250 Box Challenge
12:24 PM, Tuesday February 2nd 2021
This was more grindy than I expected.
Also I got the feeling, I didn't get better and I don't entirely get why.
Thanks for your time!
Hello, Fynnfluff:
First of all congratulations for completing the first challenge! Answering your doubt, i think you rushed the challenge that's why you didn't appreciate a noticeable improvement but also because you did pretty good from the start. Another thing i want to mention is that i chose to critique your submission because you have done critiques in the past. Keep doing it because it's a good way to learn and helping others at the same time. Some of us prioritize people that has been giving feedback over the ones, you can check on the discord server the channel critique-exchange if your are interested in improving your critiques or guarantee feedback on your submission.
Before beginning to enumerate mistakes, i have to tell you how learning mechanical skills works (and all types of learning). The moment that your brain spends on really learning things is while you are sleeping. The more opportunities you have to sleep between practice the more efficient you are at learning. In this case you spend around 2 weeks to complete the challenge doing around 20 boxes a day. Compared to my case that was 5 boxes a day, it's normal that i improved a lot and learnt a lot. The point i want to make is that quality time is more efficient thant quantity time if at the end spend the same amount of it. There is no linear relationship between time spent and learning progress. If you spend more time than me, for example x2 the time i practice, you will learn faster but your progress won't advance in the same proportion, maybe x1,2.
Now let's see those boxes.
I can appreciate that your general perception is good but you struggle a bit (as we all did) with the inner corner of each box. You can work around this by extending the plannning phase a bit more so you can re-adjust all the marks with the inner corner. It is explained in detail in this ScyllaStew video, check it when you can and try it her technique in some warm ups. It works like a charm.
Another thing that i see (maybe because of the extreme bright that fills all your scanned images, pls fix that for the next submission) is that you didn't apply line weight. Applying line weight to the silhouette makes the 3D illusion more real, this will be covered in depth on lesson 2 and that's why it was optional here, try to do this optional parts on each lesson to make the most out of them, they are worth the effort. You can see the potential of line weight on your boxes 169-174 where you tried to fix a mistake and by adding line weight you made it more obvious. You can learn 2 things out of this:
Line weight attracts the attention, making it a great tool to tell the viewer what is the important in a drawing.
Line weight little errors bigger than the whole picture.
Next thing i want to point out is hatching. Hatching is part of the process and you shouldn't be rushing over it. I have seen a lot of your hatching starting in the middle of a face and not reaching any borderline. This means that all this lines didn't go through the entire process of plan, mark, ghost, draw. You should make this process an habit until you don't need to think about it. This lines should be started at one side of the face you want to draw the hatching on, and end on the opposite side. It's ok if you don't end exactly on the other end, but if you don't even try you won't get out as much of these lines as you could. We want to make the most out of every single line we draw while practicing.
The last thing i can tell you is that some lines seem not as straight as they should be. This could mean that you were drawing from your elbow or that you wanted to adjust the trajectory in the middle of the action. To fix the first, draw with your elbow in the air, just lift it up enough to don't be a stable point so you have to rely on your shoulder. If this doesn't work you can try to draw on a blackboard or any material that requires you to being stand up and draw some big figures to get the feeling of drawing from the shoulder.
To fix the second one, you can close your eyes, commit really hard to the final stroke or making the stroke faster so you don't have enough time to react to the trajectory. Also you can be doing the transition of the ghosting phase to the drawing phase in a way that you stop between the 2 instead of making the transition smoothly. The tip that worked for me was to realise that the ghosting phase never really ends, you enter a loop of ghosting and the final stroke should be felt as if someone push your pen down while you are still doing it.
That's all. I think your lines extend properly to the vanishing points and you did an excellent job in general with the exercise. Next thing will be to continue to lesson 2. I recommend you to warm up before every session repeating some past exercises to polish the foundation you are building right now. I hope you find anything useful on my critique.
Next Steps:
Continue with lesson 2
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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