From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

886 Drawing a 3D metal star in Illustrator

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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886 Drawing a 3D metal star in Illustrator

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- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland, welcome to Deke's Techniques. Today, I'm in Deception Island in Antarctica. Which seems to be an appropriate place to discuss this thing, I don't even know what to call it. Is it a 3D heavy metal star? Is it an impossible penrose triangle as I discussed back in Deke's Techniques 331? Is it an impossible trident as I discussed back in Deke's Techniques 833? Am I obsessed with impossible objects as I discussed right now? It's entirely possible but then I thought I'm inside an active volcano, which is true by the way, it could blow any moment now, which is why this thing here is a vulcanized object that you can beat into this impossible 3D heavy metal form in Adobe Illustrator. Here, let me show you, exactly how it works. All right, here's the final version of the 3D metal twisted star. Open inside Illustrator, we'll be creating it from scratch by going up to the File Menu and choosing the New command. And then I went ahead and switched over to art and illustration just so that we're creating an RGB document. Notice I've set the width to 1,008 points, the height to 672 that just happens to work well inside our movies and I've also set the bleed all the way around to 12 points at which point I'll click the create button in order to create that new piece of artwork. And I'll go ahead and zoom on in a little bit as well. Now notice that I have very tiny thumbnails inside the layers panel. I'm going to correct that by clicking on a flat menu icon and choosing panel options and then I'll select other and I'll set this value to 70 pixels so I can actually see the contents of my layer. Now I'll go ahead and rename this layer circle guides because that's what it's going to contain and then I'll bring up the rulers by pressing Control R or Command R on the Mac. Now because of the resolution that I've set, my monitor to illustrator is giving me some very tiny rulers. Hopefully one day they'll fix that problem but never fear. And I can still drag out a couple of guides by pressing the Control key or the Command key on the Mac and dragging from the intersection of those two rulers like so. And then I'll press Control R, Command R in a Mac to hide the rulers and I'll go up to the view menu, choose guides and then choose unlocked guides so that I can modify them. And I'll go ahead and Marcie both of them like so using my black arrow tool, I'll go up here to the control panel and click on this guy aligned to selection. Switch it to align to our board and then click on each of the center icons, horizontal align center and then vertical line center like so. And that will exactly center my guides. All right now or return to the view menu. Choose guides and choose lot guides to go ahead and lock them down. And now I want to add a couple of circles by switching from the rectangle tool right here to the ellipse tool and then I'll move my to the intersection of those two guidelines and it looks like my smart guides are turned off. So I'll go up to the view menu and choose smart guides to turn them on. And then I'll once again position my cursor at the intersection of those two guys and I'll press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and click in order to bring up the ellipse dialog box and notice that I've set both the width and height values to 454 points at which point I'll click okay in order to create this big circle and thanks to the fact I alter option clicked. I'm creating this circle from the center outward. Now currently in my case it doesn't have any fill or stroke and so I'm going to give it a stroke by changing the line way to let's say two points just so I can better see it on screen. Now I'll go up to the edit menu and choose the copy command or you can just press Control C or Command C on the Mac and that way we can bring back the circle later, which will become important. All right, now I'm going to alter or option click again in order to create another circle from the center out. Notice that I've locked my width and height values into agreement with each other and so I'll just change either one to 600 points and I'll click okay in order to create this big circle here. And now I'll go ahead and select both circles by pressing Control A or Command A on a Mac. And I'll go up to the view menu, choose guides and choose make guides to convert these guys to custom guidelines like so. All right, now we want to create a new layer for our star guides and you can do that by pressing the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and clicking on the little page icon at the bottom of the layers panel and I'll go ahead and call this new layer star guides and that's it. That'll click okay. And now I'll switch over to the star tool, which is another one of the shape tools available inside this fly out menu. And I'll go ahead and drag from the center outward because after all the star tool always create shapes from the center out. And I'll press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac in order to constrain my five pointed star. And by the way, if you're seeing more or fewer points, then you can adjust the number of points on the fly by pressing the Up and Down arrow keys. But once I have a five point star, I'll press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac to make sure that all of my sides align with each other. And then I'll also press the Shift key in order to constrain the angle of my star. So I have both the Shift and Alt key stand that Shift and Option on the Mac and you want to snap into alignment with that outer circle like so. All right, now you want to switch to the line segment tool which allows you to draw straight lines inside illustrator and drag from this point to this one. So we're just drawing a horizontal line that's the entire width of the star and you may want to press the Shift key in order to constrain the angle of that line to exactly horizontal. All right, here's where things get a little bit tricky. And when I say here's where they get tricky, this is the first of many times where things will get a little bit tricky. And so I want to create a vertical guideline right here in order to mark a spot and saw press Control R or Command R on a Mac to bring up my teeny weeny rulers. Hopefully yours look much larger. And then I'll drag a vertical guide from the left hand ruler until it snaps into alignment with the intersection of the inner circle and this edge of the star right there. All right, now go ahead and switch back to the black arrow tool up here at the top of the toolbox, which you can get by pressing the V key. And go ahead and drag from this point right here. So notice this horizontal line is still selected. Go ahead and drag from the intersection of the line and that new guideline down to this location right there while pressing the Shift and Alt keys. That's going to be shift and option on a Mac. That way you're constraining the angle of your drag and you're making a duplicate of it like so. All right, now press control zero or command zero on the Mac in order to send her my zoom and I'll Shift click on this first horizontal line and now we're going to be creating a bunch of copies of these two lines using the rotate tool, but go ahead and select that tool which you can get by pressing the Alt key and you want to alter option click at the intersection