Hello I'll be handling the critique for your lesson 5 homework.

Organic Intersections

-Starting with the organic intersections, you are doing a great job here, the sausages wrap around each other in a believable way and you have kept them simple and easy to work with, which is a strategy to produce good results. When it comes to the cast shadows you are pushing them far enough in some cases and in others they seem to be hugging the form casting it, but overall your work is turning out nicely and you are moving in the right direction.

Animals

-Moving on to the animals I think you have done a good job here, I can definitely see that you broke everything down into its more primitive and simple elements and then working your way up to the more complex details, you can still push this process further, there are plenty of cases where your masses try to take on too much or become too complex.

-I have a bit if critique to offer when it comes to your torsos, they seem to be ballooning outwards, remember that we are not capturing the torso precisely as it is, we are just buildind a sausage-like form that has a consistent width, this way it will feel more solid, this issue is more easily seen in your zebra where the torso balloons downwards. You can also read this informal demo to better understand what I am talking about

-I like that you are using additional masses and layering them on top of each other a good deal, and you got better at this as you moved through the lesson, the first thing I want to call out is that your masses have a lot of sharp turns and corners, right now we are working with fairly fluid organic forms, sharp corners are a characteristic of geometric forms not of organics, that's why we should avoid them.

One thing that can help with this issue is to imagine how our mass would exist by itself in 3D space, with nothing else to touch our mass would have the shape of a simple ball then as it starts to come into contact with the existing structure it's silhouette starts to get more complex, and begins to wrap around avoiding any sharp turns. This process is exemplified in this diagram

-I also want to talk a little bit about leg construction, you are doing a good job applying the sausage method in a way that captures both the flow and solidity of these limbs, one thing I want to call out is that you tend to draw your shoulder and hip masses quite small, these muscles are pretty big, specially in quadrupeds, in order to help them move. It also gives us opportunities to push our masses into these forms, which will make our construction feel more solid, this principle is shown in this diagram.

Another thing is that right now you are only focusing on the masses that directly affect the silhouette, try to also think about the internal masses, like the missing pieces of a puzzle this will help you to better understand the concepts we are exploring in this lesson.

-Lastly I want to address head construction, I like most of your heads and the way you are extruding the muzzles, the sharp corners help to distinguish the different planes of the head. However it is important to keep in mind that the shape of the eyesockets should be a pentagon facing downwards, this gives us a wedge for the muzzle to fit in and a flat edge for the forehead, the eyesockets and the eyeballs should be big and you should give them plenty of room in the cranial ball. As always keep looking for opportunities to push this exercises further, the trick is to make a lot of simpler moves that capture specific things rather than trying to take on many things at once. You can take a look at this rhino head demo and this camel head demo to get a better idea of what I am talking about

Okayy, I think I have given you the most important things to keep working on, and you are moving in the right direction so far. I have no doubt you will continue to improve with practice, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete