Uncomfortable in the post "A big thanks to all of you who've been answering questions on /r/ArtFundamentals!"

2016-12-02 03:37

I'm pretty content with how things have shifted. The number of critiques I deal with on a monthly basis has gone down by over 50%, and people seem to be much more active in terms of critiquing each other and answering questions which has overall helped the subreddit grow (we just hit 30,000 subscribers!).

It's true that my material gets buried, but it'll always be accessible through the lessons list on the website, as well as on the sidebar. I guess there's the little articles that I write now and then as well, but those are referenced where relevant within the lessons. Most of them are just me rambling anyway.

While it's definitely less organized, I think letting people post directly to the subreddit helps growth and also shows those who are newer that their submissions and question are welcome. Comments are easily buried when there's a lot of them in a given thread, and when people tend to get ignored, others are less likely to bother to try.

As for people jumping around or not following lessons - I wouldn't say it's acceptable as much as inevitable, and ultimately their loss. The instructions are there, and even beginners here are pretty bold in pointing out when someone's trying to interpret the material before they're remotely ready to do so. Beyond being told, it's ultimately their loss if they want to misuse the information being shared.

Ultimately it's definitely not nearly as clean as it used to be, but I'm no longer losing hair over the running of this community, and I'm pleasantly surprised with how well it's been self-moderating. I expected much, much worse.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-12-01 21:39

Might have taken a while, but it was clearly worth it! Your work here is looking fantastic. Lots of solid forms, great construction, and the little details especially towards the end of the set are subtle, but add a lot of dimension and interest. The only recommendation I have is to think just a little bit more before the strokes where you're adding detail. You're thoughtful and intentional when constructing your forms which is great, but in a few places you tend to get a little looser with your details, which tends to bring the overall aesthetic appeal of the drawings down a touch. An example of this is with the beetle that comes before the water boatman.

Anyway, generally you're doing great. Keep up the fantastic work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects (new 30min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-12-01 17:07

Oh sorry, my bad. I forgot you had a literal drawing of a full camera lens. I meant the lens on this camera.

Uncomfortable in the post "We just released the game my studio has been working on for a while, and I figured I'd share my experiences along with a bunch of the art assets that didn't make it into the final product"

2016-12-01 01:19

I'd heard of Zork (of course) but not LostPig. I now know what I'm going to be doing at work tomorrow!

Uncomfortable in the post "We just released the game my studio has been working on for a while, and I figured I'd share my experiences along with a bunch of the art assets that didn't make it into the final product"

2016-12-01 00:16

Oh MMORPGs aren't that daunting - not conceptually at least. Mine was basically a glorified message board. In fact, that's exactly what I modeled it on. I've got an archive of it here - but don't laugh at the awful art assets... it was a different time.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-12-01 00:14

Each lesson's got a homework section with required/recommended tools - this is because they're not always the same. I'm much more relaxed for the figure drawing lessons, and generally don't actually recommend drawing in pen. I know it's contradictory, but it's a matter of judging when adding the extra challenge is beneficial, and when it becomes distracting.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2016-11-30 23:32

Pretty nice work! There's a few things I'll point out, but generally you're doing well and moving in the right direction.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that your ghosted lines waver a little bit - this definitely improves as you move through the lesson, especially in the boxes themselves, so just keep working on maintaining a confident, smooth, straight stroke. Another thing I noticed was that your ellipses in general tend to be rather stiff - much like the straight lines, it's important to maintain a confident pace when drawing so that the execution relies more on your muscle memory than any conscious intervention (after the planning and preparation is done) by your brain. Basically any stiffness, wobbling, or mid-stroke change of trajectory is the result of your brain trying to course-correct as you go. Don't be too afraid of making a mistake and being inaccurate. It happens, and it'll improve with practice. What is most important is that you draw just quickly enough to keep your brain from interfering, so regardless of where the ellipse is, how big it is and at which angle it's set, it feels smooth and even. I talk about this concept in this comic.

Next, jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes - just make sure you put a little more attention and effort into the hatching you use here. Those lines aren't mandatory, they were added by your own decision. This doesn't make them any less important though, and effort should be put into keeping them straight, consistent, parallel and ensuring that they stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Don't let them fall short or float in the middle of a plane.

Next, I'm really pleased to see how you struggled with, and ultimately overcame the challenges of the rotated boxes exercise. Your last page looks quite good, and demonstrates a greatly improved sense of 3D space. This carries over into your organic perspective boxes as well. There is definitely still improvement to be had, but you're making great headway.

I'll be marking this lesson as complete. You may want to move onto the 250 box challenge next before moving onto lesson 2 though, but I will leave that decision up to you. Regardless, I would like you to read through the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-30 23:24

Overall I think you're doing a really solid job of implementing the concepts covered in the lesson. Your constructions are very carefully laid out, and you're very meticulous in your subdivisions. I kind of wish I could have seen the drawings before you went at them with the black pen, as they'd give a fuller sense of your spatial sense, but it's still pretty clear that it's come a long way. At this point, it's largely a matter of continuing to practice, as you're moving in the right direction. Your biggest challenge is likely going to be a matter of proportion - which is already pretty solid, but stumbles a bit in places like the truck on page 9.

Also, your ellipses-in-planes do need a bit of refinement. I think they're feeling a little slanted in a few cases (more in the earlier drawings, so they're definitely improving). Just keep the whole 'contact points' matter that I explained in the ellipses-in-planes video in mind, and ensure that they are aligned vertically (usually straight above/below each other in 2 point perspective, or towards the vertical vanishing point in 3 point).

Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. Congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching set! I'm not sure if you're planning to move onto figure drawing next, but I do want to let you know that I hope to start an overhaul of that material during the holiday season, as I'm not pleased with the state they're in currently. I feel I can express that content much more clearly, much in the way that I've overhauled the dynamic sketching material.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2016-11-30 23:19

Pretty nice work! You're generally doing quite well, though there are a couple things I'd like to call out. The first thing that jumped out at me was that, while you did [draw through your ellipses]() for the table of ellipses exercise, you neglected to do this for the other ellipses exercises. Make sure you apply this method to every ellipse you draw for my lessons without exception. This will ensure that you maintain a confident pace, keeping your ellipses even and smooth, and will give you the benefit of some additional muscle memory development.

Next, I noticed that in some of your box exercises, you didn't draw in the horizon. It's very important that you keep it in there, as it is the first and most significant visual clue you'll have when drawing a scene. Additionally, try to stick to my instructions as written - don't add additional vanishing points to a scene or try to spice the exercises up by complicating them in other ways. While you've done fine here even with the added complication, it can lead you to focus less on the main purpose of an exercise in the future.

Oh, also for your rough perspective boxes exercises, be sure to apply this double checking method upon completion.

For your rotated boxes exercise, I noticed that you missed one important thing - if you look at my examples, you'll notice that I'm drawing all of the lines of each box, including those on the far side of the forms, as though I have x-ray vision. This, which I refer to as "drawing through your forms" (not to be confused with drawing through ellipses, which i really should have labelled differently BUT IT'S TOO LATE NOW OH NO) helps one better understand how each box sits in 3D space. Since this exercise is very much about understanding that about a box, and then how this changes as the box is rotated, it's definitely important to apply. That said, you did a pretty solid job with this exercise, and seem to understand their rotation pretty well.

Your organic perspective boxes are reasonably well done too, though I do think there's a bit of room for growth here. This is pretty standard, as for this exercise I generally toss students into the deep end without much training to let them get acquainted with the challenges involved on their own before giving them additional advice. You're doing quite well considering that.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge for more practice with those freely rotated boxes. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms - which is what I mentioned in regards to the rotated boxes exercise.

Uncomfortable in the post "We just released the game my studio has been working on for a while, and I figured I'd share my experiences along with a bunch of the art assets that didn't make it into the final product"

2016-11-30 22:48

Haha, well, who knows if I'll ever finish it. It's a remake of a text-based mmorpg I ran for two years when I was in high school, which closed about eight years ago. I've been trying to remake it since then, but each time I always learned so much about the tools I was using that I decided to restart. I've started like... maybe five times?

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2016-11-28 17:19

Those are definitely looking much better. Try to maintain that when drawing ellipses (or any marks) in the future. For now, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so go ahead and move onto the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2016-11-27 23:59

The first thing that jumps out at me is that there's definitely a lot of stiffness/wobbling to your lines. This is happening because you're not quite letting yourself draw with a confident pace - you're relying on your brain's willingness to micromanage and course-correct while you draw, which manifests as wobbling in the stroke itself. Don't worry so much about nailing every line with perfect accuracy - that's what's causing you to stiffen up. It's much easier to practice away inaccuracy through the development of your muscle memory (through repetition) than it is to smooth out a wobbly line. I talk about this more in this comic but really just remember to apply the ghosting method. Plan out your approach, ghost through the motion as much as is necessary to feel comfortable and confident with the motion, then execute it in a single, confident stroke that is just quick enough that your brain doesn't have the opportunity to try and take control. You should be trusting entirely in your arm's muscles. If you don't nail it (which is normal), it's no big deal. It all takes practice.

This applies both to your straight lines as well as your ellipses - somewhat more so to your ellipses really. Drawing through your ellipses really only ends up being effective if you're doing so with a confident pace - it's meant to help sure up the little inaccuracies that come from drawing at a quicker pace.

Oh, and overall - make sure you're drawing from your shoulder. Drawing from your wrist is inevitably going to lead to some wobbling when drawing lines of any significant length, so you've got to make sure that your wrist remains locked and that your arm is moving only from your shoulder joint. It'll feel awkward and unfamiliar at first, but this is largely because we don't use our shoulder in this way when writing, so those muscles tend to be underdeveloped.

For your boxes exercises, there's a few little instructions you seem to have missed, so be sure to give this a good read:

• Not Framing Compositions

• Guessing, Instead of Knowing

• Lines Not Lining Up With Vanishing Point

What you submitted for your rotated boxes exercise obviously doesn't come close to following the actual instructions, but I did see the other attempts you'd made. I still think that your biggest source of trouble is following instructions closely, but I won't dwell on it. You'll have the opportunity to continue working on freely rotated boxes in 3D space in a bit, but we'll leave this particular exercise alone for now.

So before we fuss on the boxes, I'm going to ask you to do one more page of the lots-of-ellipses exercise. Make sure you draw from the shoulder, and that you draw each one with a confident pace so as to maintain evenly shaped ellipses and smooth lines. Once you've finished and submitted that, I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. At that point you should move onto the 250 box challenge (I'm mentioning this now in case I forget when I review your additional ellipses). Before starting the challenge, read through all of the notes on that page thoroughly, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. There's also a video on drawing boxes, so give that a watch or two.

As with all of my lessons, there's a lot of material to digest, so go through it at your own pace, but make sure that you absorb it all. It's common to need to look at these things multiple times, watch/read them over and over, and have only portions of it sink in each time.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2016-11-27 23:43

Nice work! It looks like you've followed most of my instructions quite well. Just a couple things to note - for your super imposed lines, make sure you take the time before each stroke to line your pen up at the correct starting point. Also, I noticed that later on you stopped drawing through your ellipses. Yours look pretty solid despite that, but I still must insist that you draw through each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons, just to be sure to get lots of muscle memory. Just one extra round of the ellipse should be perfectly fine.

