It's very different. Kinda direct and upfront but mostly what kinda got me confused and discouraged is that I was already used to the iconology of illustrator. and this is only or CS2.. CS3 is even diff...
Anyways, I guess just experiment with both programs and see how it works, but of course with help, any program can be mastered properly.
I do.
Illustrator is a lot more advanced and has things Inkscape doesn't have. However, Inkscape is good enough for most of simple vector art you need to do. And with a little patience, you can get really good results.
I don't know how Illustrator works, but Inkscape's always been great for me. But, I use it for drawing logos and flags and things mostly, without going into the more complex stuff.
I'm so dependent on Adobe's programs that I have difficulty with anything else, but the basics in Inkscape worked well enough. Depends on what you need it for?
I like Inkscape, and since it's free I haven't used Illustrator for the past 5 or so years, and even then I didn't use it that much as I was mostly using Photoshop at the time. People have done some pretty impressive work using Inkscape. Still, I can't really suggest one over the other, other than that I use Inkscape and it works fine for what I do.
I have never gotten Inkscape and my tablet to play nice. Otherwise, it's different, but not too complex. I caught on quick, whereas the pen tool in illustrator still never quite does what I want. Then again, I've only used out of date Adobe (up to 7 and dabbled in first CS).
One thing in illustrator CS3 that I didn't like that I really wished it did better are the freehand and brush tools, since freehand doesn't let you adjust the path merge threshold and the brush doesn't let you change tablet pressure curves between nodes (why the fuck not?)
I know guys that use it for collision detection in video games, it's really good and quick for vectorizing some images.
But actually drawing with it? If you know illustrator, stick with that. Drawing in inkscape is especially problematic if you use a tablet, although it seems like it should be easier and more fun.
I kinda found inkscape too confusing.
Anyways, I guess just experiment with both programs and see how it works, but of course with help, any program can be mastered properly.
Illustrator is a lot more advanced and has things Inkscape doesn't have. However, Inkscape is good enough for most of simple vector art you need to do. And with a little patience, you can get really good results.
I know guys that use it for collision detection in video games, it's really good and quick for vectorizing some images.
But actually drawing with it? If you know illustrator, stick with that. Drawing in inkscape is especially problematic if you use a tablet, although it seems like it should be easier and more fun.