Hello RLX8, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 5 critique.

Starting with your organic intersections you're doing a good job of keeping your forms simple, which helps them to feel solid, and you're also doing pretty well at pilling your forms on top of one another, having each form slump over the ones below with a sense of gravity, nicely done.

An area of weakness that stands out here is the application of shadows, and I think it comes down to a few points:

• First thing to call out is some places where you're included sections of shadow that shouldn't be visible. We encourage students to draw through their forms to fully understand how they exist in space, and then clarify which form is in front by selective use of line weight at the overlaps. We have no way to clarify shadows in this manner, so drawing through them becomes very confusing. Here is a specific example on your work. In future make sure to draw all of the forms in a given pile before beginning to add shadows, and be careful to only draw the visible sections of your shadows to avoid these contradictions.

• There are places like this, where you appear to be adding form shadows. I suggest re-watching this video which explains the difference between form shadows and cast shadows.

• Try to have all the shadows on a given pile obey a single consistent light source. There are cases like this where a form is casting shadows to the left and the right at the same time, giving the impression that the light source is moving around.

Moving on to your animal constructions your work is progressing well, and by and large your constructions feel solid and 3D. I do have a few things to call out or offer further advice on, but overall you're doing a great job.

So, much like in the previous lesson, here we try to push students to build their constructions "in 3D" by drawing complete new forms when they want to add to an existing structure. You're doing great in this regard, although I do have some advice for how we can be a bit more specific in the way we design the silhouette of these new additions.

One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette.

Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram.

So for example with this construction you've got several masses running along the animal's back, which is good, as you're breaking the addition into pieces rather than trying to achieve too much with a single mass and having it fall flat. If we look at the relationships between these masses though, it looks like you're cutting them off where they overlap one another, so we only see how they relate to one another in 2D space.

Instead, we want the additional masses to have their own complete silhouette as shown here with the large mass above the shoulder. Take a look at how I've pulled the mass down from on top of the spine, around the sides of the body, and pressed it against the top of the shoulder mass. The more interlocked they are, the more spatial relationships we define between the masses, the more solid and grounded everything appears.

Once an additional mass is in place, it becomes part of the existing structure, and any more masses we draw on top of it should wrap around it in 3D space, as shown here.

As a whole I can see you're trying to work through this process in your head when designing your additional masses, and I'm pleased to see that you're also making use of additional masses along finer elements like legs. You're off to a good start in the use of additional masses along your leg structures, but this can be pushed farther. A lot of these focus primarily on forms that actually impact the silhouette of the overall leg, but there's value in exploring the forms that exist "internally" within that silhouette - like the missing puzzle piece that helps to further ground and define the ones that create the bumps along the silhouette's edge. Here is an example of what I mean, from another student's work - as you can see, Uncomfortable has blocked out masses along the leg there, and included the one fitting in between them all, even though it doesn't influence the silhouette. This way of thinking - about the inside of your structures, and fleshing out information that isn't just noticeable from one angle, but really exploring the construction in its entirety, will help you yet further push the value of these constructional exercises as puzzles.

For the underlying leg armatures I'm happy to see you've stuck with the sausage method. Try to remember to include the contour curve for the intersection at each joint as these are an important step for reinforcing the solidity of your constructions. They are present sometimes, so I can see you understand how to use them, its just a matter of being a bit more methodical about going through the steps and applying them consistently.

Moving down to feet, you're definitely doing a good job of working in 3D, but I'll share these notes on foot construction as a quick bonus. Basically they show how we can introduce structure to the foot by using "boxy" forms, meaning forms whose corners are defined in such a way that they imply the distinction between the different planes within its silhouette, without necessarily having to define those edges themselves - reading as more specific than using softer rounder forms. Then we can use similarly boxy forms to attach toes.

Ease up on the additional line weight. There are places where you're running additional line weight across the silhouette of several forms, and the extra thickness makes a little "bridge" between the forms, softening the distinctiveness of your construction and flattening things out. It is a bit like taking all your solid forms and putting them in a fuzzy sock, it makes things a little vague and mushy. Here are examples on one of your birds. As was explained in your lesson 3 and lesson 4 feedback, during this course line weight should be reserved for clarifying overlaps between our forms, and restricted to localised areas where those overlaps occur. Uncomfortable recently added this video to explain and demonstrate this concept more clearly, please give it a watch.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is head construction. Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how Uncomfortable is finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here in this informal head demo.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eye sockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.

• This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.

• We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eye socket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.

Try your best to employ this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. In many cases you're not far off, and I can certainly see you're usually fitting the pieces of your head construction together snugly, like a 3D puzzle. Try bringing it all together in the way the demo shows and you may be able to get a bit more out of the exercise. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but as shown in in this rhino head demo it can be adapted for a wide array of animals.

Okay, I think that covers it. You've done a good job and I'll be marking this as complete. The 250 cylinder challenge is up next, best of luck.