I can see that you definitely struggled with the rotated boxes exercise, but I think you did a great job by the end of it. Nice work toughing on through.

I'll be marking this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. I also would like you to give the notes over at the 250 box challenge a read. You're not required to complete the challenge, but the notes should be pretty useful, and it'd be good to apply the "drawing through your boxes" bit a handful of times, as it's a useful technique that helps you get a better sense of how your boxes sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-27 00:38

Your leafs exercise is done reasonably well. The rest of this lesson however needs some work. I'll try and break down the core issues that I'm seeing:

• Not drawing through your ellipses. This is something I insist you do for all the ellipses drawn for my lessons. It helps keep the shapes even and smooth, allows you to draw them more confidently (and as such avoiding wobbling, stiffness and unevenness) and increases the amount of practice you get in terms of developing proper muscle memory.

• When doing your stems/branches exercise, your individual segments are very choppy. This is because you're not overshooting the flow of those lines enough (step 3 here) and are allowing what little you do overshoot them to fly way off the path of the stem. This causes it to basically come out much in the way that chicken scratching does.

• Speaking of which, you tend to chicken scratch a lot. This is an extremely bad habit that should be avoided at all costs. It's common among beginners, which is why I insist on the use of the ghosting method and drawing through ellipses.

• Your constructions aren't particularly solid. You are applying an interpretation of the constructional method, but you're focusing more on shape (2D) than form (3D), and your initial stages are generally very loose and sketchy rather than focusing on constructing the solid, tangible simple forms that make up the basis of the object.

For now, that's all I'm going to leave you with. You absolutely need to go back to the lesson material. Rewatch the intro video, as I cover the importance of construction and form here, reread the article on the constructional method and reread the lesson and demos. Another thing that may help you get into the groove of thinking in terms of solid forms is to try to replicate my demonstrations exactly as they are broken down.

Also, make sure you're doing the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 regularly. You should be incorporating them into a daily warmup, picking two or three exercises each day to do for 10-15 minutes before moving onto that day's work. There's a lot of very direct instructions that need to be followed when doing these exercises and doing the work for these lessons, and it's very easy to let yourself slip on some of them. You cannot however allow that to become the norm, otherwise you'll continue to slip further and further off the path. When you fall off, you need to make sure you get back on and force yourself to reread the material as much as is needed to reinforce the concepts and ideas in your head.

Once you've had a chance to revisit this lesson's content, I'd like you to try this homework once again in its entirety. Oh, and you may want to get a new pen. A proper fineliner/felt tip pen won't allow you to draw such faint marks - it should vary only in line weight, with a fairly consistent solid black coming out regardless of how little pressure you apply. This also means that you can't treat it as though you're drawing with a pencil - you need to work within the limitations of having a tool that only allows you to make full black marks.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-27 00:22

So the first thing that jumps out at me is the timeline - you completed lesson 1 ten months ago, the 250 box challenge 3 months ago, and your last attempt at lesson 2 a couple months ago. While it's absolutely fine to go through the lessons at your own pace, it is important that you practice these exercises regularly - both so you can implement the critiques I give you at these various milestones, and so you don't forget the approaches each lesson teaches. My usual recommendation is that you pick two or three exercises from lesson 1 and 2 to do as a warmup each day. Now, "each day" is just a suggestion. Every other day, every few days, it doesn't matter, but it should be regular and not once in a blue moon.

I don't think you've really been keeping up with that sort of regimen, and your work certainly reflects that. What stands out most to me is that your linework is very stiff, rather than confident and smooth. This is especially prevalent with your ellipses. You tend to jump between drawing through them stiffly, and not drawing through them at all. Either way, you need to keep in mind that you should be drawing them with a confident enough of a pace such that your brain does not course-correct as you draw, leading to wobbly and stiff linework. Drawing through your ellipses only really helps when you're drawing with a confident pace, as it allows you to deal with the inevitable inaccuracies that come from drawing in this manner. Beginners obviously won't nail the ellipse perfectly, so drawing through them once more helps compensate for little mistakes here and there and generally even things out. Practicing the ellipse exercises from lesson 1 definitely help with this.

Page 4 of this submission - the first set of organic intersections isn't great. Your contour curves are generally not wrapping around the forms that well. Page 7 however is considerably better. The linework is still stiff and wobbly at times, but the overall sense of volume and form, and the use of contour lines is fairly well executed.

The box-only intersections on page 5 are pretty decent. I see some near-plane/far-plane size relationship issues here and there, but for the most part your boxes feel like they exist consistently within the same space, and your intersections are plotted out pretty well.

I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'm not terribly confident in doing so. It's more a matter of, you've covered the material, and seem to understand it, but your execution is poor. This is completely understandable considering that you last did lesson 1 ten months ago, so you've probably forgotten a great deal of it by now. Were I you, I'd consider redoing it to refresh my memory.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-11-27 00:06

Nice work! The construction of your boxes is coming along well - your use of line is looking fairly confident, and your line weights help convey a sense of solidity. You also seem to be picking up a lot of the major issues when doing corrections, so good on you for keeping up with all of those.

I am sorry to say though, while you've done a great job completing this challenge, your 1 year old is going to need some more practice. Gotta start them on their boxes early.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-27 00:01

You're doing a pretty good job of applying the concepts covered in this lesson. You're drawing through your forms, moving from simple to complex, and establishing a good sense of how your objects sit in space. There's room for improvement, but that will come with practice.

