I'll open myself up but for someone breaking into the industry with little draw program experience I would recommend a Full Legitimate Version of Corel Draw.
Corel is by far much more user friendly, you can find tutorials on youtube, also lessons at
http://coreldrawtips.com/site/coreldraw-x3-tutorials not only X3 but several other versions. Also many of the other version lessons will be valid with later versions. In other words, many X3 lessons will work in Corel 4 or 5.
Adobe Illustrator is also a very popular program, very detailed and exacting, it is just not a very user friendly program due to is level of detail. Comparing the two in learning is like learning to work on a lawn mower engine compared to learning a Ferrari V-10 Fuel Injected with twin turbos.
This is not saying that the final artwork has the same comparison, both produce unbelievable artwork and will completely fill the bill for your needs.
Another item to consider is the cost, you need to purchase full versions, not student or limited cost versions due to many plug in programs not working on anything but full retail versions of either. The lowest prices I have found for these full retail versions were $449.00 for the Adobe Illustrator CS5 and $169.00 for the Corel Draw X5 (with a total of 6 fully featured programs).
Corel link:
http://www.powerkeg.net/product.sc;j...FZBd2godkGL6sw
Adobe link:
http://www.softwareking.com/AICS5DW-...tratorcs5.html
Some community colleges may have a Graphic Arts program, you will need to check locally.
Hope this helps a little.
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