What do XaraX, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Flash, CorelDraw and After Effects have in common? The pen tool!

When I teach graphics classes, I find this is the tool which frightens students the most. In the past, I've been of little help. I've quickly demoed the tool, and I've mumbled something like "you'll just need to practice this one until you get it." From what my students tell me, other teachers do pretty much the same thing.

So many people give up on the pen tool. And while it's possible to do interesting work in Xara without touching it, for some apps, like After Effects, it's vital! And surely even in Xara, most people would benefit by learning to use it.

So I'm no longer content to skip over this tool. I'm trying to develop a pen-tool tutorial. You can view a rough draft of part one here:

http://www.grumblebee.com/bezier/pen.gif

I'm posting this, because I'd love some suggestions. When you first leaned to use the pen, what made the lightbulb go on for you?

If you struggle with the pen, what is your biggest hang up?

Have you ever taught anyone to use the pen? What method did you use and how effective was it? Did you use any clever analogies?

Note: I know one can draw beziers in Xara with the shape-editor tool instead of the pen (perhaps this is even the best way to draw curves in Xara), but I want to stick with the pen tool, because it's a standard. I've found that once I learn how to use it in one app, it's pretty easy to modify the same steps slightly to get it to work in another app.

Marcus Geduld
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