Drawabox, /r/ArtFundamentals and Reddit going forward. My plans for the future, and the chance to include you lot in on the discussion.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/comments/8hofmj/drawabox_rartfundamentals_and_reddit_going/
2018-05-07 15:40
Uncomfortable
Hey there, folks. As redditors, you may feel your social media platform undergoing a few... changes. You may find your voice getting a little deeper, hair may start sprouting in strange places, and you may start feeling strange around the opp- wait. No. Sorry, wrong script. Let me start again.
Reddit's changing. With the new redesign they're slowly rolling out (which is now the default view of the website, though you can still disable the new design in your preferences or access it through old.reddit.com), I find that some of the features I've utilized over the years to help me run the community being somewhat weakened, or outright obliterated in some cases. There's certainly workarounds and ways to deal with these changes, but it's kind of got me thinking that perhaps now's a good time to start planning a move.
This community started here back in August 2014, a good six months before I created the drawabox website. Reddit's been a huge part in making it grow, and attracting the attention of those who would have benefitted from the lessons I've written. To this day, I haven't actually paid for any advertisement, and despite that we've grown to a community of over 70,000 subscribers. Not only that, but the website itself gets ~2000 unique visitors a day. It's pretty damn impressive, and a lot of that is because of Reddit.
That said, reddit was never really intended to be used in this way, so a lot of the solutions I implemented to various problems where hacky at best, and not guaranteed to last or be protected through updates. So, rather than hacking together new solutions with the new tools offered (and tolerating what is honestly a pretty hideous redesign along with inline advertisements and all that crap), I'm seriously considering the following:
I'd like to build a dedicated community platform on drawabox.com.
The next step I've got, which I've mentioned to some of you already, is to rebuild the website. There's a lot of problems that make the website a little less than stable that I'd like to resolve (most coming from the fact that I never expected drawabox to grow to be so big, so I'd take it as an opportunity to experiment with some new technology which ended up being a mistake). I'm going to, at the very least, take the time to rebuild things so the content is displayed comfortably on desktop and mobile, and so updating the website is a little more streamlined for me. This part is definitely going to happen.
What's still more of a budding plan is actually including a community platform in that new incarnation of the website. Basically a place where students can do exactly what they do here (posting their work for review), along with other community interaction. Building this myself will give me the freedom to add certain features that will help me do my job more efficiently (tracking who is and isn't eligible for private critiques), but I'll also be able to add features to make students' experience better. We still see plenty of homework submissions get buried with little advice or review purely because of how reddit works. I'll be free to do more to ensure that fewer posts get buried before receiving the attention they deserve.
It won't be perfect, but it will be better.
Now, before I do any of this, I do still have some tasks to take care of regarding other projects. At the same time of managing drawabox and working a full time job, I'm also drawing a web comic called Orc and Gnome's Mild Adventures (it's a stupid, silly, nonsensical story that makes me and my girlfriend laugh, and we've made a subreddit for it too: /r/ogmacomic). I've done the math, and I figure that I can probably finish the next chapter's worth of comic pages by early July, giving me a window of a couple months where I'll be able to work on rebuilding the website.
That leaves me with plenty of time to figure out what exactly we want to include in this rebuild. In this thread, I'd like you folks to tell me anything and everything that bugs you about the drawabox website, how the information is laid out, and suggest anything you may think would be neat in regards to features for a possible community platform built into the new one. I guarantee that I won't be implementing every suggestion that is mentioned here, but I will read and consider them all.
Additionally - once the new website is built, I'm planning on creating a new set of lessons pertaining to more advanced topics of design (proportion, shape/form language, and so on). That is, the kinds of principles that are utilized as a concept artist, when asked to create a new character, prop, building, vehicle, etc. While a great deal of it comes down to how one leverages their imagination, there are many concepts that fairly few tutorials/lessons touch upon that I'd like to share. As always, the lessons will be totally free, but the private critiques will be reserved for a higher patreon tier, due to the critiques being considerably more open-ended than the rest of the lessons.
And again, if it isn't entirely obvious: I definitely want you guys to check out my stupid web comic, and see what's keeping me from working on the drawabox website immediately.
spelling_expirt
2018-05-07 17:40
Thanks for asking for input! I felt like a lot of my quibbles with the website are mostly UI, tiny change type stuff that you have likely already identified. For example, if I mouseover the learn tab, based on other websites I would expect the entire list of lessons to drop down, instead it has to be clicked (not a big deal). Or the way that the page responds when I expand a certain part of it such as "lessons" or "video demos". Because any previously expanded section is closed, it often makes it take a little longer to find the beginning of the section (also not a big deal). I would also like to be able to find the unsolicited advice comics more easily, they are a good sanity check (still not a big deal). But I think you are planning on fixing this stuff. The current layout looks really nice, to me, and is organized in a sensible and legible way.
