Assignment - Orthos to Invented Form
Assignment - Orthos to Invented Form
This lesson is premium only. Join us in the full course!
05:49
1.7K views
lesson video
Assignment - Orthos to Invented Form
courseThe Perspective CourseSelected 2 parts (136 lessons)
-6%
$261.32
$278
You save $16.68
assignments 227 submissions
Jyayasi (*Jay-o-she*)
This assignment was quite fun to do! It definitely made me better at freehanding boxes of different sizes in 3D space.
LESSON NOTES

What's in Premium?

In this lesson, you'll learn how to transform a 2D plan into 3D forms by assigning heights to its features. Starting with a provided plan showing width and depth, you'll explore creative ways to define the heights:

  • Invert positive and negative spaces.
  • Squash or stretch the height of portions.
  • Create floating elements connected by lines.

Using templates, you'll draw height lines to track elevations and enhance the illusion of depth. By practicing with side and front elevations (orthographic projections), you'll ensure accuracy and understand true proportions.

The lesson guides you to think three-dimensionally, encouraging you to create your own forms and experiment with different views. You'll start simply and gradually move toward more complex shapes.

Get this lesson and more in the premium course!

DOWNLOADS
jpeg
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-template.jpeg
427 kB
mp4
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form.mp4
147 MB
txt
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-transcript-english.txt
4 kB
txt
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-transcript-spanish.txt
5 kB
file
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-captions-english.srt
7 kB
file
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-captions-spanish.srt
8 kB
ASSIGNMENTS

Your assignment is to take a top-down plan (which only shows width and depth) and turn it into a 3D form by inventing the height. You can be creative—stretch, shrink, or flip parts, and even make pieces float. This is about training your brain to think in 3D.

  • Use graph paper or the plan templates in the downloads tab to make it easier on you
  • Feeling ambitious? Make up your own plans
  • You can also draw side and front views to better understand the form
  • Keep the shapes right-angled for now (no curves or bevels yet)

The main goal is to explore how different elevations can turn the same plan into many unique 3D shapes.

Deadline - submit by April 07, 2025 for a chance to be in the critique video!

David D
2d
Had to step away for awhile, but now I have more time to dedicate to this class. Getting back in the swing of things, making mistakes I haven’t in awhile.. but happy to be back at it! I spend a lot of my work-life in with this sort of thing - these were fun exercises!
@hampop
7d
This was surprisingly more fun than I was expecting. I did myself a favour and picked up a ruler and a chemical pencil. Turns out you can focus so much more on the actual perspective and construction skills when you remove hand coordination out of the equation. This made me want to experiment more and try to draw small regions as well as large ones which I usually avoid doing freehand to avoid messy drawings.
Bex
17d
Just tried to do the simplest one for now :)
CreativityLogs
Carmen Ciumber
Milena Radosavljevic
@sosoph
2mo
Hi :). I challenged myself to draw freehand. Everything is a little bit wonky, but I think it's acceptable for this assignment. Hopefully, I did not make too many mistakes regarding the main focus of the assignment (ie that my oblique views are consistent with the top view). Whenever tangent lines appeared, I adjusted the proportions to try to eliminate them. This also made me realize that it can be helpful to choose the viewing angle based on the object's specific structure. Certain viewpoints seemed to make the features much easier to read than others.
Joseph Coplans
@g_meza
2mo
Here are some of my attempts at the invented forms.
Neill
2mo
Interesting and challenging. I had to use a small note book and a tiny ruler because I am still traveling so some of the lines got a little messier then i would like. Also found myself always going for a square at the same angle, did not do a good job of varying the 3/4 view or giving any feeling of heading towards a VP.
Nilsa Rodolfo
This was fun , but coming out with new views is hard. At first i panic but then i just tried to construct without being perfect.
@vaporsymphony
So for this project I learned how to build a perspective grid and constructed one based on the oblique views provided in the lesson video. It was really interesting to finally figure out how perspective grids work, despite that not being the purpose of this assignment. I can imagine using grids and orthographic views together to construct complex forms in convincing perspective is an excellent strategy. My proportions are off but I was pleased with how objects look like they're in pretty good perspective.
Ric Molina
2mo
Fascinating puzzle project. Now I see how. drawing 80,000 boxes will help.
@purpleart
3mo
Just worked through Yves Yumol’s lesson on drawing a piano so I thought I would revisit this and do a (casual) drawing of a beach chair as the sea was a bit too chilly for swimming.
Clément Douziech
Quite loved to do them, but I realized it was difficult to be accurate with them being too little so made a last one bigger. I don't know how to have accurate dimension between the two sides length and the height !
Melanie Scearce
The accuracy issue is covered later on in the planned projection project! These look great 👍
Stefy Art
4mo
Sorry, but I'm missing something: how can I, from an orthos projection, create a 3D form maintaining its right dimensions without using graph paper? I don't understand the steps I have to do. In the orthos projection I had to follow a precise flow to mantain the proportion from one view to the others, but now it seems to me that I have to go free hand and "imagine" its dimentions, which makes, in a certain way, the orthos projection I’ve already done pointless.
Jack Frumkes
I wanted to make a floating block between a sort of C shaped block. Kind of like those little desk trinkets with two magnets that make a little object float. I think the thicknesses of the blocks are not exactly consistent in the non-orthos views but this was all freehand and I think the concept is there at least? I did find it hard to make the floating block look like it was truly floating in the center of the C shaped block though.
Jules Peppler
Great exercise for the daily sketchbook.
Joseph Coplans
This was an an assignment that brought a huge level of insight. A bit of advice: work on your boxes in perspective at 45° and learning how to draw them by hand. Easier said than done. Once the box is accurate compared to Marshalls it was easy for me to divide the boxes into equal parts. The benefit of this assignment is that I now can look at an old San Francisco cottage house, and determined the proportions, not scientifically, but artistically, very accurately. Thank you, Marshall!
Lane Campbell
Help!
Browse the FAQs or our more detailed Documentation. If you still need help or to contact us for any reason, drop us a line and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!