There's two pieces of advice I'd like to share with you:

• The main thing that jumps out at me in regards to your drawings is that you might be jumping into the execution of your marks just a liiiiiittle bit too quickly. It's a minor extent, and as such is a little difficult to pinpoint, but it generally feels like some of your marks feel a little less planned and less intentional. On the other hand, much of your linework is fine, so it's not something you're doing across the board. All I recommend is that you keep in the back of your mind an awareness of the importance of doing everything with a particular intent. The particular way your marks curve, the shapes you draw, you should strive to have them all match something specific that you hold in your mind just before actually attempting to put that down on the page. One example of things being just a little less than intentional is with the little lumps on your mushroom. The shapes you chose for those lumps feel a little less than thought out.

• The other point is a very specific concern with your branches exercise. Try to avoid any sort of pinching in the midsection of a tube - keep the tube fairly consistent in its width. Reason being, when the form gets wavy, and you get inconsistent swelling and pinching through its length (between ellipses), this undermines the solidity of the form. Basically it's an instance of the whole idea that complexity tends to make a form harder to sell as being solid.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-26 23:52

I definitely think you're demonstrating some improvement, and an increasing grasp of construction and the use of form. There's definitely room for growth of course, and I have a few tips that should help in the long run:

• I'm seeing a lot of faint, delicately drawn and rather timid marks in your drawings. This is something you should avoid. It's pretty normal for people to want their initial lines to be more hidden and have less of a footprint in their final drawing, but drawing timidly has the tendency of undermining the integrity and solidity of a given form. Draw every mark with confidence and don't worry about hiding some of them. After you're done your overall construction, you can come back to add more line weight to emphasize the important marks. This will ultimately have the effect of making some marks recede and become less noticeable. Always remember though that the point of the drawings we do for these lessons is not to have a pretty drawing in the end - the process is our focus.

• Draw bigger. Construction is very much a spatial challenge, and when you give yourself less room to think through such spatial problems, your drawings will stiffen up. People tend to draw smaller when they feel less confident about what they're doing, feeling as though it'll let them hide their result - unfortunately it has the negative impact of generally making them perform worse.

• Don't worry so much about detail - spend most of your time on construction, making confident, purposeful and intentional marks.

You're moving in the right direction, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 14: Composition"

2016-11-25 19:07

Imagination is the combination of things you've studied and that you're intimately familiar with, in interesting ways. Right now you haven't studied much, so you don't have a lot to work with, so you're right - the solution is to practice a lot, and film and photo studies will help a lot. You need to give yourself the time and opportunity to fill in the gaps in your visual library. Don't think of these things as voids or failures, like something you should have done but didn't. They're things you haven't done yet.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 14: Composition"

2016-11-24 20:24

Your studies are quite well done. I like the variation in the types of shots you chose, and your general value structure is definitely coming along nicely. There's one thing that I did notice though that I think will help you in the long term.

When it comes to composition and breaking things into values, it's important to break out of the habit of thinking of everything as being enclosed objects. I'm noticing that you tend to have very strong borders between the objects in your scene - don't be afraid to let the values of the surrounding environment bleed into a form where you feel certain values on it are more similar to those in the background than they are to other areas within it.

A sort of example where you did a good job with this idea is the top left on the second sheet of studies. Clarisse's face is mostly bleeding into shadow, with very little definition, and because of that, the part that is clearly defined with a lighter value feels that much more striking. Having the silhouette of an object stand out clearly is a tool - it's going to bring that object a lot of focus, so if something isn't part of a focal point, you may not want to give it so much importance.

Your thumbnail sketches are coming along well too - the only thing that stands out to me is that you seem to be a little afraid to dig really deep into the darks, so your value range tends to be a bit more limited and compressed. I think this happens more as you get deeper into your thumbnails, so it's probably something you need to think about more (and that you probably do think about, but that you might be getting sloppy with as you get tired). Also, play more with super foreground objects - think of them as things so close to the camera that the appear so large that they barely clip the frame. Most of the object would exist outside of the frame, you just want something there to help draw the viewer into the situation.

Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-24 20:17

You're definitely moving in the right direction. You've got a few really nice demonstrations of construction and form - the fly on page 2's very nicely done, and the beetle at the end and the hornet on page 3 definitely stand out. There's definitely room for improvement, but what's important is that I'm seeing a distinct budding of understanding.

The grasshopper definitely does come out rather flat - this is actually not an uncommon thing that I've noticed, a lot of people tend to do that though I'm not entirely sure why.

I do think that you have a bit of a tendency to tend a little more towards the cartoony - this is likely due to letting yourself slack off a little bit in terms of carefully observing your reference, most notably after you're finished with the core of the insect's body. It's the legs that tend to look oversimplified, as though you haven't really paid them enough attention when it comes to studying their features before drawing them. I also agree with your notes next to the flea - drawing small isn't going to be helping you here, you definitely want to give yourself as much room to think through these spatial problems as you can.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you think of the drawing as having several phases or passes (where you build up various levels of detail, starting with your initial masses, then connecting them, then adding more forms, etc.) you should be sure that you are convinced of the solidity of your construction at the end of each phase. If it occurs to you that, "oh that'll look more believable and solid once I add more forms and details", definitely stop yourself and think about what you can do to reinforce the illusion of form immediately. If each phase ends with a solid result, you will end up with a much stronger construction in the end.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 14: Composition"

2016-11-24 18:41

Old thread got locked, patreon supporters can post their homework here.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-11-23 19:39

I'm glad that you paced yourself. As a result, I can see some considerable improvement over the set, especially when it comes to achieving correct alignment with your minor axes. I'm also glad to see that you did a whole lot of cylinders inside of boxes, as this will be a particularly useful thing to practice. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-11-23 19:38

Great work! And I'm glad to see that you did a lot of them inside of boxes themselves. It's still important to always include your minor axis (just makes for a very good habit that'll pay off in the long run) but technically speaking, so long as your ellipses are lined up in the planes on either side of the box correctly (meaning that the contact points are aligned correctly, which I explain here), it technically should look correct.

