Video Training Review – Illustrator CS3 Essential Training With Mordy Golding From Lynda.com.

Illustrator CS3 Essential Training is a video that will teach you the fundamentals of Illustrator CS3 in a straight forward and progressive manner. It is geared for both the new as well as the moderately experienced user. Mordy Golding will also teach you the new features of Illustrator CS3 and how to use each of the tools to its full potential.

Illustrator CS3 Essential Training is contained in 23 lessons and is taught by Mordy Golding, a production artist for print and the web for many years. While employed at Adobe, he was the product manager for Illustrator 10 and CS. He is now serves a the founder of DesignResponsibly.com.

Lessons 1-6 introduce you to Illustrator CS3 and its core concepts. You will learn what vector graphics are, what paths are, as well as fill and stroke attributes. You will also learn about selections and layers and how to use them. You will also explore the Illustrator interface, how to set your workspace up, and how to navigate around a document. You will also learn about basic drawing, path editing and text editing.

Lessons 7-9 will show you how to make selections by using the Magic Wand and the Lasso tool. You will learn how to use the Appearance Panel for fills and strokes, how to apply live effects, and modify graphic styles. You will then work with groups and layers,  learn about object hierarchy, how to create template layers, and how to work with object, group and layer attributes.

Lesson 10 expands on drawing and path editing to a more advanced level. Here you will work with Live Paint groups, detect gaps in Live Paint groups, divide an object into a grid, and how to clean up errant paths.

Lessons 11-12 begin with explaining color and the different ways to work with it by using swatches, creating swatch groups and libraries, working with gradients, patterns and how to find colors with kuler; a method for finding harmonious colors. You will then learn about object transformation and positioning. Here you will work with moving, copying, rotating, scaling, reflecting and skewing objects as well as aligning and distributing objects.

Lessons 13-15 cover what it takes to create and work with brushes, defining, editing and using symbols as well as working with clipping and opacity masks.

Lesson 16 shows you how to apply filters and effects such as the 3D Extrude, Bevel, and Revolve effects. You will work with Transform, Pathfinder, Stylize and Warp effects as well.

Lesson 17 covers advanced text editing including topics such as creating and using paragraph and character styles, working with the Glyphs panel, wrapping text around objects, managing fonts, and dealing with legacy text.

Lesson 18-20 looks at working with images beginning with how to design for the web. Here you will work with Pixel Preview, learn how to slice and optimize for the web as well as creating simple animations. From there you will learn how to create blends for airbrush effects, animations and evenly distribute objects. Finally you will see how to place images, work with Live Trace, and artwork rasterizing.

Lesson 21-23 provide instruction in a wide variety of miscellaneous topics such as creating graphs, working with Gradient Mesh, Envelope Warps and using the Liquefy Distortion tools. Then you will learn how to save and print your documents as well as how to work with other programs such as Photoshop, InDesign, Flash and QuarkXPress.

Illustrator CS3 Essential Training provides a clear and concise level of instruction that is systematic and easy to understand. Mordy Golding is a very good instructor who makes the learning of this complex product fun. His systematic method of presenting Illustrator has to be one of the more logical training courses that I have experienced

You can get Illustrator CS3 Essential Training two ways. One is as a DVD training package Illustrator CS3 Essential Training with Mordy Golding and the other is part of the online training experience at Lynda.com. The DVD Training Package is $149 USD and contains everything you need.

The online training Illustrator CS3 Essential Training comes in three flavors. Monthly at $25 USD/month gets you all of the videos that are available online (approximately 21,811 videos on 318 topics at this time). Annually at $250 USD per year or Premium at $375 USD per year which get all the videos as well as all of the exercise files. Take note that the exercise files are not included with the monthly or annual subscriptions. They are included on the DVD and Premium subscriptions.

Illustrator CS3 Essential Training Lesson Listing:

Welcome (1:11)
1. Key Illustrator Concepts (25:02)
2. Creating Illustrator Documents (12:24)
3. The Illustrator Interface (56:59)
4. Basic Drawing (45:32)
5. Basic Path Editing (51:25)
6. Basic Text Editing (41:03)
7. Making Selections (19:04)
8. Understanding Appearances (45:43)
9. Working with Groups and Layers (52:17)
10. Advanced Drawing and Path Editing (29:07)
11. Working with Color (51:57)
12. Object Transformation and Positioning (42:02)
13. Using Brushes (24:16)
14. Working with Masks (20:10)
15. Using Symbols (25:30)
16. Applying Filters and Live Effects (66:35)
17. Advanced Text Editing (35:54)
18. Designing for the Web (26:23)
19. Creating Blends (13:59)
20. Working with Images (34:25)
21. Performing Specialized Tasks (31:45)
22. Saving and Printing (31:43)
23. Working with Other Programs (19:23)
Conclusion (6:10)

I can whole heartedly recommend  Illustrator CS3 Essential Training as a great training program for the individual student, as well as the college or vocational teacher looking to supplement their educational materials. It would be of tremendous benefit to the professional looking to upgrade their skills. You can also try out the first three lessons for free at Lynda.com.