Do you think that any part of the community site would be gated by whether a person is contributing with patreon or not? One thing I have found very valuable is looking over previous critiques, even though I feel a little creepy doing so. I think that is currently a very valuable free resource, although I am not sure how much it gets used. Currently it is a little tricky to actually get to that particular lesson's subreddit but I don't really consider that to be a big problem (I could book mark it after all).
For things about the community, I feel like if would be a good idea to organize the new platform as the discord is. That is, general subforums/channels, lesson specific channels, and then some sections dedicated to certain types of art. I feel like that organization really works; the lesson 1 and 2 channels are often quite active and people are trying to help each other. While some ineffective advice can get passed around, it is usually clarified in a timely manner. By segregating the channels this way partial submissions of lessons 1 and 2 dont drown out the complete lessons, some of which take people months to complete. So the people who need immediate feedback get it, and the people who need more involved feed back aren't drowned out.
The bigger question I have is would it be possible to implement is some sort of structured community feedback--for lessons 1 and 2 in particular? These lessons are fairly straightforward, and most of the major errors can be spotted from the self critique resources. Even someone going through lesson 1 for the first time can often spot areas to improve in anothers work. How many times have you written some variation on the theme of hook your ellipses more or your lines are wobbly? Personally I have no idea how you have maintained sanity after critiquing so many lesson 1 and 2s.
The best idea I could come up with is a voting system or a quick rubric for people to provide feedback could be good. I am mostly inspired by some of the MOOCs I have taken. Often, at the end of an assignment, you must grade the work of others against set criteria before finally critiquing your own work against the same rubric. The coursework I did was was less subjective then art, but the constraints especially on lesson 1 are so tight I feel that a systematic rubric could be created. So essentially, someone would post their work for grading. They would then grade one or more fellow students work, with some example questions below:
-
Did the person complete the required number of pages for every assignment of the homework?
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Was each page adequately filled with work?
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Were the super imposed lines frayed on 0, 1, or 2 ends?
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Were the lines wobbly for the point to point ghosting exercise?
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Were the ellipses wobbly in the ellipse table?
By having a systematic feedback system, one could also keep both the community reviewers and the submitter's eye on the largest, most important elements of the assignment.
Now I can certainly see the flaws here. Making a meaningful group-input rubric seems hard. Such a system could be abused. It could also become easily over-complicated or simply take too much effort to implement. So mostly I am floating this idea to see if you have thought of it at all.
Thanks again for the site and providing the platform for this community to grow. It has really been a great boon to me over these recent months.
dalidililada
2018-05-07 17:50
To me the only part I don't really like so far about the website is everytime I open the lesson again it always shows in Spanish so I have to set to English again and my data doesn't like it xD It only happens with lesson 1 tho.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-07 17:53
I honestly have no idea why it does that, though I'll definitely look into fixing that bug in the new version of the site.
Checkoutmyremedies
2018-05-07 17:56
Have you thought about bringing other people in to help you run the site? Also,while you're redesigning the site , are the current tutorials still going to be available?
Uncomfortable
2018-05-07 18:19
The current website will exist as it does now until I'm ready to release the new one. There may be a momentary drop while I'm fiddling with the last little bit of the switch-over, but it won't be more than a day.
As for bringing on other folks, it's not something I'm eager to do, as paying someone fairly for their time and effort will cut into my revenue margins and would cease to make drawabox a worthwhile endeavour from a monetary standpoint.
humm_what_not
2018-05-07 19:08
Hi Uncomfortable,
I'm going off-topic a bit, but I think it's still relevant. I've been struggleing at trying to learn drawing for a long time, until I discovered Drawabox. Yet, I've been stuck at Lesson 1 for the last 2 years, retrying to complete it repetitively every few months.
The only reason I haven't quit yet is because you are on Reddit. When I see post of succesful Lesson 3 and 4, it rekindles my desire to learn and to try again.
My level of commitment is sub-par, I know. But I doubt I'm alone in this situation. This "segment" I'm part of probably won't migrate to an external community plateform. This might be fine in the grand scheme of things, but it migh also limit your future growth. Just a heads up
CommonMisspellingBot
2018-05-07 19:08
Hey, humm_what_not, just a quick heads-up:
succesful is actually spelled successful. You can remember it by two cs, two ss.
