Need a crash course! 1

[GlennGould]

Hi,

I need to learn how to draw paths and shapes of moderate complexity in Illustrator, using whatever tools or plugIns are available. I only have 3 or 4 weeks to experiment with AI, maybe try out a few tutorials, etc. After that I need to get back to my motion graphics and videography projects.
Can anybody recommend any good websites for this?

I am reluctant to buy a 300 page book since I know I won't be able to read more than a small section of it.

GG

 

[YNOTU]

This may help:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=il...Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8

 

[rhyno2k]

Glenn,

Here is a nice collection of tutorials I found:

http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/tutorials/0411_illus_scan.html

This is a good set of links for "Photoshop-esque" tutes:

http://www.vecpix.com/tutorials/illustrator/

Good Luck.

 

[attrofy]

rhyno2k,

I am giving you a star for that post as that is the reason I came here. I have been a Corel Draw user since version 3, and recently acquired Illustrator CS2 with the bundle of the Production Studio. However, for the life me, I am not finding things *AT ALL* intuitve, and very frustrating in knowing what I want to do with the path, node (anchor point), etc, and spending 30 minutes reading through help files to figure out exactly how to do it.

Anyone else out there with experience switching from Corel Draw? Any tutorials or other tools that helped ease the transition? Specifically from Corel Draw? I am on the verge of requesting the money to purchase Corel since it is taking me obscenely long times to perform the simplest of functions in Illustrator. I encountered a similar problem with Photoshop, but by about version 5.5, managed to perserver through, and actualy found some of the tools more usefull then Corel (i.e. color correction and "webisizing" photos, the clone tool seems more functional in Photoshop, while Photpaints method of deplying it works a bit better). I found some similar attributes in Illustrator, but cant endure too much longer through this learning curve.

While I am here and posting, can someone give me a quick method for zooming in and out on an anchor point? Clicking the Magnifying glass, then holding alt, and clicking a dozen times, and recentering the click as I zoom out, then clicking the same dozen times and rezooming/recentering in without the ALT key is one of those non-intuitive things I am talking about. Surely I am missing something? Corel just uses the scroll wheel - same tool selected - out to see the big picture, scroll wheel back in for corrections. It only takes one hand, and the workflow is not interrupted to do something as elementary as looking at the whole image.

 

[MarcusStringer]

Hold down your Control+SpaceBar then draw a box around the area you want to zoom in on (this works with all Adobe Products) then to zoom out press control+Zero (this zoom out to fit the page in the window) or you could hold down the Control+Alt+SpaceBar then click a heap of times.



For mac users it's the Command key instead of Control key.

Marcus

http://www.midlandtypesetters.com.au

 

[acevans]

Oddly enough the scroll works with the ctrl key in Photoshop, hopefully in the future will also in Illustrator

the ctrl+(+ or -) zooms in without the mouse and using the space bar toggles the hand to move (works in Photoshop too)

 

[attrofy]

I found out while playing around with some things after posting this, that holding the ALT key while scrolling the mouse also zooms in and out (again, this may be a CS2 thing). ANyway, thanks again for the tutorials.

 

[piaff1]

I find the navigator pane ( same as in Photoshop ) very useful. Go to menu - Window - Navigator.