I definitely feel the improvement and better sense of drawing.
The texture homework was surprisingly fun, despite how difficult and intimidating it looked at first. I still have a long way to go, but such is learning.
Thank you to the person reviewing my work! Let me know if there are any issues with the submission.
I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.
You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.
Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. At times you don't overlap your edges when you should, this results in your arrows flattening out as you can see here. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.
Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise some of your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.
In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.
It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons.Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work.
While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. I'd like you to draw through all of your forms when attempting this exercise again in the future, it will help reinforce your understanding of the 3D space you're creating. Your shadows are hugging the form creating them at times rather than being cast on to another surface believably. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile. Quick final note, remember to draw through all of your ellipses, you neglect some of the smaller contour ellipses on the end of your forms across a few of the sections.
Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to the next lesson.
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!
Next Steps:
Keep practicing previous exercise as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
Hi tofu,
Good to hear from you again.
I will keep the following in mind for the future:
Experiment with foreshortening rates for organic arrows.
Keep working on the forms. They look awkward now, but they will get better.
Shift the degrees of the contours more.
Focus on cast shadows on textures.
Draw through forms in organic intersections.
For organic intersections, make the shadows cast onto another surface rather than hugging for form creating them.
I'm not sure if you answer questions, but I have a few.
What is an effective way to practice implementing cast shadows for textures? This was by far the most difficult part of the process.
When is the best time to do the 25 Textures Challenge?
It is a great feeling to finally get to the constructional drawing part of the course.
Thank you, Uncomfortable, and other TAs for sustaining and improving Drawabox.
I had Tofu set this one aside for me so I could answer your questions when I had a chance.
The main thing to keep in mind when drawing your cast shadows is what's explained in these reminders. Ultimately designing those cast shadows relies heavily on your spatial reasoning skills, which are the core skills this course seeks to develop. Meaning, being only at lesson 2, we don't expect you to have those skills already - but as we work through the rest of the lessons, your understanding of the relationships between these forms as they exist in 3D space will improve, and that will reflect in your further attempts at these textural exercises. So outside of what's listed in those reminders, think less of it as something that is going to be addressed by seeking tips and tricks to improve your results right now, and consider it more as a long term goal that everything in this course works on from different angles.
As explained on the texture challenge page, we encourage students to do this in parallel with their other lessons as they continue to move forwards, spreading it out across a long period of time. You can get started immediately if you wish, but there's no real "best time". What matters more is that you don't aim to do it all at once, but rather spread it out.
Understood. The answer to both points gives me the big picture of what I need to do.
Thank you!
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.
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