Have a nice day!
^^^^The ^^^^parent ^^^^commenter ^^^^can ^^^^reply ^^^^with ^^^^'delete' ^^^^to ^^^^delete ^^^^this ^^^^comment.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-07 19:17
Yep, that's definitely something I'm aware of, and it's one of the reasons I haven't done something like this yet. I actually intended to do this pretty soon after launching the website, but decided to stick around on reddit for all the free publicity.
What I'm basically hoping at this point is that we've grown enough to be able to stand on our own. Most of the places where the lessons are recommended, people are mentioning drawabox rather than /r/artfundamentals, so I'm hoping that the transition won't be too detrimental. It is certainly a risk though, so you've brought up a very good point.
smnokey
2018-05-07 19:36
Hi Uncomfortable,
Thank you for all that you have provided for us. That being said, I fear change, keep everything the same. Just kidding.
Most folks are familiar with the tradition forum design, so that may be a good place to start.
The more specialized each subsection in a forum, the less likely each subsection's posts will get feedback.
Perhaps there is an easy way to start people off with all the posts, and then letting them prune the posts to what they would prefer to see, and if there are no new posts within their preference, showing them a few posts from a different section.
One way is by using "tags" in addition to a traditional forum structure. You can sort by tag, or show one tag over multiple sub folders, etc.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-07 19:47
That's a very intriguing idea. Definitely a much more organic way of approaching the dissemination of information. Traditional forums are tried-and-true in a lot of ways, but also very rigid, and your ideas here are definitely good steps towards alleviating that. Thanks for the insight!
tilkau
2018-05-08 01:15
What you have described is mostly how Discourse works. Forums contain 'categories' (which can be interpreted as subforums), and you can look at all categories, or specific categories. Independently of that, each post has tags, and you can easily search a tag (example taken from pixls.us, which is a forum for discussing open source graphics processing). Naturally you can also combine those ('all posts tagged X in category Y')
Here's an example of a more complex search, which specifies a subcategory 'GMIC' within the category 'Software' and also selects the tag 'changelog'.
The only thing I don't think is (yet) covered is 'if there are no new posts within their preference, showing them a few posts from a different section'.
[deleted]
2018-05-07 20:18
Hello!
That's a really neat decision! This will also get rid of the ""issue"" of posts or comments not related to the lessons.
- I might have a suggestion regarding the redaction of the lessons themselves;
While I personally enjoy it, I could see people being thrown off-focus having to read chunks of texts where critical information might go unnoticed.
As the most dangerous aspect of these lessons is going in the wrong direction (imo) I think it would be a great idea - in addition to the text that you've already written - to make a brief list that summaries the critical points that we seek to train in each exercise, in addition to those that we absolutely want to avoid (like a list in green and a list in red).
The self-critique ressource is really precious in that regard, but I do think that its access is not flashy enough for getting the attention of enough people.
It might be dumb to say but I know people with ADHD struggle with this kind of issues and it could help out a lot of students having the critical points hammered in their face from the get-go with flashy colors. At least I think it would've done it for me!
- I've just thought about something - to encourage critiques from students, there could be a "reputation system", like reddit's karma - for example when a critique given is validated form the author of the post as being useful, it could inflate a score or something like that. I think that's a common occurence on such platforms. (And I know it would work on me haha)
Thanks a lot for your hard work, I can't wait to see how it'll come out!
CommonMisspellingBot
2018-05-07 20:19
Hey, T-E-L-T, just a quick heads-up:
occurence is actually spelled occurrence. You can remember it by two cs, two rs, -ence not -ance.
Have a nice day!
^^^^The ^^^^parent ^^^^commenter ^^^^can ^^^^reply ^^^^with ^^^^'delete' ^^^^to ^^^^delete ^^^^this ^^^^comment.
[deleted]
2018-05-07 20:36
And also we'll get rid of this abomination. I truly can't wait.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-07 20:38
I definitely agree. The self critique resources being separated out definitely wasn't a great call on my part. Once I can figure out how to present the information in a more streamlined fashion, presenting some kind of bullet point checklist of the common mistakes people make right there alongside the exercises themselves would be much more helpful than having them sitting on a separate page.
A reputation system would also be right at home for this kind of community, giving folks more confidence in the fact that they can trust a person's response.
Thanks for your feedback!
