mostly, there are still some arrows without any depth, like so, your lines are way too wobbly. You have to ghost your arrows the exact same way you'd do with any other line, with confidence and flow. On the same note, you tend to correct your lines, remember that if there are mistakes, you should just ignore them.

Another thing is the lineweight, remember to apply it only to the sections that intersect, and try to make it subtle. Finally, you uploaded one page too many of them!

Organic Forms: Your sausages have, mostly, the form of simple sausages, which is great, although you still have some that have more volume on one side than the other. Take a look again at this page from the lessons to see what I mean.

You also played with the degree of the ellipses/curves, that's cool, but it was a little inconsistent. Look at this image and pay attention to how the curves define the way in which the organic form turns in 3D space. These images here are also helpful to understand the same issue, but with ellipses. Lastly, remember that the little ellipse at the end of the forms is like the parallel line on the pole of a globe, it will change its degree the same as the other curves/ellipses, depending on the turning of the form. Good job on aligning the ellipses to the minor axis.

Texture Analysis: You draw the cast shadows, which is the whole point, so good on that. But there are some issues. Your way of shading is leaving a lot of white space into the shape, which defeats the point of the shadow and makes it look inconsistent. Same thing goes for those scratchy edges, you wouldn't have those on your cast shadows. Try to be thorough and have all your shadow as smooth, black shapes.

Your level of transition was also inconsistent. The black line at the left is still very visible. See this image. Your texture analysis would be like the second one, ok but still improvable. Try to merge your big shadows in the zones that there is less light, and think about all the little cast shadows that become visible in the darker areas.

Dissections: Here you have some of the same problems, like scratchy lines on your shadows, and abrupt transitions. Your textures wrap sometimes around the form, sometimes they don't (you want them to always wrap). But the bigger issue here is that you are relying on explicit texture instead of implicit, as you can read here. You are outlining a lot of forms, instead of drawing just the cast shadows.

You broke the silhouette in almost all the cases it was necessary, so good job on that. There's a particular texture that caught my attention: the leopard one. First, the leopard spots correspond to a pattern not a texture, the texture itself would be the fur. And when it comes to the texture, you did reasonably well, but again, those scratchy edges concern me. Take a look at this image concerning fur texture.

Form Intersections: Your forms mostly feel like they belong to the same space. However, all the problems we discussed before: scratchy lines, wobbly lines, corrected lines, inconsistent lineweight, all of them show up here. Besides that, your boxes sometimes have weird convergences, or straight up divergences. That made me look at your profile and see that you did not make the 250 Box Challenge. It definitely shows.

At this point I have to stop. I looked at your Organic Intersections as well, you have some of the same problems; you also did some things good, like making the forms feel heavy and consistent on the same space, but you straight up copied the first example from the lesson.

And I can't help but notice that your first upload was on December, 2020, and your second on October, 2021. That's almost a year between lessons. And your work from a year ago looks a lot more consistent than this lesson. So, I'm sorry, but I think you have to start over. A year between both lessons is too much, there are a lot of mistakes here that you probably wouldn't have made, if you had the previous lesson fresh on your mind. You can ask around on Reddit or Discord if you don't agree with this critique, but I think that's the right way to go. Don't get discouraged though, I don't know why you stopped last year, but you weren't doing a bad job at all. Remember that if you need to stop, if you feel burned out, that's totally fine, take some time off. The thing is that you shouldn't stop for such a long time, and then pick up right where you left.

Also, when you go through this again, after Lesson 1, don't skip on the 250 Box Challenge. It will really help you with a lot of stuff. Good luck, again, don't get discouraged, and if you have any questions, I'll be here to answer them.

Next Steps:

  • In light of the time passed between your Lesson 1 and 2, the issues on this lesson that relate to that, and the fact that you skipped the 250 Box Challenge, I recommend that you start the course again from Lesson 0 onwards.
When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:58 PM, Monday November 8th 2021

Hi Aeshnabx

Thanks for your review !!! It was really helpful and straight to the point !!! Yes, Unfotunately during last year I went through some difficult time and I had to stop doing the course. I started from lesson 2 because I wanted to recover the time I had to stop but I realize now that It was a mistake. I'll follow your advice and Start Over Again.

Thanks Again for your help

Arahel85

9:51 PM, Monday November 8th 2021

That's great! Good luck on your journey :)

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