Well, it's been only 2 days here & I guess I will have to change the way I look at UI Design & the world.
Yesterday my boss gave me quite a good lecture in the night which actually made me thinking, how good M I in Photoshop & Illustrator (2 integral parts of UI designing). Since I am now working for Web 2.0 designs & Mac Platform, I have to change the way I used to look at designs while working with Windows or previously. he told me that I need to com up with something unique & radical which is true cos while working for WPF, I limited myself to only one theme of Microsoft but Mac world is different, so is Web 2.0.
I questioned myself as where do I fit. An Icon designer which i started my career as (I hope the super old members will remember it). A UI Designer who decides how the User Interaction will happen in an application or webpage or a Look & Feel designer. So far, I have been doing all.
My colleagues have have been making great icons etc for Mac using Illustrator & Photoshop but I lost touch of Illustrator due to 3Ds Max as making a 2D drawing is easier for me to create in 3ds Max then Illustrator, specially cos in 3ds Max, I don't have to work with a perspective in mind, the camera does it for me. This is the reason I left Illustrator long back cos 3Ds Max gave me a 3D view at creating icons.
My Boss yesterday told me to make the Icon of Coda, as a test of my skills. U know what, I wasn't able to do it. I just couldn't think of how to do it in Photoshop & Illustrator, but then something struck my mind. I thought about making the same icon in 3Ds Max's 2D Plane & I was able to make the leaf shape in no time (All in mind though). Then comes the texturing part in which I agree that creating a texture in photoshop is tough for me, then using the burn tool to darken it to emulate shadow effect, but I again thought of making it in 3D Max & I found it can easily be made using Procedural textures in Material Editor of 3ds Max & then a simple light source & render as 2D will do the trick.
If you are designing components for UI & UX, U need to have a drawing tool & one painting tool. People usually prefer Illustrator to make the drawing which is good, but I find 3Ds Max to create the same 2D shapes & then photoshop to paint accordingly. I hands are just more set in 3ds Max for drawing then Illustrator.
Tomorrow I m going to talk to my new boss, after a long time someone has inspired me to think out of the box again & I will tell him what I fit in. If it is UI component designs, then I need 3ds max & Photoshop. These are the only 2 tools I will ever need to design UI now. Illustrator is just not for me as it will take me long time to learn it & give me less control compared to 3ds max.
When it comes to creating textures for 2d designs, I can make them in Genetica & bring to 3ds Max. I can even render as 2D or Cell shaded.
I will have to revise 50% things again. Since my WPF portfolio is arleady good enough, i am going to shelf it for a while & going to learn Photoshop basics again, bought Photoshop CS3 Bible today & a book for NURBS curves modeling in 3Ds Max.
Oh! by the way, I have changed my prespective & gone back to where I started, thinking different from the rest. I m still a Winboy
as the only thing good about Mac is UI & nothing else, the backend sux big time (try making an app for Mac & U will know. They don't even provide interface icons). This means soon, I might be the only guy sitting in the Mac department with a PC running Vista & designing,
(yeah yeah, making the enemy look good).