IconOfSim
2018-05-08 00:15
I just want to say that Im ADHD and i have tried to learn how to draw several times, and your course (as it is now, only started a few months back) is the cleanest, most straightforward set of lessons Ive found. Many get very confusing and lack the essential details and others lack the technical instruction, yours feels very intuitive in comparison.
That said, any more succinct you can get will be a blessing, as will (ironically) adding more information regarding techniques, styles, skills, etc. meaning i find myself wanting to mentally place certain skills where they will be used, so that i can maybe practice or choose things (where possible) before others so i can get where i want to go. Also so i can understand how certain skills may relate to other works i see and how i may begin visually deconstructing the work around me and develop my eye for art.
If you want i can explain further (or better) im just at work and wanted to share.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 03:28
I can certainly find ways to expand on how/where individual techniques can be used. But if you've got more to elaborate on, feel free. I'm going to be going back over this whole thread when I start putting together my design plan of how I want to structure the new version of the website, so the more detail you can give in regards to your thoughts and personal needs, the better. Gives me more to sift through, and there's always little gold nuggets laying around where you'd least expect them.
ossadeimorti
2018-05-07 21:59
I'd like for the single exercises not to be all grouped together like now. Sometimes it's hard to find where something is, or it's just annoying having to expand a couple of sections to find what's needed
Uncomfortable
2018-05-07 22:12
Would some kind of a table of contents style set of shortcuts as a sidebar help in this regard? So you can skip straight to the exercise you want more quickly.
antisigma
2018-05-08 06:54
I encourage you to use forum software that's already available, then tweak it to how you like it. I totally get the appeal of building everything from the ground up and making it just right, but honestly you can probably get what you want tweaking something that already exists with a lot less work. I wish I could recommend some, but its been a long time since I did any real codemonkeying.
Also, maybe I'm just ignorant, but what's the deal with figure drawing? Is it ever coming back? I love your style of teaching so much, I'd love to do figure drawing lessons.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 14:54
The reason I'm probably going to stay away from prebuilt forum software is that in my past experience, it just shuffles around where you invest the time. Or at least, that quickly becomes the case based on how much customization you're looking to apply. A bit of light customization, and it's great - anything more than that, and you end up putting more time into it because you have to work within the framework provided rather than one that fits the way you think as a developer, and that fits your particular needs.
One of my first major programming projects (admittedly, back when I was in high school) came out of the frustration that came with working with a PhpBB board, which led to me creating a custom solution. Being one of my first endeavours, it too was a complete mess of feature creep and awful code, but it still wasn't a decision I regretted (and my users seemed to appreciate the tailor-made solution as well). Since then of course I've had more experience working as a web developer in a professional capacity, so one would hope that a similar project now wouldn't result in quite as much of an internal mess.
At its core though, I just have a deep-seated hatred for full-on solutions that claim a degree of customizability. It's never been enough for me, and the result has always been unprofessional looking.
Aaaanyway! As far as using smaller, more specific frameworks - I'll absolutely be doing that to save time and effort.
As for the figure drawing lessons, it's not something that's going to happen for a long, long time - if ever. At the end of the day, it's a question of time and ability. I can draw figures reasonably decently enough for my needs, but being able to draw something and being able to describe and explain the process in a way that allows you to teach it to others are quite different. It'd require me to take a considerable amount of time to first retrain myself more formally in figure drawing, and kind of identify my own process, then I'd do the usual thing of arranging it into a set of lessons. I've tried a couple times to do the latter without the former, and it just fell flat.
Granted, that's how I did the other lessons as well - just kind of put them out there and refined them over time by having a lot of people go through them so I could analyze how they absorbed the information I was trying to convey. Unfortunately the quality expected from my lessons is higher now than it was when I started out, and dropping a bunch of half baked figure drawing lessons with the intent to use people as guinea pigs would be pretty damaging. That's the reason I removed the lessons that had been there beforehand. People have a tendency to be most interested in drawing people and characters, so as soon as they'd see drawabox, they'd gravitate towards the figure drawing lessons. Then they'd assume all the content was at about the same level.
It would be nice to one day be able to take the time to work through all of that, and release a lesson plan for figure drawing that I can be proud of, but that's just not feasible right now. Between my job, the critiques, the website expansion and other personal projects that interest me considerably more, there's just no room for it. There's also a wealth of information on figure drawing out there, so when it comes to new lessons I'd like to focus on filling the gaps that other people don't seem to cover too much.
