"Shallow learning curve?

Are you saying after reading all the above conversation, that any, if any problem, one might have with Adobe Illustrator, it must be that its to hard to learn?
Quick Display Lettering? What for like kids birthday parties, or something?

I find most of my needs as far as anything with type, are met by Quark, Photoshop, & Freehand. I don't think Illustrator can do anything they can't, please let me know if it can, I'd love to hear it. But don't worry about the learning curve."


First off, I'll say you are curiously DEFENSIVE and unnecessarily ARGUMENTATIVE in your posts. What you use is your choice. What others use is theirs. Rude and condescending comments will NOT make people agree with you.

Second, you need to stop putting words in people's mouths. I said Typestyler was VERY easy to use and that's EXACTLY what I meant. I didn't say ANY software was "difficult", nor did I say one software can do something another can't.

Maybe you should read posts more than once before responding, because you're reading words that are not there.

Hold on now, sounds like we are not communicating here.

I agree people will use whatever they want, and as stated I haven't used Illustrator in years and was asking to find out about its current abilities.

Sorry if I sounded rude didn't intend to.
Sorry if I misunderstood you.
I meant only to ask you to clarify, because I thought I was misunderstanding you.
I thought it was obvious by mys post I was soliciting opinions about Illustrator, because those that I have heard at work were dubious at best, if not sometimes unreliable.

I was not trying to get anyone too agree with me, and if it sounded like that I apologize. I have no current opinion about the thing thats the whole point.

We may both be guilty of assigning the wrong "tone of voice" to each others post, but please believe I didn't mean to be rude was jus asking for clarification.

Again I meant no disrespect, I guess I'm just typing as I would speak, not realizing how that might be interpreted, in the context of a written conversation, without facial expressions or tone of voice.

Again no disrespect was intended.

[This message has been edited by jollyman (edited 01-08-2002).]

interesting link: http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/freehand.html

As to Corel Essentials...I'd be strongly tempted to agree as to its usefulness and flexibility. I'll be able to give you a better answer on that front in another few months as I get better acquainted with the system.

Two amendments to that list of stuff left off of that version of their CorelDraw 9 I want to make: CorelTRACE is not included, nor is there much in the way of something called VBA. That last doesn't bother me much, though, as I'm not familiar enough with Visual Basic to know whether or not it really matters to a DIY cartoonist making his/her own comics.

------------------
Dwight Williams, Storyteller

I prefer a mac over a pc for work primarily because of colour management. But frankly if it gets the job done who gives a rats ass what computer you use? I have a PC sitting over there on the other desk running movies when I'm not using it for it's Parallel port...that damn cheap 11x17 scanner didn't come in scsi anymore by the time I wanted one.

Anyway, on my macs I use Photoshop for production work, Painter for artsy fartsy stuff, Illustrator for lettering, and InDesign for Layout. InDesign is the pro replacement for Pagemaker which is now officially the template wonder of the office lady who makes the news bulletins....you know, the one who comes in the art department asking for designers to make her some clip art of her poodle....if you have the free time. I've had no problems with it as long as I've used it. It exports PDFs, with fewer features than Acrobat, but I haven't needed them. And it makes Quark look like the obsolete piece it is.

However, most comics people don't really need quark or indesign or even pagemaker to print regular old serial comics. Most printers will be happy to take your 32 page masterpiece as a series of numbered illustrator docs and a printed out mock up....the mock up is usually required even if you do use a layout program.

eeep....if you like quark though, use it. But if you are on a mac you should see it on OS X about 2007. They just got around to adding OS 8 appearance function in the version that's coming out....(This is the result of a long winded rant about Quark's support policies, pricing and update schedules that had really nothing to do with the topic at hand...so I edited it out.)

Hey Savage-- What is this damn cheap 11x17 scanner that you speak of? I've been looking around for one, but it's surprising how hard it is to find one for less than $1000. Would you recommend it?

Thanks,

Drew

------------------
www.drewweing.com

The cheap scanner he refers to is likely the Mustek Plug-n-Scan 1200 A3 EP, a tabloid-sized scanner which was available for under $250 (sometimes as cheap as $100) for a long time. Mustek doesn't seem to have any on their site anymore, but there may still be some scattered about.

--Nat (who has a mean comics-making machine he wants to turn into a PC. Anyone have suggestion on how to make a 1983 Comismatic Pro5 ready for Windows XP? :b )

Yeah, what Nat said.

I got mine about a year and a half ago. but it took awhile searching the sites to see who had any even back then.

Ah. Thanks. Much appreciated.



------------------
Dwight Williams, Storyteller

I also searched high and low for many moons (ok... just one moon, but it was high and low) for a tabloid scanner under $1,000 and found zip, nada, nothing.

I finally bought a legal sized scanner that works fine for me.

But... if I were to come across a tabloid sized scanner for under $500, baby, I would snap that mutha up.

------------------
Shikata Ga Nai