Anyway, your constructions are solid, and you've covered a great deal of everything that I wanted to see. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-11-23 19:34

Ahaha, turns out it was my mistake. I was changing the flair of Occultist_Narath, not Occultist-Narath. Should be fixed now. Anyway, your boxes are looking really well done. The constructions are solid, you've made good use of line weight and your corrections are on point. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-23 19:11

Generally you've done a pretty solid job. You're right that your steps aren't great - the individual sections should not be tapering in their midsections, you should keep them pretty straight and solid. Any kind of tapering will make the form more complex, which makes it more difficult to maintain that illusion of solidity.

Your actual plant drawings are quite well done. You've experimented with different levels of detail and texture, you've made solid constructions, and you're generally stepping through different passes with a good sense for how to approach the general build-up of complexity.

As for your question, I don't really stress accuracy. Instead, I stress solidity (as one would imagine, since I've mentioned it like twelve times in this critique alone) and believability. So while you're drawing a particular plant, there's no need for someone to be convinced that you drew this specific plant. All that matters is that the result could potentially be the same kind of plant, and that it feels like it exists in 3D space and isn't made of tissue.

Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-22 00:06

There are definitely a few things we need to work on together.

Your arrows are looking okay.

Your organic forms with contour ellipses are decent, though the ellipses are a little bit stiff. Try loosening up on these, and drawing a little more confidently so your brain doesn't have the chance to course-correct as you draw.

Organic forms with contour curves - here you're missing some of my instructions.

• Firstly, you've jumped right into drawing them without the minor axis line down the center. This is an important cue you're going to be relying on for some time, as it tells you how to align your curve. The curves themselves are just the visible portion of larger ellipses, and those ellipses must be aligned such that the minor axis line cuts them into two equal, symmetrical halves through their narrower dimension.

• Secondly, you're not quite hooking your curves around properly as they reach the edge. As a result, they don't feel as though they wrap around the rounded form, but instead continue on off its surface. You do this to varying degrees - there are many places where you're closer to being correct, but you need to push it a little bit further. The last point about the alignment also factors in here. A curve that is not aligned properly will have an easier time of hooking around on one side, but a much more difficult time on the other. You should try overshooting your curves as described here to get a better sense of how the curve should accelerate as it reaches the edge and hooks around. Also be sure to read the video linked from there.

Your dissections aren't great. Most people struggle with this exercise, and you're not by any means expected to do anything remotely masterful at this point. That said, you're going off in the wrong direction in a few ways.

• What you're choosing for your textures aren't always actually textures. If you take an object - for instance, a rhino horn - you can split it up into two separate components. There's the major forms, which are more in the macroscopic range (so the large elements), then there's the little bumps, scratches, divets, and so on that exist along its surface. These too have form to them, but they exist at such a small scale that they are subordinate to the major forms. These constitute the texture which wraps around those major forms. When thinking of what is the texture of a thing, imagine what you would get if you skinned it and unwrapped its surface. In the case of the rhino texture, you'd get a layer if keratin that would be scratched and dented in small ways from years of wear and tear. This is what you then wrap around your organic form. In this way, eyes are not textures either - they're just objects that you decided to paste onto your forms.

• You need to always think about how this layer of texture you've skinned off will wrap around its new major form. In the wood example, you've drawn those rings as though they were applied on a more or less flat surface. That pattern in particular would be quite difficult to apply to a rounded form, admittedly, but it is something to always take into consideration.

• Your drawings tend to be very scratchy and sketchy, relying very heavily on randomness rather than making specific, planned marks. Don't ever rely on randomness - never scribble, never draw without thought. The right side of your first page of dissections shows more purposeful drawing, with specific little bits drawn, so that's moving in the right direction. Many of the others are drawn as though you're trying to use your pen as a pencil. You must accept that the tool that you're drawing has certain strengths and certain weaknesses, and you need to work within them. A good felt tip pen will create either a fully dark mark on the page, or nothing at all. There are no halftones. This is often quite tricky to work with, but you've got to face it head on. Furthermore, if you've got areas that need to be filled in - fill them in completely. If you leave little slivers of white, they're going to stand out like a sore thumb and become very distracting.

• This exercise needs to be started as an organic form with contour lines exercise. That means that each form should be drawn as though it's being done for the previous exercise, not as a dissection. The dissection phase is just something you add afterwards. This means that the form you're working on should already be fully solid and reinforced, like you're drawing on proper 3D form rather than within a relatively flimsy 2D silhouette.

• For more help with matters of drawing texture, give these notes a read.

Your form intersections are okay. The intersections themselves a little hit-and-miss, but it's not a huge issue right now. Though you complained earlier about box intersections, they're not all that bad. One thing to keep in mind about cylinders and spheres is that if a cylinder sticks right into a sphere, the intersection is usually a simple circle in 3D space, which would be drawn as a simple ellipse in 2D. You sometimes complicate it further than that. Also, I am seeing some of those contour curve issues that I mentioned earlier in how you wrap these intersections around the rounded forms, so fixing those will definitely help here as well.