_nkhilrani
2018-05-08 07:49
Hi Uncomfortable! I've been a part of the community for a really small time, like two months or so.
Suggestions.
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If you could ask permission from your oldest Drawabox students and take their homeworks and put a check your homework yourself tab it'd be helpful.
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The Drawabox website could have a login thingy and there could be hierarchical distribution of roles based on the lesson they're on, just like with the discord server.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 14:59
I'm definitely going to refine the whole roles system and figure out some way to allow community members to award each other completion for lessons in a way that is more structured and meaningful than the self-reporting on discord, but not reserved to those who can be critiqued by me (as it currently is on the subreddit). People love the badges, so I definitely want to try and come up with a satisfying solution to ensure that everyone can earn them by working hard and demonstrating an understanding of the content.
I also have at least been keeping track of certain homework submissions that demonstrate a lot of strong examples. I just need to find out how I want to present them so folks don't get caught up in a whole "i'm not that good i might as well give up now"... as people tend to do.
Thanks for your input!
daisybelle36
2018-05-08 10:14
I'm going to be spending years just getting through the post few lessons (I'm up too exercise 4 I think, after just over one year - I work full time and have two little kids so my free time is very minimal!). So I like having people posting their homework on Reddit, as I see it while nursing, and it keeps my brain slightly engaged in drawing :)
However, I do have one actual comment about draw a box, it's that when I'm on mobile and I open one drop-down thingy, the view jumps somewhere weird and I don't always read the text I thought I was about to read. Just something to check if you get a new site!
Thanks for having this material online - I've always wanted to be able to draw, but I never realised that it was something that could actually be taught. You've made me very happy :)
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 15:17
I definitely plan to put a lot more time into building out the mobile side of the website and testing it as much as I can to avoid hiccups like that.
Also, I did some digging - I plan on allowing users to login with their reddit accounts, or otherwise connect their reddit accounts to their users. With that, I may be able to give them a simple option to simultaneously post their homework to the subreddit along with being posted to the drawabox community platform. I may also be able to grab comments from the subreddit and display them on the community platform as well, to create a sort of continuous integration between the subreddit and drawabox, giving you and others the same flow of content.
Of course, that's a bit of a guess based on a cursory google search. I'll have to look deeper to figure out the specifics.
ElectricSquiggaloo
2018-05-08 10:21
I hope you took notes from last time I grilled your website. ;)
Some of these suggestions are great. I agree with /u/antisigma in that you want to be careful building everything yourself. Particularly since I believe you were planning on using PHP? There's likely a solution at there that can get you most of the way and be customised the rest of the way.
Is the plan to make the website for exclusively for full lesson submission critiques with the subreddit to become a place for discussion and assistance with individual exercises? Importantly, how would it be moderated?
I see a lot of people on the Discord asking about whether to read the text or watch the videos and I think it's important for the content to either match - the funnels exercise is the one I can think of off the top of my head that the video doesn't match the text - or for it to be emphasised that to get the full effect of what they're looking at, it's important to read and watch.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 15:50
I have big aversions to trying to hack existing full-scale solutions due to past experiences resulting in messes that only half-delivered the features I wanted, and looked rather unprofessional in the process. So that's definitely off the table. I totally agree that the flexibility that comes with a hand-made solution comes with the cost of time and effort, but while the times I've done that in the past (usually after fussing with something prebuilt and throwing it out the window) have come with their own array of downsides, I have never regretted it.
In essence, the website's community platform is going to replace the subreddit in every way. I am going to look into the option to feed content from the website directly to it (with reddit API integration, I should be able to give users who've connected their reddit account or logged in using it an easy option to check a box when posting their work to have it immediately posted to the subreddit as well, and even to have the comments on those threads to be displayed on the website). That said, I see reddit taking a turn with their redesign efforts that I feel would erode much of what I've found made it a valuable community platform.
While I have every intention of keeping the subreddit from turning into a ghost town, this whole push is one to ensure that we are as prepared as possible as a community to weather the biblical flood. I'm genuinely pretty worried about how reddit's choices are going to impact the biggest part of this community (and the income tied to it). I don't wanna end up getting fucked after pouring years into stoking this campfire because reddit wanted to stuff inline ads everywhere they could.
In the sense that this will assume the role the subreddit currently plays, it's largely going to be a place for people to post full lesson submissions (or partial if they really need to). Along with that, I'll want them to have easy access to integrate references to parts of the lessons that help describe issues a student may be encountering, or things they may be misunderstanding. Some manner of checklists or rubrics would definitely be a nice thing to have to help those critiquing to keep their feedback structured (and in the spirit of the lessons - I regularly see folks wandering in from outside of the subreddit giving weird, irrelevant feedback à la no rules only tools).
