In general, how long would you say that it took for you to feel like you A) knew what can be done with Illustrator and B) be able to do it? What sort of things did you do to learn? Simple projects, working with others, website tutorials etc. It's very differnent from what I was expecting, and kind of hard to get used to. I can't figure out how to delete a part of something that I drew, and it's making me crazy. Anyway, I'm looking to become somewhat proficient with this, so any advice you might have on how to learn my way around it would be appreciated.
1. "RE: Illustrator, how long did it take?" In response to Reply # 0
>In general, how long would you say that it took for you to >feel like you A) knew what can be done with Illustrator
six months.
and B) >be able to do it?
i learned in like a month.
> What sort of things did you do to learn?
It's all about vectors..drawinf with 'shapes'
>Simple projects, working with others, website tutorials etc. >It's very differnent from what I was expecting, and kind of >hard to get used to. I can't figure out how to delete a part >of something that I drew, and it's making me crazy.
every layer has 'sublayers' you can lock, edit and/or delete.
Anyway, >I'm looking to become somewhat proficient with this, so any >advice you might have on how to learn my way around it would >be appreciated.
get the illustrator quickstart book..or if you copped it 'legally' all you need to know is in the instruction manual. shit's pretty detailed.
2. "I feel you about the instructions..." In response to Reply # 1
I can learn the functions of the program pretty quick but to be able to put into practice what I learn will likely be a differnet story. Like in Photoshop, for example, I learned how to adjust the levels a looong time before I knew what I could do with that, see what I'm sayin? I am thinkin' bout pickin' up some sort of in depth book though.
5. "i thought i KNEW illustr like 6 month after i used it first" In response to Reply # 0
its been 11 years since then and i still learn new shit every day. and i use it every day for tons of different work. Same with Photoshop. ESPECIALLY photoshop. That program is a beast. I was blown away when this one cat who designs color schemes for xerox showed me some CRAZY math-type shit in photoshop. Some serious color matching (im not talking about basic Pantone library shit either, he opened up some graphs that blew my mind) Believe it or not, it came in handy like 2 months ago, about 6 years since he showed me. read the manuals for both programs, study that shit, cause you can do alot more than you think
6. "RE: Illustrator, how long did it take?" In response to Reply # 0
I took a class on Photoshop and Illustrator and even by the end of the semester I felt like I didn't know those programs nearly as well as I should. I was doing comics for the newspaper using Illustrator and was constantly running into blocks. It all woulda been so much easier if I had drawn stuff by hand, scanned it and then used the software to refine, but our lab was a hole.
9. "RE: stupid question: what does Illustrator do that Photoshop doesn't?" In response to Reply # 7
I've only been using it for a couple days now, and I can tell you that once I started feeling comfortable with it, I could do the same things I could in photoshop, but alot faster. After running a few tutorials, I can do the same things faster and add cooler effects, use different tools, do better color fading/blending. And the main thing that I was always interested in illustrator over photoshop is still the kicker: When I scan in a drawing into photoshop, I can't make it bigger without pixelating it. Since illustrator is all vector based, I can enlarge (not just zoom in on) whatever I want and and it is still crisp and clean. Makes doing tiny details pretty slick.
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