Project - Simple Animal Portraits
Project - Simple Animal Portraits
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lesson video
Project - Simple Animal Portraits
courseDrawing BasicsFull course (185 lessons)
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assignments 1983 submissions
Dave
Being limited to 10 shapes or less was tough. You had to think intently about what to include or exclude.
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hippo.jpg
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buffalo.jpg
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rooster.jpg
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project-simple-animal-portraits.mp4
183 MB
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project-simple-animal-portraits-transcript-english.txt
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project-simple-animal-portraits-transcript-spanish.txt
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project-simple-animal-portraits-captions-english.srt
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project-simple-animal-portraits-captions-spanish.srt
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ASSIGNMENTS

Deadline: Submit your assignments by 06/15/2023 for a chance to be featured in the next critique video!

Level 1:
Create animal portraits using basic shapes. Try to simplify the animal using 10 shapes or less. Keep your shapes organic and simple. Simple shapes could be stretched, bloated, indented, or curved to capture personality. Don't worry about perfect proportions. Instead, focus on creating cool, simple designs. No details or shading! Use the three reference photos I provided and find 5 to 10 more.

Level 2:
Take Level 1 assignment and push them further. Play with your basic shapes and size relationships to give the animals different personalities. Don't hesitate to experiment and look for additional references to understand your subject better. Now, go have fun!

Brenna McCrea
My Level 2 attempt:
Melanie Scearce
Nice experimentations!
Kevin Gasanli
Here is another attempt at the simplification exercise. I think this one was harder, since the whole body required more shapes, which forced me to constrain myself even more than if I only did the head.
@hannahfathi
watched the demo and made these monkeys (or are they apes?)
Patrick Bosworth
Great sketches!
@tilbury
3d
References for water buffalo, rooster, and hippo, are those provided by the course. Additional references are shown for my cat, and a creature from another planet. I still find it really difficult to draw confident lines that are also accurate lines. My lines always end up looking very scratchy or very searchy.
Kevin Gasanli
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.
J K
5d
This is my second post for this assignment (the references I used) since there is a 20 photo limit for each post
J K
5d
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
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Nice work! You did a good job of simplifying all these critters in to simple shapes. Keep it up!
Brenna McCrea
My level 1 attempts.
Chuck Ludwig Reina
Nice! Well done with your shapes. I particularly like the hippo!
Destiny Daniel
Did Level 1 and then the cats were my attempts at level 2
Nickdulis
11d
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.
Noah Denney
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
Melanie Scearce
I like to think of this project like a cut paper project of sorts. The layering helps me think in a 3D way although the shapes are just 2D. The forms that are closer to you overlap the forms that are further away, and the shape design is informed by how those forms connect to each other.
Myra Lemmond
Another one
Myra Lemmond
Hoping for feedback
Melanie Scearce
You did a good job identifying the main forms in the sketch in the middle row. Those are some solid shapes. It's cool that you did a bunch of different iterations; I think you could get more variety with more experimentation with proportions- generally the faces follow the same measurement rule, which I copy and pasted over your sketches to show what I mean. Playing with those relationships while you experiment with different shape language will help you go in different directions that could be really interesting!
rheannon
13d
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
Ben Kraske
13d
Nice job applying what you learned from the demo! The overlaid full shapes really help to build the form of the animals. Great work!!
rheannon
14d
@gabriel138
My simple animal portraits submission. I noticed I leaned more towards round shapes.
Ben Kraske
14d
Nice work! It might be a fun exercise to draw these same animals again, but challenge yourself to use more rectangular, or triangular shapes to build the form. I see a lot of potential for some blocky animals in your choices here! :)
Bashayerfhs Bash
Fern
17d
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!
Umbre on
17d
Was a lot of fun. I'm pretty happy with almost all of them!
John Oz
18d
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.
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