Lesson 6: Applying Construction to Everyday Objects

7:22 PM, Thursday October 17th 2024

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3 pages of form intersections

8 pages object construction

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7:36 PM, Monday October 21st 2024

Jumping in with your form intersections, by and large your work is coming along very well. At this stage we generally expect to see students comfortable with intersections involving flat surfaces, but to still have some difficulty with things involving curving surfaces. Overall I'd say you're further along than that, with a fair bit of comfort with curved surfaces, although I did notice a couple hiccups, one towards the top of this page with the pyramid-cylinder intersection (given the flat base of the pyramid, the cylinder could not physically both enter and leave through that surface), and one here (given the fact that the cylinder curves around its lengthwise axis, that intersection would not simply be made up of straight lines, but rather would have to wrap along the cylinder's surface). While I don't expect you're in dire need of it, this diagram is something I share with students at this point, as it helps to further solidify their grasp of how intersections are made up of different pairs of surfaces, and how each surface and how it sits in space must be considered in those pairs, with the resulting intersection lines being stitched together at the end. It also demonstrates how we can think about curving intersection lines similarly to different flat surfaces stitched together with what would be a sharp edge transitioning between them.

The only other point I wanted to stress is that given that this exercise has a lot of forms existing together in the same space, going overboard with your foreshortening can create inconsistent impressions of the scales at play throughout the scene, since dramatic foreshortening implies that the length of a given form is way longer in a particular dimension. With all of these forms together in the same scene, it becomes very difficult to ensure that the scale of the objects as described by differing elements in the scene is consistent. So, it's better to keep the foreshortening fairly shallow for this exercise, as stressed here in the instructions and here in the "common mistakes section.

Continuing onto the object constructions, as a whole you've done a great job here, especially when it comes to adhering to the principles of precision that are espoused throughout this lesson. Precision is often conflated with accuracy, but they're actually two different things (at least insofar as I use the terms here). Where accuracy speaks to how close you were to executing the mark you intended to, precision actually has nothing to do with putting the mark down on the page. It's about the steps you take beforehand to declare those intentions.

So for example, if we look at the ghosting method, when going through the planning phase of a straight line, we can place a start/end point down. This increases the precision of our drawing, by declaring what we intend to do. From there the mark may miss those points, or it may nail them, it may overshoot, or whatever else - but prior to any of that, we have declared our intent, explaining our thought process, and in so doing, ensuring that we ourselves are acting on that clearly defined intent, rather than just putting marks down and then figuring things out as we go.

In our constructions here, we build up precision primarily through the use of the subdivisions. These allow us to meaningfully study the proportions of our intended object in two dimensions with an orthographic study, then apply those same proportions to the object in three dimensions.

While I don't see orthographic plans included here aside from the computer mouse construction (that's not a problem, they're not technically required to be included for this lesson, although definitely be sure to include them when submitting Lesson 7), based on your approach as a whole I can see that you either did employ orthographic plans quite effectively, or at the very least you were able to apply the methodology and thinking that goes behind them to ensure that your construction was built up based on clear and specific decisions.

One thing you may have noticed is that your control over your proportions between different dimensions may not have been as direct as you'd like, and you may have felt that was something you were missing or not quite getting. A good example of somewhere this might have occurred is this speaker, where the big dial definitely got stretched out width-wise, causing it to appear anything but circular.

This is entirely normal for the simple reason that we haven't yet given you the tools to solve that problem yet. At best we've trained up your ability to estimate a square plane in 3D space, but you're still going to be pretty far from being able to gauge those proportions accurately each time by eye. In Lesson 7, we discuss a technique that will allow you to build 3D unit grids, effectively replicating the same measurement in all three dimensions so you can control the proportions of the resulting bounding box more directly.

All of which is to say, you're doing very well, and if you're concerned about cases where those proportions don't behave exactly as you'd like, that's totally okay and expected. Because I didn't want to just leave it without identifying any issues, I figured I'd get a little nitpicky and call out something I noticed on this vcr player. The inset portion where the right half is taken up with the display appears to have been positioned more arbitrarily than it should have been. You identified the horizontal center of that front plane, but you seem to have picked the far left and far right edges of the inset portion at random. This means that it was not centered to the face, and was actually drifting a little more towards the right.

As shown here, where I take the rightmost edge and mirror it across the center to find the leftmost edge that matches, it's further out than where you had it. While picking one of the edges by eye is not a problem, it is important to ensure that those things that are meant to be centered use the tools of subdivision/mirroring/etc. to enforce those relationships.

Anyway, as a whole you've internalized the concepts of this lesson nicely, and so I'm happy to mark this lesson as complete. Keep up the great work.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto the 25 wheel challenge, which is a prerequisite for Lesson 7.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:23 PM, Friday October 25th 2024

Thank you so much for your detailed feedback. I truly appreciate the time you took to break down both the strengths and areas for improvement in my work. I’ll be sure to keep your points in mind, especially regarding intersections with curved surfaces and the importance of consistent foreshortening. Your insights made me feel encouraged about the progress I’ve made so far, and I’m excited to apply these lessons moving forward.

The critique on precision and proportional control also resonated with me, and it gave me clarity on where I can further refine my approach. I look forward to tackling Lesson 7 to better address the challenges with dimensional accuracy.

For the 25-wheel challenge, I was thinking of getting an ellipse guide like the one in the photo. Do you think that would be a good option, or would you recommend looking for something different? Thanks again for your guidance—it’s motivating to know I’m on the right track, and I’m eager to continue improving!

https://imgur.com/a/uRsv4gC

9:51 PM, Friday October 25th 2024

The ellipse guide in the picture only features ellipses of a single degree (35) across multiple sizes, and would not be a good choice for the wheel challenge. Look into getting a "master ellipse template" as discussed in the video from Lesson 0 Page 4. The important point is that it covers several different degrees.

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