Page eight; boring but necessary. This page is quite different from the others in one very important way; I drew the elements using a program other than Illustrator. Due to a friend's email (hi, Vince!) I checked out a new vector based drawing program called Affinity Designer. I refuse to move onto the Adobe subscription platform for their software as it's so much more expensive over time than how they used to do business. Also, my version of Illustrator CS5 does everything I need it to do. I'm going to be really unhappy when the day comes that it's no longer supported. The new software look good, so I downloaded it and gave it a try.
In general, I like the way it works. The pen tool took a little getting used to but, in its way, was clearer in use than that of AI. Some of the keyboard commands I use without thought (most notably the 'never appears anywhere else' shift-command-a) were not the same, which is to be expected. I know there will be some training when moving to any other program and that's ok. The major feature missing from AD that I rely on is the live trace feature. I use this when I'm using inked drawings of any kind and it's central to the way I work. Looking on their forums I see I'm not totally alone though it's a feature they only want to add when they have a version that's better than what's already on the market. Well, ok, but something would be a lot better than nothing.
Deciding to take the plunge, I decided the next page would be done in AD. Without a lot of problems, I drew all the elements pretty much the way I do in AI until I got to the final steps. One of the features I use constantly, no matter what kind of style I'm working in is the command-7 step which basically allows me to use an overlapping shape as a mask to slice away extra details. This is most notable in the current comic in the word balloons where the detail of the background is neatly cut into the outline of said balloon. There was no way to do this in AD, or at least I could not find one. Crippled at this point, I had to move back to AI. The one nice feature was that I was able to select and copy the elements I'd already drawn in AD and simply paste them directly into new layers in AI. From there, I used my usual process to finish the page.
While AD is really not able to replace AI for me yet, it's a strong contender and I hope its programmer's will continue to develop it. Adobe needs someone to offer them competition. I haven't heard of one person who likes the new subscription model. Since it's a tool I rely on day to day, I'm very interested in how they continue and how others might come up to bat. Here's hoping.
2 comments:
It looks impressive, just as good as illustrator, you would never know it wasn't. I would say intriguing more than dull. If they do well there is good reason the features you want be added sooner than later. I use some pretty obscure photoshop features especially with retouching work and if inswitch to their upcoming paint program I bet I will be finding work around a as well. I did some searching on stand alone tracing software....some are free and some are really expensive! Some even have you subscribing by month or charging 12$ an image! Is the world insane ?! It's a minor feature included in illustrator, flash and others and goes back to freehand days!
Well, I didn't ask much of AD in this case, just the line tool and the shape tool. All the editing I had to do in AI. I was hoping to do the whole thing. Kind of surprised that the path tools aren't all there but at a fraction of the price, I can't really complain. For the time being, I'll stick with AI which I just heard is beta-testing iPad versions. As for the paid versions of live trace, hell no!!
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