So Very Dark

Ugh.

I’ve been working on homework for my new Typography class.

First of all, I had been hoping to get the same teacher for Advanced Type as I had for Beginning Type — I liked her, plus, with new teacher, you don’t know what their expectations are.  Not to mention the fact that, despite the fact that this quarter’s teacher didn’t have all of us in her class previously, she expects us all to know what she taught the way she taught it.  So I feel like I’m on somewhat unsteady ground with this teacher…I don’t know what she’s expecting and some of the terminology she uses is somewhat foreign to me.

Second, we are doing most of our work digitally this quarter, including the first two projects…which I am FINE with.  The problem is, we are using Adobe Illustrator, which I am not really familiar with at all.

Now I KNOW that Illustrator is a great and very versatile program…but I ALSO know that it is a program that can be very challenging to learn.  Not just something that you can pick up on the fly.  The teacher gave us a brief tutorial of some basic stuff in class last week, but despite this also being an Adobe product, there are so many aspects and functions that are so very different from Photoshop that pretty much everything I try to do beyond the most basic covered-in-class stuff is ultimately unsuccessful.

Example:

In Photoshop, what you do on one layer doesn’t effect other layers.  Apparently, not the case in Illustrator?

Not to mention, where the hell do you go to flatten layers?  Can you even DO so?  I would assume you can, but how?

I am tempted to just scoot my homework over to Photoshop and work on more familiar turf, but I feel like that would be giving up.  On the other hand, I feel that I’m at a pretty heavy disadvantage in comparison to the students that have a) had this teacher before and b) have used Illustrator in the past.

Sorry for all the whining.  It’s just…I guess…this is a typography class, and I should be able to focus on that aspect…not on having to figure out how to make an unfamiliar program work.  I want to learn Adobe Illustrator.  I hear it’s a great tool and very useful.  Many people who learn to use it never go back and use of the program is a necessity in the Graphic Design industry.  But I would like to learn to use it in a class that teaches ILLUSTRATOR.  Not a class where I’m supposed to be learning Typography and have to put out an inferior product because of my lack of familiarity with the program my teacher favors.  Between this and math class, this may add up to be a very frustrating quarter.  Oh well, at least it’s just a couple months.

Back to the homework-board.

*EDIT

Well, I finished my homework, but I really feel like I did a sub-par, underachieving job, which is so not me.  I just wanted to choose something and get it done, rather than attempting something above and beyond and then not being able to figure out how to make it work.  Oh well.  We’ll see how it goes.    Stupid Illustrator.

Choo Choo Bear is the hairless, boneless cat from the web comic ‘Something Positive‘ (if you haven’t read it, you should.  It’s awesome)…due to his boneless nature, he is very…well, Choo Choo has been compared to silly putty and also engulfed limbs and other pets.

  <–the origin of Choo Choo Bear.

Well, now there’s this–

Choo Choo Bear corset:

Yeah.  I need that.