Really bad practice image posted for great justice!

Long story short, it was a pretty rushed job just trying to learn how to use the tools to accomplish something of the sort

Also I'm just bad at art but gotta practice xD

I learned two approaches to doing the fills.... not sure which I like better. Live Paint and Shape Creator tools

I like the blob brush for painting...

Since this drawing I've turned the smoothing up in hopes that my lines will end up better. Otherwise I just need steadier hands I suppose

Managing layers and sublayers can be confusing (sublayers is a new concept to me and I don't fully understand what becomes a sublayer when) but I think it will come down to practice

Overall I'm quite happy with Illustrator though

Now that I've played enough I suppose it might be time to watch some video tutorials (maybe Lynda) to figure out how pros actually do it as opposed to the way I've made up myself over the weekend.

@SpartanDonut cool, looks like you're getting a good grasp on it pretty quickly!

Yeah now I just need some artistic talent and I'll be set ;)

that costs extra

@SpartanDonut Just remember that everything in Illustrator becomes its own sublayer. Every object has a place in the picking... er... stacking order.

You can even add multiple strokes and fills to a single object, and even those will have an editable stacking order, within the actual object.

hey @Baka

Ai should be sponsored by SE, with so much stacking it does.

hey @JohnB

what's up?

just caught what would have been a devastating error...someone sent a mock-up for production that used stock art we hadn't paid for

the kicker: it still had the watermarking on it -_-

ouch! As long as it's a mock-up or a preview, that's fine, I do it alle the time. But for production...

and yeah, you sometimes see ads or the like with a watermark... :)

seems like you're awake, today.

I need to hang up warning signs: ALL ARTWORK MUST GO THROUGH ME BEFORE GOING TO PRINT

through you? ouch!

hehe

I know some artwork can be sharp, but...

'What happened to John?' 'Well, he asked to approve my flyer for that hardware store's axe campaign....'

How was your weekend?

tad stressful. We're buying our first house and the paperwork is driving me insane

I did do a lynda course by Von Glitschka yesterday, just to relax :)

Yours?

arg. Congrats though!

very easy going

that good. I know of some mods on this board who work just about every weekend

Seems everyone is awake this morning, I keep getting pelted with e-mails

@JohnB and thanks :)

was banging my head over the weekend trying to get Adobe Media Encoder to cooperate, no luck though :\

eh? was that the issue you had on Friday?

yeah, no amount of re-installation or trying different versions seems to have helped

I think some other program I have installed might be interfering, but I can't figure it out

nasty

hello

not a known bug? The Googles don't have anything?

Hey @Ryan, how're you?

hey Ryan

the googles have other people with the same problem but no one seems to have reported back with a working solution

eh, im decent. wondering why my life has gotten to this point as I watch my peers continuously amaze me. think I need to start taking more risks.

eh? thirty-ish blues?

nah I don't think thats it. More like complacency blues, or possibly intelligence blues.

ah, the other way around :)

One of my friends from high school just secured a 4.8 million dollar investment in his startup. Another friend from college is hiring his second employee. Another friend just left his job at IBM to be a lead at an architecture firm, the same friend I just learned is also insanely famous in SecondLife. Meanwhile I go home and don't do anything productive really.

I take it you spent the weekend hanging out with people your age you haven't seen for a while?

Don't forget that the grass is always greener

and... you don't know what the rest of their lives look like.

oh I'm not sad about my life, just wondering why I haven't done more. Wondering if I spend a little too much time not taking risks.

would taking those risks make you happier, you think?

some of them!

hehe :) 'Life is happening just outside of your comfort zone'

ah I've stepped outside my comfort zone a lot, just not as much since 2009 when I came back to the states

hm. I'm of the opinion that I don't like my life to be compared to some imaginary scale of success or 'making it'. But that's probably mostly because I'm European

I know my income and the risks I took are peanuts compared to what some of my peers did. But I stopped caring. I know some of those peers who are distincly unhappy because they're too scared to quit their dead-end well-paying jobs

nah I don't want you to misunderstand. I feel like I have made it. I love my job and what I do. I just wonder if I could be doing even more if not at work then in my free time

I was published at the age of 5 for my writing, I won a few design competitions in high school and college, now when I get out of work I sleep, eat, workout. I hide behind the fact my computer isn't great and I don't own a new camera anymore or any design software.

I've decided on a bunch of investments I want, but haven't done any of them either.

I just go home, eat, drink, sleep, workout lol I should probably be doing more

anyhow, thats how I am this morning :\

@Bakabaka In other news, I got the magazines delivered this morning with their media planner... It says they have been audited and have a circulation of over 22,000. Now I really have no idea whats going on

sry, I'm being nagged at over the phone. get back to you soon!

@Ryan I seriously don't see why that's a bad thing. If it keeps itching you, try and do something about it, but I wouldn't worry too much.

@Ryan eh? Maybe this sales lass has no idea whatsoever she's talking about?

lol maybe. gonna have to call her. It is a really nice publication so pretty sure its the one I'm going to select for us to advertise in.

@Ryan maybe they just need to stop outsourcing their sales phone desk to Rawalpindi.

lol sadly the woman is here in the states and I get the feeling has been with the company basically since it formed

still weird

Oh, I managed to actually win some rares, by the way :)

Nice! Which ones? Were you doing the new 2015 cards or Legacy?

2015. managed to pull Ajani and Avacyn

and went only 2-1 because of bad mulligan decisions

looking them up, dont know the new cards at all

seeing a bunch of ajani. Which one did you get?

Steadfast looks like it might be the only one in 2015

Ajani Steadfast. And Avacyn, Guardian Angel

that was the first time I ever managed to play a planeswalker in draft.

hmm whats the + - stuff mean?

those are the amounts of loyalty counters the PW gets when you activate the abilities

you can only activate one once a turn, as a sorcery

PWs are kind of another player: your opponent can attack them, and when their loyalty hits zero, they leave play

okay so is "4" the number of loyalty Ajani Steadfast starts with? Then you have to keep him alive a good while using the +1 ability until you have enough to use one of his other abilities? That the idea?

ayup!

(I haven't played since Urza I believe)

does the 4 also act as a 4/4 creature or anything? Or is it basically a creature that doesn't attack or block?

you can choose to 'burn' through the loyalty by using the -2 ability, but then you'll never have the chance to get to the ultimate

it's not a critter. It just sits there, looking awesome. All it can do besides its abilities is being attacked instead of you.

when you attack, you have to decide for each attacker wether it attacks the player or any of their PWs

the angel is a lot easier for me to understand lol

I can imagine :)

PWs are... confusing. They're mythic rare for a reason

that angel is pretty damn good for only 5 mana

uh yeah, creatures have gotten a bit of a boost since you last played

they want the game to be balanced between critters and spells --- back then everyone played mostly spells, because they were so much more powerful

excuse me just checked I played through Nemesis

ah, that's only a year later

i think I played longer than that but didn't buy any cards

Oh, there's been years I haven't bought cards.

I mean, crack is a cheaper addiction

ok, I declare this working day over. time to go buy the foodstuffs. See you 'round, and good luck with that sales lass!

later enjoy your evening

ty!