Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

4:02 PM, Friday June 17th 2022

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Thank you in advance for reviewing!

I had some trouble with the texture exercise, by far takes me the most time to complete. Also my intersections started to get better, but I'm still having trouble with curved-to-curved surface intersections.

Any resources in intersections (especially curved surface) that I could take a look at?

Thank you so much, take care!

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12:03 AM, Monday June 20th 2022

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. 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 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. Something to remember is that the small contour ellipses on the end of your forms should only be on the end(s)that are visible to the viewer. Speaking of contours you're doing a good job trying to shift the degree of your contours so far, be sure to keep experimenting. 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. I'd like you to lengthen your forms just a bit and draw through all of them when tackling this exercise again in the future, currently they're rather short which can make it trickier to wrap them around each other. Drawing through them all will help reinforce your understanding of 3D space. Your shadows are often hugging the form creating them rather than being cast on to another surface believably. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. 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.

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.

As far as resources for intersections go I don't have any for you right this second but I'd also like you to not stress too much about it. This was just an introduction to a bunch of concepts and we'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons where you'll find that they get expanded upon, and that using them in a more practical sense (constructing something you know compared to free floating random forms) will benefit your understanding.

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.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
3:40 PM, Monday June 20th 2022

Hi Tofu,

Thanks so much for the feedback! I'll keep working on these exercises as I move on and will work on improving with respect to your critique points.

Thanks again! Have a great day

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