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

926 Precisely sizing stars in Illustrator

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

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926 Precisely sizing stars in Illustrator

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- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. Now over the past couple of weeks, I've been showing you how to draw regular polygons of a specific size inside Illustrator. Well today, it gets that much better as I show you how to draw a star of a specific size, once again, inside Illustrator. Now, if you think about it, a star is a regular polygon set inside another regular polygon. So the sides go in and then back out, which means that Illustrator requires not one, but two radius values. And so let's say you want to draw an upright five-pointed classically American star, or if you prefer, Liberian, Somalian, Senegalese, Vietnamese, Chilean, European, Puerto Rican, Texan, Californian, many, many independent entities, employ five-pointed stars. And so if you want to draw a kind of bloaty, out of shape star, child's play, but if you want to draw a precise, all sides aligned, upright five-pointed star, that's, let's say, exactly 400 points wide from wingtip to shining wingtip, then sit up straight and watch this movie. All right, let's start with a basic overview of how the star tool works here inside Illustrator. I'll go ahead and click and hold on the shape tool in order to bring up this flyout menu, and choose the star tool from the flyout menu. And then, just so we can see what we're doing, I'll increase my line weight to four point, which I'm doing from the horizontal control panel. You can also do it from the big, huge properties panel, if you prefer. And then, you just go ahead and drag from the center outward in order to create a star at any angle you like, and if you want it upright, then you just go ahead and press the shift key. And in my case, I've drawn a five-pointed star. If you want to change the number of points on the fly, I just go ahead and press backspace or delete to get rid of that guy. Then, as you drag, you can press the up arrow key to add point, or the down arrow key to remove points. So those are a few options. But let's say you want a star that is exactly 400 points wide. And it's one of those perfect five-pointed American stars where the sides line up with each other and everything. All right, so I'll get rid of that star and I'll begin drawing a new one, and I'll press the down arrow key so that we just have five points like so, and if you want the sides to line up, then you press and hold the alt key. That's going to be the option key on the Mac, and then I can press the shift key to make it upright. And at this point, you can see that I've gone ahead and aligned to that outer circular guide. So that's good, but I have not created a star that measures 400 points wide. Notice these vertical guides right here are 400 points apart, and the star does not quite touch them, which can be infuriating at times. If you have a specific idea in mind about how wide a star should be, then it can really drive you nuts. And that's the whole thing I want to demonstrate here. So, I'm going to get rid of that guy. And I want you to know that these two circular guides, one of them has a diameter of 400 points and therefore a radius of half that, 200 points. And then the other one has a diameter of 200 points, the smaller one, meaning that it has a radius of 100 points. And so I'm just going to go ahead and click at the intersection of those two center guides, in order to bring up the star dialog box so that you can see that sure enough, we have two radius values. Now, they can go either way. Radius one can be the outside or inside, so you can flip them back and forth. But let's say I set radius one to 200 points to match the outer circle, and I'll set radius two to 100 points to match the inner circle. And sure enough, things work out the way you think they would, the only problem is, what should these darn values be? All right, so I'll undo that so I can show you, if I go ahead and click again, I'll keep those same values, but I'll set the number of points to six this time, and click, okay. And we get this star, which is definitely appealing, but it's not your typical six-pointed star with sides that line up with each other. Instead, things bend inward. Now things start looking pretty good at about eight points. And so, click again in order to bring up that dialog box, and I'll take the number of points up to eight. You can experiment with other values if you like, but notice if I click, okay, now I have a star that is actually 400 points wide. It goes all the way between those two vertical guidelines. So at eight points, you're set. I don't know how often you create seven and nine pointed stars, but again, you can experiment with those. What I want to show you is how things work with five and six. And so I'll go ahead and switch over. Here's a perfect five-pointed star that measures exactly 400 points wide. It goes all the way between those vertical guides. But notice the two circles, the inner circle is smaller than the one that we are seeing right here. I'll just get rid of that star so you can focus on it. So look at the inner circle, and then look at this guy. This circle is