Then there's the badges - people love badges, and it's been a bit sad that I haven't been able to deliver on that front. It means a lot to me that the badges are earned as a sign that one has completed the work and understood the material. So far that's been limited to the subreddit, and more specifically where I've had the chance to review peoples' work (where that was limited to patrons after a couple years). By giving more structure and support to those critiquing, I want to allow the community to somehow award completion badges (that aren't quite as glowy and fancy as the ones i'd award as the great box king). The specifics of all that will require a good deal of working out of course.
As for moderation, there are plenty of folks I've come to trust to make rulings on their own in the community's best interests when it comes to handling problems. Moderating the subreddit's been a non-issue, but I can definitely see a need to take some of the discord mods and perhaps others from the folks there who I feel are trustworthy.
Lastly, I'm certainly going to take the opportunity to try and iron out at least some of the inconsistencies between content that had been written at different times (and different states of exhaustion).
mirkyj
2018-05-08 15:12
This might be down the road but it would be so great to have something geared for younger kids. I'm an elementary art teacher and love the method but have terrible adapting lessons to be simpler
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 15:57
That's actually something I've raised to a few people who've come asking whether drawabox would be appropriate for their younger children. My answer has generally been a pretty firm no.
The stuff we teach here is definitely important - and there are probably little bits of exercises here and there that can be pulled out to good effect - but overall the perspective I approach the topic is one of "OKAY KIDS. You've had your fun, now sit your ass down and get to work."
Of course, I try and emphasize the importance of balancing hard work and accepting the tedium of certain exercises alongside taking the time to draw stuff for the fun of it - but it really does depend on the fact that a student has already found a personal reason that they want to take something like this much farther.
I definitely can't speak from the perspective of anyone who knows anything about children beyond the experience of being one, but had I been introduced to this kind of material before I was 12 or 13, I would probably have grown to dislike it. It's not a guaranteed thing, but I do feel that it has the potential to drive younger students away.
The best thing about elementary school art teachers is that in a sea of tedious school work, painful memorization and standardized tests, art class was an island that focused on exploration and enjoyment. The important thing to me was that I didn't have to do things well. I just had to step outside of my shell and do.
Drawabox on the other hand adds clarity by giving a student a better sense of whether or not they succeeded, and what the mistakes were in specific terms. In that sense, it's really the opposite. Both are important, but I feel that they're an integral part of the development of one's skills at different points.
Of course, again - much of what I'm saying in regards to children is from a fairly limited perspective.
mirkyj
2018-05-19 17:19
Thanks for writing out such a detailed reply, I appreciate it even if I'd like to challenge your perspective a bit.
I'm going to try to characterize your perspective and I hope you don't think I'm being unfair. Let me know if I get it wrong but I think you are inserting a distinction between "Making art to have fun" vs. "Making art to become a better artist." You seem to also claim that before 12 or 13, kids can't really access the second one. Furthermore, elementary school art class is a respite for the task oriented drudgery of school, so not only is it not really developmentally appropriate, it would undermine one of the benefits of art class; namely providing kids a safe place to express themselves without the presence of criticism or rubrics. I think this is a reasonable perspective, and one shared by many people who don't work with kids regularly. Again, let me know if I mischaracterized you.
Here's the thing though: kids love working. Kids love working more than adults even. They are generally so unskilled at so many things, that not only is there a huge and satisfying learning curve after investing a minimal effort, but even the most basic feedback can inspire significant improvement. Without a doubt, my least successful art lessons are the ones where I let kids just be free and express themselves. Creativity is cultivated through limitations, not in spite of them.
As an example: when I introduce paint to kids, the first thing I do is give them black and white tempera, small paint brushes, and copy paper. I explain the craft of mixing colors, being intentional about choice of paper, and experimenting with how water effects the process. If they show me they can do all this, and clean up, the next day they unlock 1 primary color. We have a whole week of just white, black, and blue. The next week, one more primary color. When they have all three, I only let them unlock secondary colors when they have successfully made a color wheel using only primary colors. The message being I'll give you access to secondary colors once I prove to you that you can mix them yourself. For older kids there are avenues to unlock the privilege of better quality paints and paper, or to study more advanced techniques. For everyone, pre-K to 5, it is a full month of slowly progressing through a limited color palette before anyone even sees orange, purple, or green.