Your organic intersections, as one might expect, suffer from a lot of the same issues as the organic forms with contour lines. An additional point I'd like to mention is that you should try and keep these forms as simple as possible. Simple forms are much easier to give the illusion of solidity, so whenever we add more complexity to them, we have to work that much harder to make them appear solid. Usually - and I get into this later on so it's not something to worry about just yet - we instead break complex forms into simpler ones, draw those, then refine them and combine them in later passes.

So, when drawing your organic forms - for this exercise as well as for the organic forms with contour lines exercises, maintain simple sausages. Don't let them pinch or taper in their midsections, don't branch them, no waviness or anything like that. It'll make things much simpler, and will help you focus on the main challenges of these exercises.

I'd like you to do two pages of organic forms with contour curves, then take the second page and use those for your dissections. Then I want you to do one more page of organic intersections.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-21 23:30

Really lovely work! I have absolutely no complaints. Your organic forms with contour lines show a solid understanding of how those forms exist in 3D space, and how their surfaces curve around. Your dissections show some great experimentation with a variety of ways to approach texture and do so understanding both the advantages and limitations of the pen you're using (rather than trying to treat it like a pencil). Your form intersections are solid and cohesive, and your organic intersections really show an understanding of how those forms support each others' weight, and how they sag when there's nothing there to hold them up.

Keep up the fantastic work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "We just released the game my studio has been working on for a while, and I figured I'd share my experiences along with a bunch of the art assets that didn't make it into the final product"

2016-11-21 23:20

Ultimately, these things happen. Ideally we'd release on several platforms simultaneously, had we infinite resources and time, but ultimately there always comes a time where you have to decide to leave certain things for later and focus what you do have on creating a good experience. By narrowing our scope, we improve our chances of a positive reception. If the game is received well on one platform, then we end up with more resources to open up that same great experience to others.

Of course, that leaves the question of why iOS over Android as a starting group? That's where statistics come into play. It's surprising, but it turns out that iOS users spend roughly five times as much on an individual basis as Android users do, which gives a game released on that platform significantly better chances to survive, and ultimately thrive.

I myself use an Android phone, so I would have loved to see a simultaneous release. I'm confident though that we made the right decision, and that it is one that will benefit everyone in the long run.

Uncomfortable in the post "We just released the game my studio has been working on for a while, and I figured I'd share my experiences along with a bunch of the art assets that didn't make it into the final product"

2016-11-21 20:57

Hi there.

Uncomfortable in the post "We just released the game my studio has been working on for a while, and I figured I'd share my experiences along with a bunch of the art assets that didn't make it into the final product"

2016-11-21 20:07

Hahaha, once it's further along I'll write another article. "Why would an artist make a game about text?!"

Uncomfortable in the post "We just released the game my studio has been working on for a while, and I figured I'd share my experiences along with a bunch of the art assets that didn't make it into the final product"

2016-11-21 19:45

To be honest, I haven't put in nearly as much overtime as one would consider to be stereotypical for the game industry. There were a few periods where it was just necessary (that time it was largely because after those two weeks, I was slated to go on vacation). There have been some other very isolated instances, like coming into work for 13 hours on Canadian Thanksgiving (a statutory holiday), but for the most part I my days are 8 hours. When the overtime does happen, it USUALLY results in something I'm super proud of which makes it all worth it.

Either way, I work on my own stuff when I get home. Drawabox, personal projects (I'm makin' a text game! :D), and whatever. I'm just a workaholic.

Uncomfortable in the post "We just released the game my studio has been working on for a while, and I figured I'd share my experiences along with a bunch of the art assets that didn't make it into the final product"

2016-11-21 16:28

Exactly. Those of us who give up, either have had what once motivated us shrivel and die or never had any such thing at all. Those of us who keep going must have some driving force, even if we can't quite describe it or give it a name just yet. It's there, and by continuing to pursue these hobbies, we slowly carve it into something more distinct.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects (new 30min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-20 20:47

In that case, take a look at the contact points of your camera's lens ellipses and check their alignment.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2016-11-20 18:55

Despite your struggles, you've definitely done a lot of great work here. Your lines are quite well executed, and they're rather confident. Your ellipses are even and smooth, and your boxes are generally quite solid.

Always keep in mind that when something is difficult, it doesn't mean it's necessarily the wrong way for you to be doing it - so, even if it's challenging, try and push through it, and fight against the urge to go back to your wrist. You mentioned that you draw with your elbow supporting your weight against the table - I definitely advise against this. Instead of resting on your elbow, let the side of your hand rest slightly on the page to stabilize it. Both are technically not-great-habits (because they behave like anchors, making it more likely that you're going to go back to drawing from the wrist rather than the shoulder). Resting your hand on the table is simply easier to deal with than resting on your elbow. Either way, you need to constantly be vigilant, catching yourself and correcting yourself whenever you go back to drawing from your wrist.

Back to your homework - the only section where you demonstrated any significant weakness was with the organic perspective boxes, and this is totally expected. This exercise was included to let students struggle and get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This is very difficult, and I have no expectations for students to be nailing it this early on. That said, you've done a pretty solid job regardless, and while there's definitely room for improvement, you're making good headway.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I do want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more practice with rotating boxes freely in 3D space. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page before starting the work, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects (new 30min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-20 18:46

Looks to me like you've done a pretty solid job of implementing the things I covered in the lesson. I agree that when it comes to the alignment of your ellipses, there's definitely some work to be done. Overall ellipses are RIDICULOUSLY difficult, which is why in the next lesson you're free to use an ellipse guide if you can get one to make your life a little easier. On top of the natural difficulty of ellipses though, make sure you give the ellipses in planes video from the next lesson a watch, as it will definitely help.

