A Little lady

[Albacore]

Found this drawing as a AI tutorial and as work demands that I have good skills AI so did it in AI all it is is gradients and Trans. with a big blend for the fan. Took me 2 hours with most of the shapes drawn for me.

Thought I would do it in Xara but I had to start from scratch as it did not export well even after stripping out some all of the effects. After 2 and a bit hours with a few interuptions here is the finished article. One negative point from the experiment was that Xara made a mess of the blend of the fan but it was easily sorted by using a conical fill.

Any crit would be welcome on using both software as it is not my drawing.

Had to place Xrara Jpeg into AI so it will be a bit more compressed, unfair

[John Rayner]

Hey Albacore, Lets see both drawings side by side... The AI and the X1. would be interesteing to see how they both compare.

[TimS]

Beautiful job, I like it very much. I agree with John, it would be interesting to see both images side by side. Not to bash AI, just to see how they differ if at all.
tim

[Albacore]

Well now you can see both drawings and I would not say this is a AI v Xara competition.

With working with AI at work nearly 90% of the time I have mastered the "Pen Tool", although it has takem about 6 months (its a age problem).

As I stated in the initial piece, this is not my drawing but it has taken from a Tut. in AI to encourage people to use the Trans., Grad., and Blend tool. All of the shapes in the drawing was there, with you only having to do the Grads. ect. and the Dragon on the fan. The tut. also asked you to develop the earings as a symbol and use this toool to finish off the earings. It was a straight forward tut. with no surprizes with the only problem that it took me 2hours to complete. The blend on the fan was done individually working from left to right, not done with one instruction. I tried the same in Xara but it left a horrible blend which I tried many workarounds to get ris of. Eventually I decided that the fan could easily be done with a "conical fill". If I had spent more time on the fill I could have acieved the copy as shown in the AI version but I was quite pleased with the result I achieved.

The time spent on the Xara ver. was about the same with interuptions amd I still feel more at ease using this programme. Having used Xara for about three and a half years and AI for just over one year I like both programmes and at work I find that AI has very consistent colour when compared to Xara, but please do not ask me why as I just try and get on with my work.

The place that I work in is just a simple "Print shop" and they use AI for everthing. In my freelanse work I use many programmes like most folk here but I am getting more convinsed that InDesign is a programme that I am using more and more even to do simple jobs like Biz. cards from start to finish.

Having respoded to John's request I still prefer to do the complicated drawings in Xara and my web work is always done in Xara and then exported to Image Ready or Flash. As everyone knows in this forum Xara is so quick, so easy to edit your drawings in, and it is so reliable, many bitmap effects that no other programme can entertain. To use a frequent expression that Jorn Rayner uses it is K.I.S.S of the vector drawing programmes.

[John Rayner]

Hi Albacore,

I think you made the fan harder than it needed to be. I just dropped simular color onto a linear fill then changed it to a conical fill. 10 Minutes for the whole thing, (spent more time on my sticks... )