Now if I had just unlocked all the paint, told the kids that they can finally feel free to express themselves, it would be much less successful for everyone. Some kids would relish the opportunity, but those are the kids that would benefit most from direct instruction because they are already interested in painting. Most kids would almost immediately get bored, or overwhelmed with so many options, and would no longer be interested in developing craft, or expressing themselves.
I guess all of this is to say draw a box provides the same things that good teachers provide: a clear rubric for developing skills with opportunities for targeted feedback. What I'm envisioning isn't really about adding bells and whistles to get kids interested, or denying them the valuable freedom that happens during the increasingly rare sanctuary of an art class. Modifying draw a box to be for kids wouldn't take much more than simplifying the vocabulary and modifying the expectations to better align with well established developmental benchmarks.
Anyways, this is already way too long, but I wanted to give a full reply. Thanks for starting the conversation though.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-19 17:59
I strongly agree that limitations are extremely valuable in providing a more directed means to explore a topic. I did want to mention though that it's not that I believe kids can't access the second point (making art to become a better artist). Rather, I know the grindy way these lessons approach the development of skills to be quite frustrating to a great many adults, who only manage to hang on due to solid, long-term goals.
One of the biggest factors on whether or not a student is able to push through and grow that I've seen is whether or not they have already come to love the process of creating, rather than loving (or hating) the result. A lot of people struggle with the separation, and come to base their own value on their results.
What worries me is the possibility that if younger children are exposed to this rigid progression, they'll be more likely to focus on the results of their drawings, rather than the enjoyment they received from producing them. Focusing so much on correct/incorrect results can be massively discouraging. It also has the quality of being a lot easier to sit down and do, so a lot of my students (despite my protest) end up spending all of their drawing time on exercises, without drawing for the fun of it (thus perpetuating that cycle of focusing too much on their results over the process).
Anyway, I definitely don't think that I'm equipped to tailor drawabox to a younger audience. My own uncertainty in regards to how children think aside, when it comes to my manner of writing, this overly complicated waterfall of information is about as simple and succinct as I can manage :P
I'll certainly keep it in mind for the future, but I do think it's important that I try and deliver in the areas where I am confident in my ability to do so, rather than forging into territory where others may be better suited to the task.
JimGeneCricket
2018-05-08 15:31
Hi Uncomfortable,
Im glad youre taking the time to do this! Im very excited about the idea to consolidate onto the website.
Personally, I would love a way to track my progress and revisit lessons as a side bar. Another user mentioned a table of contents to get to lessons and I wholeheartedly support that idea. Id also love if those table of contents had completion marks next to them that would fill in when you a) uploaded your homework b) when another user reviewed it and c) when the homework was reviewed and also cleared to continue to the next lesson.
I know youre revisiting roles for your site - and Id love to see this incorporated into the system.
Also, if there was a tracker for completing the exercises as warm ups - where all you had to do was upload a picture of your exercise and the system would check tally 3 warm ups completed this month or something like that, I think it would be a really great way to encourage practice and also keep track of progress.
Just a few ideas I had that you might like to play around with. Thank you for the chance to share them and open up this forum! Best of luck completing your comics!
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 16:00
Those are fairly easy to implement, and definitely worth it too. I can see being able to check off one's progress (and have that tracked against one's account) being a particularly useful feature for students.
I know lots of people are particularly fond of community challenges, so something to that effect involving regular warmups could definitely be a fun thing to add to earn a few extra badges.
le_becc
2018-05-08 18:27
Some minor UI things:
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The accordion type folding/unfolding of the individual exercises is very annoying since what I want to read ends up outside of the screen much too often
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The menu items in the top bar go to a JS toggle function, meaning you can't middle-click them to open them in a new tab, or bookmark them
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Would be nice to have a way to have the whole lesson open at once to be able to CTRL-F it, or skim it easier (it gets loaded all at once anyway despite the folding, so no additional load issues with that)-- and now that I'm typing this, I find the "Expand all" button, d'oh! -
Table of contents (in a sidebar for ex) for the individual subsections of a lesson would be great. With anchors for easier linking/bookmarking of subsections would be amazing.
Other than that, I'm a big fan of the very plain design.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 18:31
Thanks for the feedback, and for formatting it clearly. You've raised a lot of good points that I agree with completely, and I hope to address them all.
bubbledoo
2018-05-08 22:17
This is a small thing but it would be nice to have the lessons a little more printer-friendly. I like to print them out and have them as a reference while drawing so I'm not constantly scrolling up and down on my phone, as I tend to get lost/confused that way. Plus I highlight important bits of info to remember.