Overall, your objects - especially the boxier ones - have a really strong sense of solidity and construction, and your proportions appear to generally be estimated quite well. I especially love your lighter - even the ellipses there were quite well executed.

Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-20 01:27

I'm sure I'll have more to offer when you actually submit your work for critique, but for now, do as I said. I'll worry about making heads or tails of your results, just focus on following the instructions as best you can.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-19 23:36

They're certainly not the core of that exercise, but don't leave them out just because you're struggling with them. Do your best with the explanations that are available to you right now, and I'll point out any issues or misunderstandings I see when doing my critique. Never neglect to do something just because it's difficult.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2016-11-18 23:13

Ultimately it's a matter of practice - it's natural that you'll get better at it over time, but it's important that you not slow down so much that you start getting wobbly lines. Make sure that you're always going at least quick enough to keep your brain from course-correcting as you draw. From there, you just have to train your muscles through practice.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-18 20:58

You're doing okay. For the most part, your constructions feel fairly solid, and it's clear that you're working towards breaking everything down into their simplest components. One thing I did notice is that you have a tendency not to use minor axes when constructing your flower pots (which are often either cylinders, or derived from cylinders). This definitely results in them being flimsier. The use of minor axes for your branches/tubes is definitely good, however.

One thing I'd like to draw your attention to is the leaves on the aloe plant at the beginning. While many leaves are quite flat with negligible thickness to them, if you look closely at the leaves of an aloe plant, you'll see that they've actually got quite a bit of substance to them. When drawing contour curves, it's important to remember what those lines represent - they're lines that run along the surface of a form, wrapping around it. So, where the form has an edge with a little more thickness, you'll find the contour curve wrapping noticeably around it, creating a little lip. Here's an example of what I mean.

Another thing I'd like to point out is with the branching in this image. When applying the constructional method, the most important thing is to keep your forms as simple as possible. It's easiest to make simple forms appear solid and tangible - and it's also fairly straightforward to combine several simple forms to create complexity without losing that basic solidity. Looking at the points where your tubes branch in this image, I see one important feature - the main branch from which the second one comes out, tends to become a little more complex around that branching point. Rather than remaining straight, the tube kind of reaches out in the direction that it's branching. This undermines the inherent simplicity of the basic tube, which also compromises its solidity.

When doing something like this, it's best to draw both tubes as just tubes with no more interaction beyond their occupying the same space where they intersect. Then in a subsequent pass, you can add a little more transitional form to smooth over where one branch flows into the other. The key is to split things up into different passes and phases, rather than trying to accomplish too much in one go.

Anyway, keep all of that in mind as you continue to move forwards. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-18 20:48

Definitely much better. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2016-11-18 20:46

Sorry for the late response, I've been pretty swamped at work. Your homework is generally looking pretty good. Your lines are confident and well executed for the most part, but watch out for the tendency that you have to arc your lines.

For your ellipses, across the board it looks like you missed my instructions stressing the importance of drawing through your ellipses. This is something I want you to do for each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons.

Most of your box exercises are well executed, and I'm pleased to see that you applied the double checking method to your rough perspective boxes. The rotated boxes are also quite well executed, so keep up the great work there.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along okay - they are on the weaker side of your submission, but this is completely normal. This exercise was included to let students get their feet wet with the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. It's not an easy thing to do, and it's expected that students would fumble around quite a bit.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to submit one more page of the table of ellipses exercise, this time drawing through each and every ellipse as instructed. Once that's submitted, I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more practice with those freely rotated boxes. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-16 23:07

Much better! And I'm glad the article helped put things into perspective. Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-16 23:03

Definitely some good stuff here, though there's a few things I want to draw your attention to. First off, your organic forms with contour lines are going in the right direction, but with the contour curves you're kind of riding the fence. In many areas, you're doing a good job of wrapping those curves around the rounded form, making sure they accelerate and hook back around as they reach the edge of the form. In other places, however, and not infrequently, you kinda let yourself get sloppy. It's clear to me that you understand the concepts wrapping curves around organic forms but you need to stay on top of it in order to really let it solidify. Letting the curves overshoot a bit as they hook back around (as though you're drawing just a little bit more of the full contour ellipse) can help keep you on track.

You're showing some good experimentation with your dissections, especially on the lower half of this page, so keep that up. The material over on the texture challenge may also be worth reading.

For your form intersections, I'm really glad to see that you're drawing through your forms - just make sure that when you do, don't go out of your way to make those lines especially faint, as this will compromise the integrity of those lines. Basically, if you try too hard to make them faint, you're less likely to keep them straight and solid. Draw your lines normally, then come back later to add more weight to emphasize the more important lines. Adding tight hatching to one of the front-facing faces can also help give the needed visual cue to show which side of the form is which.

Your organic intersections do a good job of demonstrating how those forms interact, and result in a fairly believable illusion of form. The same point I rasied about your organic forms with contour curves does stand for some of these however (like the top right sausage here), but again that's just a matter of not letting yourself get sloppy.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Don't forget to keep up with these exercises as warmups though.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-11-16 22:53

The cylinder challenge will certainly help with the form intersections, but it's not a hard requirement. I leave that up to you.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-11-16 01:19

I'm sure the boxes you see are beautiful! As these here are quite wonderfully done. Confident linework, subtle line weights, and some reasonably accurate corrections. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-11-16 01:15

Congratulations on completing the challenge. You've done well to get through them all. I do agree with your self-assessment though. In terms of accuracy - yes, you should absolutely put the dots down before drawing your line, especially since that's in the instructions :P

Specifically, I say to use the ghosting method for every single line you draw, and the dots are the first step. It also helps to place the dots for the entire box before starting on your lines, so you can figure things out spatially before committing.

