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About instructor
I Teach Creatives
assignments 81 submissions
Hi Marshall!
This was a really interesting exercise/brain teaser. I chose two of the provided ortho templates and invented a number of 3d forms, working over a sheet of isometric graph paper. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the results.
This is also a great way to practice my technical skill with pencil and pen (I have shaky hands...)
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
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-template.jpeg
427 kB
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form.mp4
147 MB
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-transcript-english.txt
4 kB
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-transcript-spanish.txt
5 kB
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-captions-english.srt
7 kB
assignment-orthos-to-invented-form-captions-spanish.srt
8 kB
ASSIGNMENTS![]()
![@balkanninja]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![lautaro asis]()
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![Worldblox]()
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![Maestro]()
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![Rachel Dawn Owens]()
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![@deadsm]()
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![Guadalupe Belgrano]()
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![Sandra Süsser]()
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![Sandra Süsser]()
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![Ethyn]()
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![Ben Nunn]()
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![Iman]()
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![Rachel Dawn Owens]()
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![Jorge Landivar]()
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![Rachel Dawn Owens]()
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![Jacob Granillo]()
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!
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6d
Ooh I like how you experimented with the cylinders, looks cool!
People around me must have thought I was drawing the next Da Vinci kinda thing with all the measurements I was making, but it was just a little baby turtle
i had some fun doing this! I like turning 2d objects to 3d, its just quite satisfying and fun!
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2mo
Perfect!
You could build a ton from these drawings. This is a perfect foundation.
If you used a thinner pen or pencil for the inside lines, you could give it more depth.
Want to add an extra level of polish? Shade one side with any light value marker, pen or pencil to define more form.
Thanks for sharing!
This lesson was hard. I am grateful, though, as it got me to do a bunch of exercises to get to this point. I figured out pretty quickly that to solve these visual problems I needed to get better at drawing a box in any angle. So that's what I did; I spent many hours drawing lots and lots of turnarounds. They are not perfect, but I am happy that I was able to get here and I look forward to revisiting this again later to see where I am at.
I'm still trying to catch up. At first, I started with the top view and tried to create the other views in orthographic projection. But when I had to draw an oblique view, I realized I struggle when the proportions aren’t exact—not half, not a third, just... almost.
Then I tried doing them in isometric perspective, using a template behind the page.
On my second attempt, I skipped the orthographic views and worked directly with the isometric grid. I discovered I had trouble figuring out which cube was which, so I had to draw little faces and symbols on them to understand and check if I was missing any.
Really enjoyed this exercise <3. Drew my own ortho plan and just did versions for the top view since I had enough ideas for that alone.
Just realizing I drew one impossible figure unintentionally lol. Can you spot it? :D
Here's my attempt at this exercise. It was great practice for thinking about things three-dimensionally! Putting the plans into perspective really made me realise what parts I hadn't fully thought through in the plans.
There templates were a lot of fun once I got in the groove! I tried to experiment with it a bit!
I used the templates provided.
The third one stumped me for some reason, and indeed as I’m submitting this I just noticed a mistake on the second tier. I didn’t include its depth as it wraps around the cube.
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5mo
These are very impressive. I would not have ever noticed that one ‘mistake’ if you didn’t say it.
You did great.
Hello, this assigment was difficult to do with 2 point perstective, and the knowing that the object become distorted by the perspective itself . thanks
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6mo
Wow this is a tough one. You should try this assignment again with a simpler form. Maybe a 2x2 or 3x3 cube made of blocks.
You have a 3x4x5 form here and it’s a real brain buster. I took some time to make some sense of your drawing the best I could. This is what I came up with.
I like the addition of color. If you match the color to your orthos drawings, it can make your drawing easier to read.
I hope this helps. Thanks for sharing. Good luck on your next one!
took a month to do this assignment, and got boring over time. This assignment really challenged my thinking because of the endless combinations of invented forms I can make!
I took my time to try to come up with invented forms. I have many more pages in my other sketchbook but I’ll just upload these
