In terms of looking for a recommendation for what to do next, you are both in the right place, and the wrong place. The wrong place in the sense that I can only give recommendations in areas I'm familiar with (although things are continually changing, and the longer I spend locked away in teacher land, the more separated I become from the industry and what it's focusing on right now), and to be honest I'm not entirely sure what an animation designer is. But the right place in the sense that the reason this challenge exists and can be submitted for official critique despite not really being in the structured vein of the course as a whole, is because it gives me an opportunity to introduce students to the concept of design.

In truth, I'm planning on eventually increasing the credit cost (right now at 2 credits it's still very much in keeping with the fact that we offer official critique far more cheaply than it costs to provide, but this really does fall outside of that structure) while also formalizing how I approach critiquing it, but ultimately the way I handle it right now is largely using what you've drawn here to talk about the kind of thinking that influences the choices we make when creating our own things. While ultimately one's next steps is going to depend on what their overarching goals are, I think design is one of those things people don't entirely recognize exists as a field of study, and so opening their eyes to it in this way can help them move forward with greater awareness of what they might explore going forward.

The first point I wanted to talk about is the importance of thinking not only of the object as a whole that you're creating, but rather about the individual components that come together to make the whole - most specifically, their thicknesses, as shown here. It's normal to think of the object you're creating as one cohesive thing, and thus to focus on the goal you have for the general vibe it carries, but a common mistake beginners make (and personally I made this mistake for a good ten years before I started to understand) is that we can't just think about what we're creating in one way, or engage with it from one direction. We have to think about the big picture we're aiming for, as well as thinking about how the thing is built up from individual pieces, and considering the nature of those pieces themselves (which leads into the next point, which we'll get to in a moment).

I did notice that there were a lot of places where you did include thickness, so this isn't something you were outright overlooking, but it was inconsistent. Additionally, you had a tendency to fill those side planes in with solid black, which is not a good idea when working with strict black and white, as generally the viewer will start assuming that filled black areas are meant to represent cast shadows, and so they'll start from a point where they're seeing a paper-thin structure and the shadow it casts, and it'll take a few moments - milliseconds, really - to register that this interpretation doesn't make sense, and then they'll realize that what they're looking at is the side plane being shaded in. While it doesn't take long for them to make that switch, you really do want your drawing to read clearly at a first glance, and so even that much will impede how easily the viewer can understand what you've drawn.

So getting back to the point about considering the nature of the object you're constructing gets into the meat of design - that is, understanding who this thing is for, who made it, the circumstances in which it was made, what the various parties are able to afford, and so forth. The designs beginners make tend to be boring because they're made entirely based on creating a pretty end result, but everything we design - whether it's props as we're engaging with here, characters, vehicles, environments, etc. - play a role in a larger narrative, and it is that narrative that makes them real. We can't simply design an object without considering how it fits into a larger context.

So for example if we look at this chest, we might ask ourselves questions about how the lid was put together. Is it a single slab of wood that has been painstakingly bent into a curve (I believe it's possible to achieve this, though it would definitely be a pretty involved and time consuming process, and therefore expensive), or is it a more standard lid made of separate boards or slats of wood that are then held together through iron or leather bands and secured with metal rivets? The design itself leaves this unclear - you've got bands with very loosely implied rivets (although their placement seems somewhat careless and uncommitted - you don't have to draw every single one, but it'll go a long way to consciously decide where your rivets will generally fall, and imply the presence of a few of them by drawing the shadow they cast similarly to how we approach textural detail in this course) but the lid itself doesn't show any sign of being made up of separate pieces. Arguably the bands could still serve to hold the lid's curve, but ultimately the more unique of a direction you take a given design (in the sense of not being what the viewer will be likely to expect), the more supporting information you have to provide within the rendition of the design.

We would also take into consideration the person crafting this chest (what kind of technology do they have access to - the era/civilization would also play a role here in determining what they might be able to bring to bear), as well as what kind of client it's being made for (in terms of whether or not they could afford something that was made in a particular way to elevate its appearance (a single board for the whole lid would be much cleaner looking, and would generally be fancier), or if their intent or budget might result in the cheaper, more function-focused approach making more sense.

These kinds of considerations can be taken pretty far, and for anything of consequence, they really should be. Ask yourself all kinds of questions - from the big stuff like what kind of world, civilization, etc. this object exists within, to the kind of species and physical limitations of the people and creatures that might use it. This is the bedrock of what I call the "What If" method of taking a very simple, rudimentary idea, and really developing it into a cohesive design through iteration, which is fueled by the questions we ask. You'll find this discussed in more detail in this video - it's a preview for a larger course I sell through Proko.com, though the entire concept of the "What If" process is covered in that video. The rest of the course is more explaining what concept art and design are (in contrast to illustration), and the way in which I've had to think about a wide variety of problems I've faced in my career as a concept artist, and while it's generally relevant, what's covered in that linked video is all you really need in terms of what I'm explaining here.

While common objects don't necessarily have a lot of wiggle room for design (not to say they have none - you should absolutely get used to this way of thinking, even when it comes to simple objects that have been done a million times before - eventually it'll be second nature to think of everything you create in this way), when we start getting into much more extravagant, specific, and unique designs - like those on this page, it's very easy for things to just not make a lot of sense, to really feel like they're unique and extravagant for no particular reason. The best way to keep those kinds of feature in check, and avoid things getting out of hand, is to place them in a larger context that can provide you with clear logical reasoning that can be followed to explain why, say, a chest has chicken feet, or why it might be covered in spikes.

And of course when it comes to adding textures to these things, you should not be relying on any sort of scribbling or randomness (as is discussed in our own texture material). Eventually your instincts will be developed well enough so when you think to apply a particular texture you won't need to think very hard about what kinds of forms make up that texture, but you get there by taking your time now in considering what textural forms are present, and getting used to conveying them not by drawing them directly, but by drawing the shadows they cast. And so, if you have a veiny sort of texture as we see here, considering the way in which those veiny bumps actually connect to one another as they spread across the surface, and not simply trying to get marks down quickly, will have a much stronger impact overall.

Anyway! I hope I've given you a fair bit to think about. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.