This page contains rules, procedures and information about posting
your lessons. Please read it.
Please post your messages to the Illustrator Discussion Board
I've been teaching computer software skills in college classrooms (yes, real ones, with desks and students) for about ten years. I started with WordPerfect, way back when, and gradually have added just about every program in popular use. But beyond a doubt, my favorite programs are the ones that produce art.
You may never have been in one of my real-life classes, but we may have met around the digital art scene. You may even have taken on-line classes from me. This set of lessons is being written for Eclectic Academy. They have never appeared before anywhere in the physical universe. They are designed to take up where Introduction to Illustrator left off.
My rules for the class will be the same as always:
1. Contact me through the school's message board, and not through private email. This doesn't mean I'll shoot you if you private email me; it just means I can't guarantee that I'll see the message if you send it privately. If I ask you to email me with something, I'll be watching for your message.
2. Post your lessons to your webpage when you want to share them. You don't have to share them, but you are welcome to do so. If you share your lessons, you will get feedback, especially if you're having trouble with something.
3. When you post to the school's discussion board, label the message, especially if you have a question. I don't always read students' comments to one another, so if you want me to see the message, you need to give me a clue.
4. I review each week's lessons by Saturday evening. I check for questions daily, but I may not look at lessons every day during the week. If a weekend goes by and I don't seem to have seen your lesson, create a new message. I missed the first one. Same for questions - if you don't get an answer in a day or two, I missed you. Post a whole new message at the top of the stack.
5. Meet the lesson deadline. I'm from the real-world, where instructors have office hours, students have to get their work in on time, and late work is handled at the instructor's discretion. I don't always load pages for lessons from past weeks, (like, don't send me all six lessons a week after the course has ended) but I will always answer your questions about lesson material, and you will be given credit for the material, even if it is late.
6. When you pick up your new lesson on Sunday morning, take a look at my comments for your work from the previous week. Save the new lesson to your hard drive. Work through the material. When you've done your best, put your assignment on your webpage, and be sure your name is on the page.
7. Be sure you give me a direct URL to your assignment page, and not to a homepage or an index page with links to your assignments. ONE CLICK PER LESSON PAGE!!! There's nothing that makes me cranky quicker than having to follow multiple links to load image pages.
Actually I'm a pretty casual camper, but with my work load, I have
to set limits, and sometimes I actually stick to them.
You don't need to tell me when you are going to be late with a lesson. You can compare your work to other students' to be sure you are working on-track. If you aren't, that's when you need to ask questions.
Above all, don't think your drawings have to look like mine. For those of you who are actual artists, this is good news. Again, the point is for you to learn the program, not to create images that look exactly like those created by an amateur scribbler called Doodelbug.
If you don't have any version to use, you can download a Trial Version of the program. Click on the image to go to Adobe's Illustrator download page.
Many digital art books include a CD, and those CDs often have demos included. The trial versions may not let you save your work, but you can save a screen shot of your work and paste this into nearly any other program. If you size the frame of the program to fit your image, and then press alt-printscreen, you have a copy of your image to paste into your webpage creator!
Size the frame of the program around your image.
Then press alt-printscreen.
Switch to your webpage creator and press Ctrl-V.
You'll have the title and frame, but - so what?
Another way to get your work into your webpage creator is to use a screen-capture program, such as Ultrasnap, to copy/paste the image. You can download Ultrasnap from http://www.mediachance.com. I highly recommend this little screen capture program. It's shareware, and it's super.
I recommend that you schedule a segment of time when you will work with your lessons. Write it on your calendar, and treat it as something important. If you must miss a session, be sure to reschedule it. Believe me, unless you take your studies seriously, you won't get everything out of them that you could.
You should place the designated image each week on a single web page. This will be your Final Results Page.
You will find a free tutorial for uploading your work on the college news page. http://www.eclecticacademy.com/nsnews.htm
Then you need a page to upload. For those who want to create a web page without having to write code, but don't have a clue how to start, I recommend using Netscape's Composer, version 4.78. It's free, and it works pretty much like MS Word. Click File > New > Blank page, and you're in business. For that matter, you could use MS Word to create your page, but the code that program writes isn't very clean.
Don't use Netscape Composer, version 6. It doesn't work since AOL bought it out from Netscape.
Put your name on each page or project. Yes, artists sign their work, and so do first graders. You should, too. (If you don't, I get confused about whose work I'm looking at.)
Post to the discussion board when you have something to share or a question. Label the post with the word QUESTION, or with something like "Lesson 4 is ready." It is better to post to the discussion board, especially if you want feedback or have questions, than to email me directly or to put the questions on the page with your work.
Except for the word "QUESTION" I like to be the only one who lables messages in all-caps. I do this to get your attention when I have something I want to tell the whole class.
Include the URL for the page you want viewed. If I have to follow links, I'll probably never get there.
Getting help. If you need help with something in the lesson, please ask. This is the place to ask those questions you think are too dumb to ask someplace else. I encourage you to use the board, rather than private email, for two reasons. You may get an answer from another student before I get to the board. And your questions and observations are sure to benefit other students.
Don’t be afraid
to help each other! We can all use a little help, and
the best way to learn something is to teach it.