of the two center guides like so and we want to rotate these lines 360 degrees for a full circle divided by five because after all we're working with a five pointed star. Turn on the preview checkbox to make sure that's what you want and then click the copy button in order to create a copy of those guides and then duplicate that rotation by pressing Control D or Command D on the Mac a total of three times in order to create a total of 10 straight lines. All right, now you want to convert these guides to custom guides by pressing Control A or Command A on the Mac in order to select all of them. Then just right click in the document window and choose make guides, which is an easier way to get to that command and we'll end up with these guidelines right here. All right, now I'm going to zoom in for another tricky step in this process and we're going to create yet another new layer by pressing the Alt key or the Option key on a Mac and clicking on the little page icon at the bottom of the layers panel and I'll call this guy inner guides and then I'm going to change its color to grass green, which I like better than regular green. All right, I'll click okay in order to accept that change and then I'll switch back to my line segment tool and you want to drag from this intersection right here to this one in order to create a short line on the inside of that star edge. So just make sure it's parallel to the other lines right here. And then switch back to the rotate tool, which you can get by pressing the R key and alter option click at the intersection of those two center guides in order to once again bring up the rotate dialog box and angle value 72 degrees is exactly what we want. So just go ahead and click copy in order to create a copy of that line and then press Control D or Command D on the Mac three times in order to create these five lines right here that intersect to form another five pointed star. Now press Control A or Command A on the Mac to select all of those lines, right click in the document window and choose make guides in order to turn those guys into custom guidelines. All right. Now, believe it or not, we are now ready to draw the star. And we're going to do so of course on an independent layer by pressing the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and clicking on a little page icon at the bottom of the layers panel. And I'll just go ahead and call this guy star and I'll change the color to violet and then I'll click okay. And now I'll grab my pen tool, which you can get by pressing the P key. We're not going to do any advanced drawing here, but it is tricky. So you want to start this path right at this position here and just click, we'll just be clicking the whole time. And then you want to click over at this intersection, then move your cursor down to here, this spot, and go ahead and click and then move it to this spot right here near the center, but not quite the center of the document. And then move it up to this location, click and then close that path out line like so. So that we're creating this kind of half an arrowhead as you see here. All right, I'm going to zoom out a little bit and I'm going to create another path outline starting at this location and then I'll click down here. So we're just clicking no dragging involved and I'll just go ahead and click all the way around like so. In order to create this four pointed path outline. Now you want to press the V key to switch back to the black arrow tool. Go onto the edit menu and choose paste in front in order to bring back that circle that we copied near the beginning of the movie. All right, now go ahead and Shift click on that path you just drew so that both the circle and it are selected. Then you want to go up to the window menu and choose Pathfinder. In order to bring up the Pathfinder panel and click on this third icon in the top row intersect in order to find the intersection of those two paths like so. All right, now go ahead and partially marquee both of them and notice that we have a problem where this miter joint is concerned. To get rid of that, click on a word stroke up here in the control panel and switch the corner to round join like so. And then we want to set the line weight value to six points like so. All right, now I'm just noticing that my tiny rulers are still up on screen. So I'll press Control R or Command R on a Mac to hide them. And then I'll press Control zero or Commands zero, on a Mac to center my zoom and I'll go ahead and select that first shape that I drew that half an arrow head right there. And I'll go to the window menu and choose gradient. In order to bring up the gradient panel, you want to be seeing the whole thing. So you may have to click this little double arrow head icon a couple of times and now go ahead and click and as gradient slider right there in order to apply a default gradient, that's not the gradient we're looking for. And so with my swatches panel up on screen, I'll go ahead and grab the black swatch right here and drag it and drop it down to this first location. And then I'll drag the white swatch actually is what I want and I'll drag it and drop it to the final color stop. And then I'll set the angle value not to zero degrees but to negative 90 degrees is what I'm looking for in order to produce this effect here. And actually now that I look at this, it's too dark. And so I'm going to grab this shade of gray, the one in which the RG and B values are all 77 and I'll drag it and drop it to that first color stop like so. Now I'll go ahead and select the second path and I'll click on a gradient slider to once again apply that same gradient. By the way, the one that goes from dark gray to white. And I'll change the angle value to 36 degrees. And you may wonder how in the world do I know that? Well, we've been rotating everything to 72 degrees. You may recall in 72 divided by two is 36 degrees, which is what we're looking for. All right, now go ahead and shift. Click on the first shape. So we want both of the shapes to be selected and now you want to grab your rotate tool once again, which as I've been saying, you can get by pressing the R key and you want to Alt click or on a Mac Option click at the intersection of those two center guides. So you're going to have to line things up carefully and notice that we're still looking at an angle value of 72 degrees, which is what we want. And so click the copy button in order to make a copy of those paths and then it'll press Control D or Command D on the Mac a total of three times in order to fill out that star and now press the V key to switch back to my black arrow tool. I'll click off the shapes to de-select them. I'll switch back to the stroke panel so that I have a little more room to work over here on the right side of the screen and I'll turn off all of the layers except for the star layer like so. And the result is a five-pointed 3D twisted woven metal star here inside illustrator. All right, so far we've got this gray thing here, which is fine, but what we really want is this, which is to say absolute blacks with absolute whites and gradients of gray in between, which is why if you're a member of LinkedIn learning, I have a followup movie in which I show you how to do exactly that. Come to think of it. This might serve as a great flag for a future independent nation of deception Island for which I will gladly serve as self appointed emperor. Looking forward to next week, wonder woman, 1984 a blast from the past brought to you by me the duly elected emperor of deception. These techniques each and every week. Keep watching.

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