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This video explores the different mindsets that we've encountered from our students, those that work well with this course, and those that hinder one's progress.
It also explains how students can access feedback on their work, how the community feedback and official critique works, and so on.
Above all else, remember this: follow the instructions to the letter. Complete only the work that is assigned, as it is assigned, and do not deviate in any way from what is asked. We do not expect your work to be perfect, or even good.
Rather, you have but one responsibility - to give yourself enough time to apply the lesson material and follow the instructions to the best of your current ability.
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There are a few major distinctions between the two main categories of feedback a student can receive on their homework.
Community feedback is free, but not guaranteed, as it relies on the good will of other students. While we have future plans to expand the reliability and structure of what our free students are able to access, right now I highly recommend making use of the unofficial critique exchange program hosted on our Discord server by one of our TAs, Elodin.
Official critique is paid, although it is one of our core principles to price it as cheaply as possible - to the point that we actually pay our teaching assistants as much as twice what a student would be paying for the same critique, something we can only achieve through our credit system (which is explained in more detail in the video).
In order to ensure that we're able to provide that feedback as cheaply as possible, we do impose certain hard requirements (which are only recommendations when submitting to the community):
Students start at Lesson 1, only moving onto the next step when their previous work has been marked as complete by a teaching assistant or instructor. You effectively have until you're finished Lesson 1's homework to decide which track you'd like to take (without redoing anything).
You must work with the recommended tools. We'll get into this in more detail later in Lesson 0, but for the most part it means working with fineliner pens and paper - not digitally, not in pencil. I cannot stress this enough - it's not because we think pens are the greatest tool ever invented. I myself am almost strictly a digital artist.
All submissions for official critique must be complete. Meaning, you may not submit partial work. In the case that a lesson includes multiple sections (like Lesson 1 has the Lines, Ellipses, and Boxes sections), all sections' assigned work must be included in your submission.
There is a 2 week cooldown between submissions. If you were to submit your homework today and have it marked as complete, you would not be able to submit your next lesson or challenge until 14 days have passed. This is not a deadline, and most of the lessons will probably take more than 14 days to complete.
While we strongly recommend that everyone follows these rules regardless of what track they follow, they are only hard requirements for those receiving official critique.
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If you're interested in pursuing the official critique route, you can sign up via Patreon. In the future we hope to offer other alternative payment options.
Keep in mind that the official critique program is SUBSIDIZED. Meaning, those of you who spend all your credits aren't quite covering the cost of our TA's feedback, and those of you who are allowing credits to expire are helping to cover that remaining cost. You can read more on how this works here on the first page of Lesson 1.
So, if your intent is to support Drawabox, keep in mind that spending all of your credits will not achieve that, and will actually incur a further cost to the community - that's entirely intentional so those with tighter budgets can still afford reliable feedback, but the expectation is that those with more flexible budgets will pay accordingly.
Important things to note:
Patreon charges at the time of sign-up, and on the first of the next month (in the Pacific timezone). As of September 2022, this has changed. Now the subscriptions work more normally - you'll be charged each month on the same day as when you signed up, until you cancel.
Each credit expires 2 months after you receive it, and goes towards subsidizing the cost of critiques for everyone. This is a critical part of why we're able to provide feedback as cheaply as we do.
So you've reached the point at which you've had a lesson marked as complete. What now? Are we done with those exercises forever?
Hah! As if you'd be so lucky. No, those exercises aren't going away any time soon.
Whenever we complete a lesson or challenge, the exercises from that lesson goes into a "pool" of warmup exercises, and at the beginning of each sitting, we randomly pick 2 or 3 of those exercises to do for 10-15 minutes. This allows us to continue sharpening those skills, and helps us keep them sharp as we continue to move forwards. After all, when we've had a lesson marked complete, that doesn't mean we've mastered the exercise. It's merely a confirmation that we're headed in the right direction with them, and that we understand what we're meant to be aiming for.
Warmups are incredibly important - to the point that if you decide that you're going to take a break from Drawabox, you should still try to keep up with your warmups. 10-15 minutes per day (or every other day, etc.) is not too much, but it'll keep you from getting rusty in the interim.
Keep in mind that in that 10-15 minutes, you don't need to do a whole page of each of the chosen exercises - you merely do what you can in that time period. You can also choose to spread a page across multiple sittings, picking the same exercise across a few sittings until the page is done. All that matters is that you continue practicing regularly, and that none of the exercises get abandoned.
Note: Keep in mind that everything we recommend or instruct applies only to the time you're spending working on this course and its homework (which does not include the 50% rule, which pertains more to how you spend time outside of Drawabox). So the "sittings" we refer to are when you're working on your Drawabox homework specifically.
Additionally, as mentioned above, if you need to take an extended break from progressing through Drawabox, or if you're coming back after an extended time away, devoting some time to warmup sessions can also help you keep your skills sharp, or help you reimmerse yourself in our instruction.
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On the next page, we'll look at the tools we'll be using for these lessons.
These are my favourite sketchbooks, hands down. Move aside Moleskine, you overpriced gimmick. These sketchbooks are made by entertainment industry professionals down in Los Angeles, with concept artists in mind. They have a wide variety of sketchbooks, such as toned sketchbooks that let you work both towards light and towards dark values, as well as books where every second sheet is a semitransparent vellum.
Having your work reviewed by others is critical, as those who are just starting out aren't in a position to properly judge their own work, and won't be for quite some time. Don't be afraid to show your struggles - it's by analyzing your mistakes that we can help you grow. Perfect homework is not what we're looking for; we just need it to be complete.
There are currently two places you can get your work critiqued by the community - Reddit and our Discord Chat Server.
Both of these are completely free.
If you are interested in receiving extra help, I critique the work of those who support Drawabox on Patreon.
All of these private critiques are done through reddit, in specific threads where students post their work as a comment, including a link to their work (often hosted on Imgur, though most image hosts are okay).
My requirements are more strict than the free community critiques:
The minimum pledge for this lesson is $0.00/month. The orange button above will take you to the reddit thread for this lesson, you can post a link to your work there and I'll be notified. Once I catch the submission, I'll add it to this backlog spreadsheet.
Pledges are collected at the beginning of the following month, but you may start submitting your work immediately. If you're a new patron, I'll be reaching out to your shortly to collect your reddit username.
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