I wanted to make my Martini Pinup as a vector, because I REALLY need to get better at Illustrator. With the profession I'm going to school for, I HAVE to know how to use it well.  

I took a course in my first year and learned NOTHING! If you're majoring in graphic design, beware the "Revealed" series of textbooks! I had them for Illustrator and Dreamweaver and learned NOTHING!

But I think it's because it takes more than a handful of tutorials out of a book to teach you this stuff. You need actual, practical application and experience to become adept at it. When I took a course for inDesign, I learned MORE than I did with Illustrator, but I really got better at it when I started sitting down and making shit that was not in the textbook! I got good at Photoshop by drawing with for closing in on ten years now!

And I think that's how I'll get good at Illustrator. And the Martini drawing was a good starting point to give it a try, because it's not that complicated, it had a fairly simply, abstract background, etc. BUT I CAN'T GET ILLUSTRATOR TO FUCKING INSTALL BECAUSE GODDAMN WINDOWS IN BEING A GODDAMN TWAT! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

*bangs head against desk*

And if you tell me to get a Mac, I will track you down and kill you in the most brutal, and creative way a potato peeler and my own imagination can devise. I work with Macs at school, and I have a much higher opinion of them than I once did because of that, but as I don't have a spare couple grand to spend at the moment (and if I DID, there's about a zillion other things I need more), THAT DOES NOT SOLVE MY PROBLEM!

Well, I got a couple other ideas that will be good candidates for my first foray into vector art. I'm just hoping I can resolve this Windows installer problem without having to resort to the "nuclear option". Oh, I have all my irreplaceable files backed up, but we had to format my old computer once, and although I had everything backed up, it was still a huge pain the ass, and several days of me trying to do routine tasks on my computer only to say "Oh FUCK, I have to re-install that!" And getting all the drivers again, oh FUCK, just kill me now!