smaller. So radius two in our case, is smaller. Radius one is bigger, it goes beyond those two vertical guides. Same happens with the six-pointed star. Our inner circle gets bigger actually, but our outer circle also gets much bigger. And so how in the world do we figure things out? Well, let me show you. I'll go ahead and switch over to the sample document here and I'll grab the line segment tool, which I'm just finding more and more useful, the more I use it inside Illustrator. And I'm going to go ahead and click at the intersection of those two center guides. And I'm going to set the length to something big, like 250 points, which is bigger than the outer circle radius. And then I'll set the angle to 90 degrees, because I know I want that point in the star to be upright. And so I'll click, okay. So this is just a stand in for the point that should line up someplace in this region. All right, now I'll switch to the rotate tool, which you can get by pressing the R key. And then I'll go ahead and alt or option click at the center point right there. And let's imagine we're trying to rough things out for a five-pointed star. Then you'd want to enter an angle value of 360 divided by five for each of the points. And then if you press the tab key, that gives you an angle of 72 degrees, at which point you can click copy if you want to, but really it's okay just to click, okay, because this is all the information we need. We just need to know where this line intersects the vertical guideline over here. And we're going to figure that out by switching back to the line segment tool, go ahead and press Control + Shift + A, or Command + Shift + A on a Mac to de-select everything, and drag from the center, once again, just to here, to where the line intersects the vertical guideline and then release. And that tells you the size of your outer radius at which point, go ahead and click, don't drag. It's very easy to do tiny drags with this tool and just mess things up. We want this linked value right here. So just go ahead and copy it by pressing Control + C, or Command + C on the Mac, then you can cancel out, you don't need that anymore. And then you can just go ahead and press the V key to switch to the black arrow tool, marquee these two lines here, and get rid of them. We don't need them anymore. And now, switch back to the star tool, and go ahead and click in the center right there. Now, we're looking for five points, not eight, so I'll go ahead and reduce the number of points. And then you want to take that radius one value and paste, and then don't worry about radius two yet, just click, okay, and that will create a star that, notice, is 400 points wide. So it's as wide as we want it to be. Obviously, you can go with other values if you want to. I'm just using 400 points as an example. All right, now the outer points are exactly where they should be, the inner points are not. So what you want to do, is switch back to that line segment tool and go ahead and drag a horizontal line across like so, between those two outstanding points, so that we're extending the entire length of this 400 point distance, which I didn't, I missed it. So I'll undo that line, and I'll try it again. This time I'll drag from the left to the right, and notice my de-value there for distance is 400 points. That's what I want. All right so, what I'm going to do now is switch back to the rotate tool, which you can get by pressing R, I already said that, so obvious. I'm going to alt or option click at the intersection of those two center guides. Notice we still have an angle value of 72 degrees, click copy. Now what you want to do is go back to the line segment tool, and then you want to drag from the center to the intersection of those two most recent lines that you just drew. And notice I'm seeing a D value there. That's going to be my inner radius, at which point I'll release. Then you want to click, don't drag, and press Control + C, or Command + C on the Mac, to copy that length value, click, okay, or whatever, we don't really need that line. In fact, I'm going to press the V key to switch back to the black arrow tool, and I'll go ahead and marquee these paths outlines, and as long as your guides are locked down, then you can just press the backspace key, or the delete key on the Mac, to get rid of all that garbage. And now go ahead and select the star tool, and click right there in the center. And then I want you to shift tab to the radius two value, and press Control + V, or Command + V on the Mac, to paste that value, and then click, okay. And we now have a perfect star that's upright, the sides align with each other, and it is exactly 400 points wide. All right, so it may not be exciting, but I hope that helps. That is how you create a perfectly sized star of any size you like, with the help of the line segment tool combined along with the rotate tool, here inside Illustrator. Okay, I feel like that was a lot, awesome info, but a lot, which is why, if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have a followup movie in which we take these same principles and apply them to the task of creating an absolutely symmetrical six-pointed star, much like the ones featured on the flags of Bonaire, Burundi, Slovenia, and more. Deke's Techniques each and every week, keep watching.

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