Need assistance from Illustrator Experts

[Extreme8]

I'm working on my CP and teaching myself Illustrator as I go along. I've nailed most of the objects in the layout (a blatant ripoff of Motorfishes artwork) but I'm having trouble with the shapes that are a composite of lines & curves. You can see attachment for examples. The jpg's look pretty much OK but at full size it's obvious in most places where I've attempted to join 2 shapes or reshape curves.
 
Can someone give me a few tips on what tools or techniques I should be using to get these shapes to look right.

[GreenKnight37]

Well first off (As I myself learned), don't try to join two different shapes.  Keep it as one single shape.

If its a single vector, all of the lines will be smooth and flow into one another.  You won't have to deal with getting two different set of vectors lined up neatly.

You can draw straight lines with a vector, Frosty's tutorial goes into it a bit.  I don't remember the key off the top of my head that does it, as I usually just drag the little guidelines back to the main point until it becomes a straight line. 

Someone else probably has better advice then me, so I'll leave it at that.  But just keep messing around with the program.  It wasn't until I was 90% finished with my Megaman vector that I really got the feel for the program.  Its one of those things that just takes a bit of practice. 

[Extreme8]

Thanks for responding GK. I remember watching your progress on Megaman. You seemed to catch on to this vector stuff in a hurry.

I ran through Frosty's tutorial, that's the only way I managed to get this far along. As I said, the rest of the panel actuall looks pretty good, but these odd shapes are knocking me for a loop.
I realized early on that joining shapes wasn't the way to go, but when your only tool is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail.
Hopefully someone will come along and explain how it should be done.

[questionallthings]

Well it's actually quite simple (only if I have read your post right). Before I give an answer I need to make sure of something. Are you trying to join two lines together at the ends? Or two complete shapes?

If it's two lines all you have to do is use the white arrow key to highlight the two ends, then right click on one of them, then select join. It will ask you if you want to join them as corner or smooth. Corner will make it a literal corner and smooth will obviously give it a smooth transition. (now this is if it's two straight lines).

If we add a curve into the equation the corner and smooth join tool actually work very similar but the smooth tool can alter the curve slightly so you might want to watch out for that.

Now joining two complete shapes is something that I haven't done in a while so I'll have to recall how to do that (if I can recall at all).

[Extreme8]

To clarify:
What I had been trying to do was join a shape (circle) to a straight line. I was creating the radius of the corner curves with an appropriate sized circle, cutting out what I didn't need then joining a straight line to the remainder. Elegant, huh?

I know there has to be a better way of doing it but my experience with Illustrator is limited to the tools included in Frosty's tutorial and what I've been able to learn by experimenting.

I'll try the join command and see if I can get it to behave the way I need it to.
The large curve on the left is of most concern because, if you notice, it's asymmetrical.

Thanks,
Keep the ideas coming!

[Crowquill]

While probably not the most elegant way to do it, it definitely works. I've used this quite a few times myself, especially for very geometric shapes such as custom lettering. Here's a quick rundown of how I would do it for making a fairly simple...um...test track.

Create Circle. Use scissor tool on top and bottom points to seperate into semi-circles (fig. 1). With the black arrow, shift-drag one side away from the other. Holding down shift constrains the movement as you move it away. Another way would be to move it and then use the align palette to

[questionallthings]

I agree with Crowquill. The pen tool is a beauty when it comes to line art. I know there is also a way to take a rastered object and select the border for easier lining but man I can't remember it to save myself.