The demos listed here have no written counterpart.
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Going through both the videos and the text is important - it allows us to attack this complicated material from many angles, learning from it more effectively and efficiently. But reading isn't for everyone - try listening instead.
Drawabox has been working with the guys over at Audiblogs to make our lessons more accessible. With much more natural intonation and inflection than normal text-to-speech, it makes absorbing the material vastly easier. You can test it out on Lesson 0, and the Lesson 1 Lines section for free. You can also learn more about our collaboration with them here.
Lesson 5: Applying Construction to Animals
Video Demos
Otter demo
Here's a subject that you don't see drawn too often, despite being insufferably adorable. An otter.
Head construction demo
A frequent pain point for students is constructing the heads of animals, as they'll often jump into detail and forget that construction and blocking in forms applies just as much here as it does to the rest of the body.
ComicAd Network is an advertising platform built for comics and other creative projects to affordably get the word out about what they're making. We use them for our webcomic, and while they don't pay much, we wanted to put one of their ad slots here to help support other creatives.
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Color and Light by James Gurney
Some of you may remember James Gurney's breathtaking work in the Dinotopia series. This is easily my favourite book on the topic of colour and light, and comes highly recommended by any artist worth their salt. While it speaks from the perspective of a traditional painter, the information in this book is invaluable for work in any medium.
Getting Your Work Critiqued
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.
Private Patreon Critiques
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:
- You must complete the lessons in order, in their entirety, starting from lesson 1
- All work for the lesson must be completed - that means all exercises in the lesson, not just those in a given section
- You may only move onto the next lesson once the previous has been marked complete
- The work must be done in the tools recommended in the lesson
The minimum pledge for this lesson is $10.00/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.