Week 3 Review

Check out Illustratorworld.com when you get a chance.

I also stumbled across what looks like a great drawing weblog. Check out Drawn. I really liked Chris Wahl's drawing video, but there is a ton of other content for those artistically inclined peopel out there!


The First Project was due today. Label a FOLDER with your name and the class number, put your work in that folder and drop that folder in my Drop Box.


Last week we worked with the PathFinder palette. This week we'll check out the Flare tool. Remember that there are several menu options with HIDDEN options behind them. So check those pullouts and see what other tools Illustrator has to offer.

Week 2 review

We covered another chapter in the book. yahoo!

We also discussed:

• good file naming habits
• good file/folder path issues (really project setup)
• using keyboard shortcuts as much as possible
• thinking in "object-oriented" terms - in Illustrator this is using Layers!
• using a tablet to help in your drawing.

We reviewed the Pathfinder tool and we looked briefly at using Illustrator to generate SVG drawings.

Wacom tablet and SketchUp

Using a tablet for computer based drawing is pretty much an industry standard thing and has been for the last several years. Wacom is the industry giant in this area. You can buy their tablets just about anywhere including Ebay, Overstock.com and CompUSA. If you are serious about your graphic/design/artistic pursuits you should be using a table. You'll find modeling, animation, and general computer use to be a bit easier with a tablet.


Sketchup is a 3D program used primarily by architects, landscapers, and the visualization crowd. It was recently purchased by Google. There is now a FREE verison of SketchUp available for general use. I highly recommend downloading a copy of this neat little app and creating something with it. Well worth at least taking a look at and most likely even more!

MMI Summer 2006 Illustrator CS2 - week 1 summary

Points to ponder for week 1:

• Illustrator CS2 is a vector app NOT raster like Pshop is
• Illustrator plays nicely in the CMYK color space. It knows what RGB is as well. DO YOU know what other color spaces are out there?
• jpg images do not have a transparent background
• If you want a transparent background, be sure and work with GIF and PNG formats.
• Lossy formats "throw away" information. this is aprt of the compression codec that lossy formats use like jpg, mpg, etc.
  
• Lossless formats save ALL image information. Nothing is thrown away, in part because usually there is no compression involved in a lossless format. Examples include psd, ai, and tif. Most working file formats are lossless.

Class issues -

• There are four projects in this class that I will assign, and two that you can come up with on your own. Each project should be either placed in a folder and dropped on my drop box OR printed out. We'll discuss project output in class.
  
• PROJECT 1 - due at the end of class for week 3 - create a marketing package for your business. This includes at a minimum: a logo, a brochure, a business card, a postcard, and letterhead.
• PROJECT 2 - due at the end of class week 6 - using JUST Illustrator create a character of your choosing. Pretty wide open here. Enjoy.
  
• PROJECT 3 - this is one of your own choosing due at end of the midterm week 8.
• PROJECT 4 - due at the end of week 9 - this is a project that emphasizes typography. Again wide open. Consult with me if you are uncertain what to do. Think about the different fonts and how people choose to use them. Think about serif, sans serif, leading, kerning, making your own font, how fonts have been used through history, usability issues, etc.
• PROJECT 5 - due at the end of week 12 - another one on your own. Develop an Illustrator-centric concept, write it up, we can talk about it real quick, hopefully I approve it and you are on your way.
• PROJECT 6 - due at the end of the week 15 class - this is the week of the final as well. The project is simply tracing a person. Here as an example, is a tutorial on Tracing people using Illustrator and a photo. There are many other good tutorials out there, including this one, which does a good job working through the gradient mesh tool. Below are links to three images you can choose from for this project. If you have a fourth image that you would like to use show me first.
  
  Here is the first option.
  
  Here is the second option.
  
  Here is the third option