Love the site, love the ideas, love the community, love your involvement. Thanks for providing this awesome resource! It's helped me to take drawing more seriously as a skill, to focus on the movements and lines, rather than to just doodle mindlessly.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-08 23:41
I'm definitely going to give some thought towards that - but at the very least, I plan on making the basic web layout a lot easier to use.
LincolnShow
2018-05-12 10:53
I've stumbled upon drawabox.com like a week ago and can't thank you enough for bringing us the explanation of such basic, though enormously valuable concepts in drawing! Like, I have had my experience with an art class and from their explanation I thought of perspective as of something very trivial and now, going through the lesson 1, I see just how wrong I was.
Speaking of site improvement suggestions, I would consider adding a special page listing all the amazon products you personally recommend hence making it easier for visitors of the site to find the ones of interest to them.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-12 16:37
Such a page actually exists! You'll find it here: https://drawabox.com/recommendations
4269745368696674
2018-05-12 17:15
I started drawabox in 2014, and it first got me into drawing after having 0 prior experience. While I took long breaks since, I've recently got back into it, and I've met tons of new friends from my new hobby. No matter where the community goes, drawabox will always be a really huge help to all artists.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-12 19:01
Thanks for the kind words! It's always nice to know that people feel my efforts have been of value to them.
monkeyballpirate
2018-06-07 11:16
I see you link lesson 8 in the read this first reddit post, is that the revised lesson 8? There doesnt seem to be a link to it on the website itself in the learn section.
Uncomfortable
2018-06-07 14:10
Aah, I forgot to remove that from the sticky post. A while back I decided not to move forward with the figure drawing lessons, as I'm not equipped to teach that material as well as others perhaps could. It would result in a poorer use of my time, and an overall decrease in the perceived quality of drawabox as a whole (since everyone's bound to jump to figure drawing in their first visit just to take a peek, and they'd likely judge the whole website on those lessons).
You'll see in the sidebar here, as well as in the desktop version of the website, an explanation regarding the missing figure drawing lessons.
monkeyballpirate
2018-06-07 14:24
Indeed, are you intending to readd them? I am planning on taking prokos classes once i get to that point, and then would I resume your lessons from 13 after learning figure drawing from proko?
Uncomfortable
2018-06-07 14:30
I have no intention of adding figure drawing lessons in the forseable future. I'm am actually going to be reorganizing everything after lesson 7 rather soon, after rebuilding the website (which I'm planning on doing this month). But back on topic, yes, moving onto Proko, Michael Hampton, etc. after lesson 7 is probably a good idea.
monkeyballpirate
2018-06-07 14:33
Sounds quite dope. Im planning on taking aaron blaise's classes to learn animation once I learn the fundamentals from you and proko.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-07 17:48
Thanks for the feedback! Once upon a time I had thought a bit about ways that students could mark each other's lessons as complete, but to be completely honest I totally forgot about that. That's definitely something I'll want to tackle in this new website. The idea about rating other peoples' work before doing so for your own is a really intriguing idea, too.
smnokey
2018-05-07 19:48
There is a new book, A Mind For Numbers Barbara Oakley. Which covers how we learn.
The title markets to people bad at math, but it about how we learn generally. Your website has an evident pedagogical philosophy about learning, and you tailor your website around that philosophy. I think Oakley's book dovetails well with your ideas about how to learn. For example interleaving practice with different concepts.
The MOOC inspired suggestion fits in well with Oakley's book and your website.
Rating others people's work before having your own work rated seems like a good way to get people to think about a concept from different angles. It also reminds me of torrent ratios on private networks. if you don't keep a ratio above a certain point, you don't get to download from the website. Perhaps that can work for submissions over X submissions. X for free, then you have to review a few. As long as it isn't abused, it can work. Abuse is bound to be a thing, so admins will likely be important.
Uncomfortable
2018-05-07 20:01
That leads to a pretty interesting, yet straightforward notion - rather than having your posts bumped strictly by activity within the thread, your activity in others' threads could be a significant factor.
Abuse is always a concern no matter what the solution, but I the bigger worry is having people spreading misinformation due to their own misunderstanding. Perhaps lesson 1 posts are exempt from that factor, so those looking for critiques for lesson 2 upwards can bump their own by helping those still at lesson 1.
I'll also check that book out. So much to think about! Thanks again for your input.