I spent the entirety of today (meaning from noon 'til one ante meridian) working on the second out of three digital vector illustrations for a government contractor for whom I'm on retainer. Thirteen hours! Of Adobe Illustrator. Augh. The memory hogging of AI is legendary, and I can't even run it after a while. My laptop has 4GB of RAM. Four. And it still chokes up on Illustrator more than thrice a day. Bloody astounding, the heaviness of that particular aspect of Creative Suite 3. Photoshop never does this. Acrobat, gods forbid. The few times I've had to use InDesign on my home computer, it's been fine. The only other CS program that's ever come close to this level of asshattery is Flash. WTF Adobe? AI is entirely MATH. There's not even pixel mapping.
I'm really not a pleased creature when it comes to AI, but that may be a combination of the above-stated and the fact that I'm just not as comfortable in AI as I am in any other program. I just don't think in vectors, and I have trouble conceptualizing what I need to do to achieve desired results, so I tend to wing it. Which probably takes longer than it should? I have no idea, really, since I've never sat and watched another designer or artist using it.
And in the end, 13 hours later, the files sent to my client... I'd like to start drawing. Mayhaps I will.
On the up side, I sent out a few inquiry letters to small press publishers today and yesterday! Here's finger's crossed. I need to finish the above painting to I feel comfortable about m'portfolio and then send it off to HarperCollins, Candlewick and the rest of them. I did enter the Illustrators 52 contest over at the Society of Illustrators. Am nervous.
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