Friday, 31 October 2014

Illustrator Induction Part 1




In our Illustrator induction, we did a little exercise which got us used to using the pen tool, which I found to be SO much better than the ones Photoshop. I use Photoshop all the time, constantly and almost feel cheated that the one in Illustrator is so much more impressive and I never even knew it existed. I remember using Illustrator in high school to scan a drawing in and change it into a vector painting, but I have never used the pen tool.

I found there to be multiple differences between Illustrator and Photoshop. for example, even to go back a step on a mac uses less buttons, which is a major bonus. As far as the pen tool goes, both uses the left click which makes an anchor, and pressing 'alt' puts it back to a straight line. But in terms of the programme, you can use the space outside of the canvas to draw on, which I think could come in really useful in the future. You can also have a number of art boards, so you can do two pieces of work at once which something Photoshop also doesn't have. 

Illustrator uses vectors, which are like mathematical equations. Unlike pixels, they do not lose their quality for example, when you zoom in it isn't blurred or pixilated. Therefore you don't have to worry about the size of the piece, the ratio is more important.

In the exercise we traced over the lines using the instructions given, to help our familiarity with the tool. We then got the chance to fill in these shapes and experiment with the stroke. I love playing with colours and seeing which combinations work well together, so I chose to fill my shapes in with gradients and then play with the stokes afterwards.

In conclusion, I feel like I learnt a lot and I really enjoyed doing the little exercise and found it to help me become familiar with the pen tool a lot more easier.

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