Here are my first few attempts. After watching the critique video I noticed that I did a lot of mistakes (mostly for the meerkat), so I will redo this exercise tomorrow. Some of the mistakes I did: - Forgetting to break the whole thing into many small shapes and focusing too much on the contours. I should put down shapes on top of each other like paper cutouts instead of morphing contours. - Not closing lines into full shapes - Varying the design by thinking about the whole animal (proportions, expression, personality, etc) instead of how to vary the individual shapes (like making one more dominant than the other). A mistake since this chapter is more about shapes than character design.

This is my second post for this assignment (the references I used) since there is a 20 photo limit for each post

Hello everyone! I enjoyed this project. I think I can do better the more I practice. I will post the references I used after this one since there is a 20 photo limit

My level 1 attempts.

Did Level 1 and then the cats were my attempts at level 2

This was kinda hard not gonna lie. 10 shapes were kinda limiting. My biggest weakness seems to be able to design good, interesting shapes. Especially if I want to go wild for lvl 2. I also wanted to try and apply it to human faces while watching the 2hour livestream. Providing that picture too. Some were from imagination but most from reference. Wasnt exactly following the assignment when it came to human portraits. It was more of a "lets try simplify into more basic shapes" approach.

Dang I feel like I jumped back to square one with this XD I think the demos will clarify what im not getting, cause Im struggling to see the shapes in the heads

Another one

Hoping for feedback

After watching the demo & critique videos, I realised I needed to redo this project but with full shapes. I also had a go using procreate for some which was a learning process all of its own

My simple animal portraits submission. I noticed I leaned more towards round shapes.

I had a lot of fun with this assignment, but I also found it challenging to simplify to only 10 shapes. As I did more animals and after I watched the demos and the critiques, I did better at keeping things simple. I'm level one but I just had to try some modifications, which was so fun! I would love some feedback on what to specifically work on if anyone sees something. Thank you!

Was a lot of fun. I'm pretty happy with almost all of them!

There was five more images but I can only upload twenty images. Don't know if I am drawing the objects correctly. There's definitely errors on the cat and the buffalo. Think I need to simplify more like I did on the other drawings I couldn't upload but wanted to know others' thoughts rather than me staring at it for too long.

Still find it really hard to just loose sketch without reaching for an eraser. Also had to rush line in/line weight this AM (will go back later) yet but I'm really happy I finally managed to apply some of the concepts. I will reattempt and move further away from designed shapes and more to realism as a second attempt which I think was more the point of the exercise? I wasn't sure. Only been drawing a few weeks so i found this exercise really REALLY tough. Attempted. Failed and floundered. Watched the livestream, and tried to research some references to help things 'click'. If anyone has seen the awesome 'Hey Duggee' you'll know they push simplified shape animals to the extreme. I dug through images to get some inspiration. I copied one or two to start to warmup, but then tried to loosen up and just apply the ideas of core shape choices more loosely. Ive tried to label the 2 or 3 here that are copies, not trying to pass them off as my own (1 lion, 1 buffalo, and a duck I think). Then once I'd got some confidence I tried to create / iterate by myself. Yes, I know they are bad! BUT for *me* it's a massive step after I flopped so hard on the first attempt! Here I used some initial reference photos but also just played with shapes on some other paper until I found something that 'felt' like a particular animal, the promoted it to sketch book to explore further. The wolf and dog were both just things that fell out of experimenting (i know nothing or gesture yet so I imagine I could really make the dog 'point' more if I flipped the neck angle to continue that strong directional feel The 'ooh' monkey and square bear are my favourites I think. May take these and blow up and detail neatly. Some are more detailed than they should be but you can hopefully see the core shapes I used originally to overlay

Most of the references I picked didn’t break down into simpler shapes as obviously as the 3 he picked. Well, I tried. My first dog looks kind of like a bear, as does my Tasmanian Devil and wombat. The wallaby looks demonic. Not sure why I did the hatching on those few.

Not sure I understood this assignment correctly

I liked the exercise... Hippo was challenging.