Quote
GauntletsAngel
I know a lot of you are more into the digital arts than the traditional, so I decided that 1. You needed a thread for that and 2. I needed a place to ask you guys questions.
Question #1: What is vector art?
Question #2: How does one make vector art?
Question #3: What is the difference between vector and digi-drawing?
And, yes, I'm almost always this self-serving.
Answer #1: Vector art is a pain in the....
Answer #2: Not easily
Answer #3: Not sure what you mean. Some digital drawings are vector, so...
Answer #4: This is why we love you.
Now for the less snarkified answers. There's the complicated definition of Vector art that only makes sense to the elitist people who use it: "Vector graphics is a resolution-independent description of the actual shapes and objects that you see in the image. A rasterization engine uses this information to determine how to plot each line and curve at any resolution or zoom level." Uh, yeah.... whatever...
Translation: The difference between vector drawings and "bitmap" drawings are that bitmaps use lots of little squares to make the image, which is why you can't take a smaller JPG image and enlarge it - all the little squares suddenly are really noticeable. Vector makes smooth lines, and you can reduce or enlarge it, and the lines stay smooth. It doesn't use those little squares (pixels).
On the high end, you can use Adobe Illustrator or Fireworks, or there's a free program you can play around with called Inkscape:
http://www.inkscape.org/ I haven't tried it or checked out their tutorials or anything but, word of warning with most places that discuss vector stuff. They generally expect people to understand their frellin' private lingo. Which is probably one reason I obviously don't like vector much. I do like Illustrator though, since it makes good designs for logos, print, brochures and all that stuff customers like to pay for.
And Answer #4 again: This is why we love you.