250 Box Challenge

1:39 PM, Monday April 17th 2023

250 box challenge extra 50 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/v2okFBM.jpg

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hi there i have finished the 250 boxes challenge plus the extra 50 that i've been adviced to do!

1:13 AM, Wednesday April 19th 2023

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Not only does the challenge help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

  • Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn.

  • You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, and proportions. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

  • Your hatching lines could be tidier. Just like any other line we want to take our time planning them using the ghosting method, space them evenly and draw them confidently.

  • Line weight isn't a requirement of the challenge but I do recommend practicing it in your future attempts. It's an incredibly useful tool but one that people often require a fair bit of mileage before they feel comfortable applying it. The sooner you start to build up that mileage the sooner you'll see better results.

  • You're not following the directions for extending your lines correctly. As demonstrated here you should only be extending them towards your vanishing points, this also leads into the next point.

  • At times you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes (boxes 293, 295 and 300 are examples of this). This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction and your boxes becoming distorted because your lines are actually diverging from where the vanishing point would actually be. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you place your vanishing points and line extensions more consistently. If you need some more examples you can find them here and a simplified guide below.

  • I'd like you to experiment with rates of foreshortening more. Currently you tend to keep your lines close to parallel and push your vanishing points far from your boxes. Try bringing your points in closer so that your lines have to converge more dramatically. Remember that experimentation is important.

  • There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds off concepts in the previous course material so if you move forward with un-addressed issues you end up just creating further issues on top of them.

I'll be asking you to draw 30 more boxes, focus on extending your lines consistently in the correct direction and experimenting with rates of foreshortening. For the first 15 I'd like you to draw all 3 of your vanishing points explicitly on the page after you've drawn your initial Y shape, this will force you to work with vanishing points closer to your box. For the latter 15 you can go back to the original method which should hopefully be easier an easier task after the first 15.

Once you've completed your boxes reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready I'll move you on to the next lesson.

I know you can do this and look forward to seeing your work.

Next Steps:

30 boxes please.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:10 PM, Thursday April 20th 2023

hit there thank you for taking the time to give me a critique

ima be honest i am struggling to understand what you mean about the vanishing point between the viewer and the box if you mean by having the (imaginary) horizon line in the middle of the box or something else?

also for the first 15 boxes you said you wanted me to show you the vanishing points and i have done a little test page to see if thats what you mean

https://imgur.com/a/XAmN2fB

againt thank you for the critique and ill come back for you with the rest of the work shortly

6:36 PM, Thursday April 20th 2023

Those are all looking well done so far.

I've used your box attempt #300 as an example to demonstrate why placing your vanishing points between the viewer and your box is an issue here.

As you can see I followed the same colour pattern as you have to make this explanation a bit easier.

Your green lines are extending towards the viewer rather than away from the viewer, in your attempt you tried to make your green lines parallel so the box itself looks fine but if you were to converge those lines towards a closer vanishing point the box quickly becomes distorted. The top plane of the box becomes smaller than the bottom plane which can't happen (due to perspective) so all that is occurring is your box is no longer a standard rectangular box and instead becomes a squared pyramid.

Where as in the corrected box I've placed the vanishing point away from the viewer, the top plane appears larger than the bottom due to the corrected perspective and everything makes sense in terms of 3D space. This is a rectangular box properly distorting due to close vanishing points (which we could use to imply scale or stylistically, or even witness with certain camera lenses) rather than distorting in a way that wouldn't occur.

If you're still struggling to understand why a vanishing point between the viewer and box is incorrect I recommend re-reading the guides I provided in your critique, looking at the boxes you just provided as well as the problem boxes I mentioned previously.

11:19 AM, Wednesday April 26th 2023

hi there

i have finally finished the extra 30 boxes that you wanted

https://imgur.com/a/xiZGyxg

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