Teaching yourself Illustrator?

[NuT]

I've been wanting to learn Adobe's Illustrator for a while, but am unable to afford any professional classes.

I checked out several Illustrator tutorials at a local bookstore but they all looked pretty advanced, geared more for the intermediate and advanced users.

I was wondering if anyone had an suggestions for someone who's learning Illustrator for the first time.

 

[DRxAndy]

are you familiar with photoshop? because the learning curve from adobe products makes it definately easier to learn.
Illustrator is a bit more advanced than photoshop, if you ask me.

i suggest one of the visual quick start books, they always tend to present the information well, and have lots of pictures.. They've got loads of information in them.

I learned illustrator cause i'm a graphic design student, but we were supposed to be using the visual quickstart books, but i hate learning from a book.

 

[aaronlidman]

^ i'd have to agree, my instructor taught us illustrator first and I'm so glad i learned it that way, after illustrator photoshop was cake. As for learning it on your own, try reading some step by step tutorials or even books. I'm very glad i was actually taught by an instructor, she might not have been great, or even good for that matter, but it made things so much easier.

 

[rob2000]

i had a book, but i think illustrator was much easier than photoshop. i got the adobe classroom in a book from school. the 14 day illustrator trial has some tuts built into it.


www.pixel2life.com has a bunch of illustrator tuts as well as photoshop ones.

if you have a pc show near you can find a $10 cd with tuts.

EDIT: Suggestion removed. Let's not go there, okay? - Lethal

the library might have a book. but if your really struggling. id look to see if they made a Dummies version for illustrator. Those books sell well for a reason. while most are basic in some of what they have. some are really good at getting you into the thick of the program and comfortable with it.

i did this in illustrator took awhile.

heres on from in the process. all those red dots are clicks.

 

[Absentee]

using illustrator is easy.

getting good with it isn't (that tank is good BTW, but your graphic design skills need a bit of work no offense)

http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modListing.asp?pid=8
^Best site for learning programs EVAR!

 

[gadnium]

You have to take into consideration the purpose of each package. This is where I had the biggest problem differientiating the two. Photoshop is for Pixel based graphics and Illustrator is for Vector based graphics. I also apply this: using Illustrator for print work and PS for web work. But say you are working with flash then you will use a combination of the two (although it was intended for optimizing vectors for the web).

But then you can get into reasons why you would use one piece of work from Illustrator to PS, vice versa. Such as tracing a company logo in Illustrator for a webpage. They give you a letter head with the logo, you scan it. Then trace or auto-trace in Illustrator. Then you can import it into a PS document at any size and apply effects/styles. Or say a picture you took with a digital camera. You clean it up in Photoshop, scale it appropriately for your intended application in Illustrator. Then say create a birthday card in Illustrator and import you your picture into it.

Let's say for an example the Tiger Ace Work above. The backgrounds in the two boxes are pixel based so they were edited in PS before getting into Illustator. Then the rest of the stuff was created in Illustrator. As for that tank (if it was in the game), I would have imported the model to 3D Studio Max and rendered with Swift 3D (vector rendering engine). Then go in and hand edit the fine details. Or you could take a picture of a tank cut out its backround and auto-trace the pixel image (you can mess with the auto-trace setting in the preferences) until it got as detailed as you want it.

Illustrator is alot simpler than you probably think it is... Everything is based on spline editing. So learn how to apply add/subtract splines and all the other tools in the spline modifier toolbox. I don't have Illustrator installed atm.

Steer clear from styles and all that crap when you start out, it just complicates things. Do the simple tutorials Illustrator comes with, you will learn alot just from them.

And use the grid (or guides) to its fullest, in PS your spoiled with pixels that are square. You can mangle a line's straightness in Illustrator if its off 1/8 of an inch.

Here's a T-Shirt I designed for a Nine Inch Nails contest:

NIN T-Shirt (its a gif just for example purposes)

To get these printed they would take the vector file and print it at the highest dpi for a screen printing.

Here's the source file:

NIN Source File (I think this is the matching file)

Everything here is made up of splines and simple spline primitives (square or circle). I used a bitmap image off the net to trace the nail. Then everything else is text or simple items, such as the ruler (made of primitives). I aligned everything via the grid.

Note:

Make sure your read the manual about layers and object order. This can be confusing at first. I use layers for grouping items and just use object order like layers in PS.

send to back, send to front, move up, move down...

Then I used the 3D modeling plugin that comes with CS, a video tutorial is on the second CD. I mapped everything to their corresponding side (top, left, front).

It may look complicated but its really simple when you get down to it, creativity is what makes something good come out of Illustrator.

Note:

The auto-trace tool is useless from what I hear in CS but supposedly better in CS2. I haven't used either so I have no personal opinion on them. My cousin is a graphic designer (98% print work) and prefers CorelDraw for this feature and other things. So that might be a easier place to start. Again I haven't used CorelDraw since junior year in HS (1997).

If I ever get my website together I should write some Illustrator tutorials. Because there really isn't that many on the web, especially explaing the simple things.

 

[gadnium]

using illustrator is easy.

getting good with it isn't (that tank is good BTW, but your graphic design skills need a bit of work no offense)

http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modListing.asp?pid=8
^Best site for learning programs EVAR!

The Real Barrier To Illustrator?
Is Illustrator getting a bad rap because of a handful of Illustrator snobs? Everyone, at some point, has run across them…Illustrator elitist who treat non-Illustrator users (or n00b users) like crap but should that actually be scaring people away from Illustrator?

 

[mikeblas]

Everybody learns differently, but I'm with gadnium -- I don't think showing off a difficult drawing and calling it "easy" helps anyone.

For my input, I think one of the most important things to do when learning something new is to start easy. You're not going to learn C++ by following someone who has written a complete spredsheet program and having them tell you it was easy; you'll need to start with programs that print "hello world" or show you the first 100 prime numbers.

For Illustrator, i'd forget about compositing with Photoshop and all that stuff. Just start doing simple easy graphics. I made a Biohazard logo, for instance, based on a tutorial I found on the Internet. Make little labels and signs to get used to the text tools. Learn to do fades; pick two colors and fade from one to the other in a few different ways inside different shapes and objects.

I think another easy thing to do is learn to recreate simple logos. Can you make a NewEgg logo, with the three eggs and some text? A Westinghouse circle-W logo? An HP logo, with the letters sticking out of the circle? And so on -- even if it doesn't look exactly the same as the real logo, learn how to manipulate the invovled shapes to get different looks.

I got the Visual QuickStart guide for Illustrator and Photoshop when I bought the Creative Suite, and I've foun them very helpful. The Illustrator book is very easy to work through, and you'll learn a lot. It's also a decent reference if you want to go back and find how to do something step-by-step you forgot.

Start simple and go at your own pace.

 

[Absentee]

The Real Barrier To Illustrator?
Is Illustrator getting a bad rap because of a handful of Illustrator snobs? Everyone, at some point, has run across them…Illustrator elitist who treat non-Illustrator users (or n00b users) like crap but should that actually be scaring people away from Illustrator?

So I'm an "elitist" who's trying to scare him away because i made a statement about Illustrator being EASY to learn, but hard to get very good with....ok bud


The autotrace tool in CS is junk...best use? tracing VERY simple (1-2, maybe 3 color raster images). The "Live Trace" tool in CS2 is amazing.....decent(sometimes good) quality photos in vector format...amazes me....


If I may make a personal suggestion: (dunno if i can since I'm a "Illustrator elitist")

MASTER the Layer and Pathfinder palettes once you get the basics down. It makes a huge difference while working if you have a clean layers palette.