For your line weight, generally you apply it after a box has been constructed. It looks to me like for the most part, you perhaps tried varying the pressure used on your initial stroke. Think of it like an extension of the super imposed lines exercise from lesson 1.

I have one last recommendation - drawing through your boxes is great, though it can have the negative effect of making the drawings a little confusing (in terms of which side is facing the viewer). In order to alleviate this, try filling one of the faces oriented towards the viewer with some tight, clean hatching. This will give the appropriate visual cue that makes the whole thing much clearer and easier to understand.

Anyway, consider this challenge complete. You've got plenty of room to grow, but you're moving in the right direction.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-16 01:05

So! Your work is generally pretty well done. There's a few recommendations I can make, and one common issue that I see, so we'll deal with that. In general though you're moving in the right direction.

Your dissections show a particularly great deal of care and patience. You explored quite a few different textures, and while the level of detail you'll be able to observe and carry over into your drawings will improve with time and practice, it's clear that you drew each one with your full focus, and intent driving every mark. That's definitely what I want to see.

The common issue that I noticed is with your organic forms with contour curves. The curves aren't wrapping convincingly around the forms. As the contour lines reach the edge of the organic form, they need to accelerate in their curvature and hook back around so they can continue along the other side. Think of it as though this sausage-like form already exists in space, and you're just reinforcing it by drawing lines along its rounded surface. Think of how your pen would flow along it, and how some of your current lines would actually start flying off the surface of the object, rather than clinging to it faithfully. I discuss this issue more over here. Be sure to give the video linked there a try, as well as the whole overshooting-your-curves method, as it may help you get used to the kind of curvature you need to be striving for.

For the organic forms with contour ellipses, I did notice that your ellipses didn't really line up to those central minor axis lines. Remember that the minor axis cuts an ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves through its narrower dimension. This applies to the contour curves as well, since the curves are really just the visible portion of the full ellipses. Making sure the alignment is more correct will help you achieve that wrap-around illusion more easily.

The whole issue of contour lines wrapping around also has had an impact on your organic intersections, so getting your head around this particular issue will definitely have some considerably positive results across the board.

The last thing I wanted to mention was that while your form intersections are alright, you really should be drawing through your boxes as you learned in the 250 box challenge. That is, drawing the lines on the far side of the box as well, so you get a better sense of how that box sits in 3D space.

Anyway, I'd like you to do another two pages of organic forms with contour curves, and one more page of organic intersections.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2016-11-16 00:51

The most important thing to keep in mind when struggling as you are with your confidence is this: of course you're doing things wrong. Why wouldn't you be? Hell, I've been drawing for years, and I still do things wrong all the time. You're supposed to be doing things wrong - it's important to make mistakes so you can learn from them. If you don't give yourself the chance to stumble, you're not going to be able to grow. You'll just stay exactly where you are, all safe and sound, with no scrapes on your knees.

As far as motivation goes, I actually wrote a little blurb about that. You should give it a read.

Now, onto your homework - you've generally done an okay job, but as you predicted, there were some mistakes. Your arrows are pretty decent, though one thing I want you to focus on when doing this exercise in the future is to consider the arrow as something travelling through space. Right now they feel like they are three dimensional, but their translation is still moving more across the flat page rather than through the depths of a 3D world. When drawing arrows, consider how they would flow from a point far away, to a point closer to the viewer - or vice versa.

For your organic forms with contour curves, you seem to have skipped over the whole "draw through your ellipses" bit. It's important that you do this for each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons, without exception, in order to keep them smooth and evenly shaped.

Your contour curves are showing a pretty common issue, where the curves themselves don't wrap convincingly around the rounded, 3D form you're trying to build. Or rather, that you're trying to sell to the viewer. The rounded form is already there, but in order to make the viewer believe in it, you have to include some marks that run along its surface, wrapping all the way around a cross-section of it. Because the object is rounded, as the contour line reaches the edge, it needs to accelerate in its curvature and hook back around, so it can continue onto the other side. You can read more about this issue here. Be sure to watch the video as well, and try using the 'overshooting' method explained in that blurb to help you maintain that curvature.

Your dissections are pretty good. Lots of interesting exploration of different textures, and it's clear that you really put a lot of time and care into studying your references, and kept yourself from relying on too much randomness.

Your form intersections aren't bad, but one thing you should be applying here is the approach you learned when doing the 250 box challenge. That is, drawing through each box, so you can fully understand how it sits in 3D space. This will also help avoid the all-too-common far plane larger than near plane issue.

Your organic intersections are pretty well done. They do suffer from the same issue as your organic forms with contour curves, so getting that sorted will definitely strengthen this exercise as well - but despite that, you've done a decent job of selling the illusion of form, and the idea that these forms are all piled together.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do another page of organic forms with contour ellipses, then another page of organic forms with contour curves. Try to avoid any complex forms - stick to simple sausages, as they introduce the least amount of irrelevant complications. Focus on creating the illusion that the sausages are rounded and solid.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2016-11-16 00:29

That sounds pretty terrifying! I hope whatever it is, it doesn't end up being particularly serious. From what I can see, the lack of coordination doesn't seem to be coming to the surface in your work here. Your lines are reasonably precise and well executed. The drawings themselves are a little stiff, but this is pretty normal when one starts coming to terms with construction, and thinking in terms of solid forms. The constructional aspect of your drawings is coming along well.

I think you should be good to move onto the next lesson, so I'll go ahead and mark this one as complete. Good luck with your appointment!