So how hard is it to learn Adobe Illustrator?

[javeryh]

I guess this is a loaded question and probably impossible to answer... I just want to be able to design a marquee or side art or something in the typical cartoony style so nothing even remotely resembling photo-realism.  I envision plotting the outline so it prints to the proper size, taking an image from google and vectorizing it (like through vectormagic or some other similar site) and then adding some fonts on top.  Are there any good (free) tutorials out there?  I've never used any kind of drawing program before like Photoshop or anything like that but I suppose I can learn...

For example, how would I go about designing an original overlay for a Ms. Pac shaped cocktail cabinet?   

[05SRT4]

Ive never used Illustrator before only Photoshop. Once you learn all the little tricks to make things work its not that bad I only use maybe 3% of what Photoshop can do. I'm sure there are some peeps here that can give some advice.

[SammyWI]

Inkscape is a free open source alternative to AI.  It does have some pretty good basic tutorial / help sections available.  There are also quite a lot of AI tutorials on the web.  Learning enough to put together my cab art was not too bad overall.  But I did only use vector art that was done by others that I just manipulated. 

Vectorizing art seems doable but takes time and patience.  I tried Vectormagic and had poor   results.

[Well Fed Games]

I did the same thing for my "30th anniversary" Pac Cab, and I can say there is a decent learning curve to IL, even if you are familiar with Photoshop like I was. I have used some of the online vectoring tools, but I found that the time cleaning it up vs. vectorizing the characters myself was about the same, so I eventually stopped using them for the most part. I watched a lot of Youtube videos on IL, there are some good ones out there, and Smashing Magazine has some good tutorial roundups (like http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/05/illustrator-tutorials-best-of/). Eventually I was able to vectorize existing art (for an upcoming project I will be making some original vector art, so we will see how that goes  ).

As far as the sizing, the cocktail top file here: http://vectorlib.free.fr/MsPacMan/ should be a good starting template (I would measure your real-life cabinet to make sure it is the right size though). Protip: one of the alt tools for the eyedropper tool in IL is  the measure tool, I used that like crazy to make things match up.

[yotsuya]

There IS a learning curve, and at first I couldn't wrap my head around it, but now I love using Illustrator. It comes so natural to me now. Look for tutorials online, both walkthoughs and videos.

Google Sketchup is the program giving me fits now.

[05SRT4]

Google Sketchup is the program giving me fits now.

Yeah Sketchup took me a min to figure out to. but its a fun program to play around with.

[knohbody]

Illustrator can be incredibly easy or incredibly frustrating.
Probably the hardest thing to learn is making curves with the pen tool. Bezier curves don't seem to work like most people think. You will definitely need the pen tool if you're planning on vectorizing anything yourself.
What I would start out with is pen tool tutorials, then on to the pathfinder and align pallet tutorials. These are the tools I find most helpful.
Here's a post listing 5 pen tutorials:
http://www.illustratortips.com/index.php/Instruction/Beginner-Tips/5-essential-illustrator-pen-tool-tutorials.html
Here's a decent overview of the pathfinder pallet:
http://www.bittbox.com/illustrator/pathfinder-explained
The align pallet is fairly easy to figure out, however, i found this post after using illustrator for years and not being able to align objects to each other. It's quite useful.
http://www.vectordiary.com/tips-and-tricks/aligning-to-objects/

[javeryh]

Thanks for all the links guys!  I'm a total noob when it comes to this stuff but I have a good eye for design.  The extent of my knowledge is using MS Paint so there is probably a steep learning curve ahead of me...

[05SRT4]

Just keep at it and you'll learn what you need. Don't feel dumb about asking questions either. There is a ton of knowledge floating around here.

[Pixelhugger]

Just remember it is more a drafting and line art program than a paint program. So the photoreal and shaded examples of what people do with it are approached from a technical drawing perspective more than a painting technique as in Photoshop. Hopefully keeping that in mind will reduce frustration. Frosty's "vectorial" was hugely helpful to me when I was learning.

[Blanka]

Problem with Illustrator is that it never was, and still is NOT A GOOD PROGRAM. As long as it exists, it was merely sold because it was almost free with the purchase of Photoshop. Take the 5 different pointer tools for example. Horrible. Until the latest 5.5, masking had been totally cumbersome. Selecting of masked items: hell.
Its competitor, Aldus Freehand, and later Macromedia Freehand, was much more how a Vector program should work. The 10 year old Freehand 10 version for example, is still capable of most stuff InDesign and Illustrator 5.5 offer together today! At just 38 megabytes for the whole program folder, 9 Mb just the app alone! Grab it of TPB and give it a shot. It will FLY on your 2010 PC. We can almost consider it abandonware today, you can't buy it new, so promoting downloading does not feel wrong in this case..

I only use Illustrator for 1 thing: it has excellent EPS, PDF and DWG conversion.

For really serious vectorizing, Freehand has a big edge: it allows very precise adjustment of grips, and you can change from pointy angle, to line-to-curve, and to spline corner with a very easy information tab. Also is it the only program that has round corners on rectangles that stay round with resizing.

[TopJimmyCooks]

. . . Also is it the only program that has round corners on rectangles that stay round with resizing.

This is something that came up with me recently while doing backgrounds for layouts.  It was super annoying in both CorelDraw (v9) and IL(v old).  As you say, neither can stretch a rectangle (that I could figure out) without distorting the fillets/round corners.  It seems like missing the point of vector drawing if you can select part of an object/nodes, etc. but can't transform just those nodes.

I was going to see about getting rid of all in favor of inkscape, but I will definitely check out Freehand, sounds good. 

I'm surprised at people having difficulty with Sketchup, it is 1/4 the complexity of a vector program.  I recommend their own tutorials on the Sketchup site if you are starting from scratch.  Biggest problem, drawing something imprecisely so you can't establish a plane.  Don't be afraid to undo or start over again.  Often, I do a model, don't like something about it or can't get a plane to close up easily due to a mistake i've further added on to, and I just redo it from the beginning.  First draw takes 15 minutes, perfect redraw once all the ideas are worked out and simplified, takes 3 minutes. 

[pgielen]

as mentioned you can use inctscape instead of illustrator its a free program to do vector art.
you can download it here http://inkscape.org/

its not to hard to use i don't work with this kind off programs and made this for my kid http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=81296.msg868227#msg868227
just cost a lot of time to do it