Here I was, sitting in my Illustrator class, feeling like 7 shades of idiot because i was just not getting what was going on. Pat (instructor) starts walking around the room checking out how we are doing, making comments, and then he gets to me....
Inst: So how's it coming
Me: (wailing) I don't get any of this!
Inst: What don't you get?
Me: Everything...I did the assignments but I have no idea how I got the results I did and I am not even sure this is what you are looking for.
Inst: (looking at work) You did this right....it looks good. But have you tried this? (reaches for graphic pen and tries something...gets wrong result) What?
Me: (sighing) The program doesn't always work right...my last instructor told me to uninstall and then reinstall everything but I haven't done it yet.
Inst: THAT shouldn't have happened! Why isn't this working?
I admit I was feeling a lot better that it wasn't just me having issues with this @)(#&_@#$)* program
Inst: Well let me show you a couple of things here...move this there and hit this command key (etc etc as he gives me a mini tutorial on the joys of live trace)
I admit I felt a lot lot LOT better as several other students crowded around to see what he was showing me because, as they admitted, they didn't understand this either and hadn't wanted to say anything.
Why is it that we clam up when we should really just raise our hands, open our mouths and admit, "look, I really don't get this". No, we'd rather sit there in class, feeling stupid and about to burst into tears because EVERYONE else must be smarter than you because they aren't asking dumb questions (yes, I felt like crying in class last night...must be something hormonal....) My admitting I didn't understand, and my instructor coming over to help me opened up Illustrator to me. Now I admit, I still have no idea what most of those icons mean or would do if I were to start playing with them, but I have a much better idea of how to manipulate the small corner of Illustrator that I was playing in last night. I am in school to learn, I am paying for the privilege of what these instructors can impart to me, the classes are deliberately kept small for more one-on-one collaboration. I am sooooooo going to open my mouth from now on.
Sitting in class I managed a small piece of brilliance last night though. Our challenge was to create a logo using our name or initials. Well I pulled together some lame little thing on my laptop and was fussing around when the instructor mentioned the most amazing logo he'd seen was a gal took an oval with a line in it and, using a couple of breaks in the oval, managed to make the initials ANJ appear. Well I wasn't going to sit still for that....I opened up another document, started fiddling around, and came up with a logo that I plan to use for Etsy....I was debating on my shop name and I think this will work great. Since its not in a compatable format to include here let me just say its a turquoise rectangle with an old-fashioned 52 at one end in white. Brilliant. My instructor looked at it for a moment, the wheels turning in his mind and then he started laughing...in between laughs he coughed out "you HAVE to save THAT!"
Note: for those of you who are not familiar with my initials....they are S.Z..... 5.2....get it???? So yup, I do believe my Etsy shop will be called "fifty-two".....
4 comments:
Good for you! I know I felt the same in one of my math courses, I felt so stupid, and then on the day before the final before the teacher came in, literally everyone in the class was complaining that she didn't teach us anything and that none of them knew what she was talking about!
Congrats on learning though, I can't figure out how to use Illustrator to save my life! They don't offer that sort of thing here at my school, but dang I wish they did! I spent all day yesterday trying to teach myself Flash so I could make flash cartoons and I just about burst into tears and ended up with a migraine! :P
Wow, you really hit it there! My class does the same thing...I'll get a few blank stares but not much else. Finally, one student raised her hand and said, "I really don't get it." After I'd shared an experience similar to yours from when I'd gone to the 'Y.'
Needless to say, it's good that there are people out there who know when they don't know and aren't afraid to make the much-dreaded statement, "I don't get it."
I'd love to see your logo...maybe you'll have to design one for me too.
Miya.... according to my instructor you'd be better off to learn Illustrator for your web comic rather than do everything in Photoshop...it comes down to vector and raster graphics and Illustrator is designed specifically for, gee, illustrators. Our "textbook" might be available at your library...its "Illustrator CS3, Visual Quickstart Guide by Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas. Its not bad...according to the instructor though most of the icons in Illustrator and Photoshop are the same so if you know one then the other should be that much easier to learn. I am looking forward to learning Flash but that class won't be for a couple more months.
Jase,
My logo freaking rocks....at least I think so, but then I am in on the joke...I do have a logo class coming up sometime in the future where we learn components of logo design....whee....oh, and I am all but bouncing up and down because they announced Tuesday that they are opening up a Photoshop group that meets every other saturday for an hour and a half to learn photoshop! And for me its freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! My advisor said the class is too short and there is too much to learn with photoshop to really not offer something more in-depth. Its going to be open to the public but its like $25 a class for the public to attend.....I'll teach you on the side what I learn in there......
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