- In this movie, we're going to create
these sculpted circles
at each one of the six points of the star.
This is largely a function of assigning
multiple, variable-width strokes.
So, I'll go ahead and switch over to
my star in progress;
I'm going to turn off the main star
and Inset Layers for a moment,
and then click on the Shapes Layer to make it active.
I want to go ahead and select this circle right there,
and then I'll press the Alt key,
or the Option key on the Mac,
and drag that colored square
up to the Inset Layer, in order to make a copy of it.
Then, I'll turn off the Shapes Layer
and turn the other two layers back on.
Now, I'm going to zoom in on this circle, quite a bit here.
The thing about a circle, is that it begins here,
on it's right-hand point, and that means that
if we're going to assign a variable-width stroke,
we've got to have a width-point right there,
which is not what I want;
that'll make a mess of everything.
I need to rotate this beginning point, in the circle,
upward to the top of the shape, and you can do that by
clicking on the word Transform,
up here in the Control Panel,
and then, make sure the center point is selected,
in a Reference Point Matrix,
and change this Rotate Value to 90 degrees,
and press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac.
It will not look any different,
but it will behave differently.
Now, go up to the first color swatch,
up here in the Control Panel,
and change the fill color to the darkest brass
which is e21m49y100k7 and then let's go ahead
and change the stroke color to this last guy,
c1m8y32k5, and now what I want you to do,
is increase the Line Weight Value to 15, like so.
Now, go ahead and get the Width tool,
which, as you may recall, has a keyboard shortcut
of Shift + W, and go ahead and double-click
on this top Anchor point, there,
to bring up the Width Point Edit dialogue box,
Change the first Size value to 0,
and change the second Size value to 15, and then click OK.
You notice, we cannot delete this point,
because this is the point at which the shape starts.
Now, just go ahead and click OK.
The reason we're not seeing anything,
is because the fill's in front of the stroke,
so, go to the Appearance panel,
and just drag the stroke up to in front of the fill like so.
Now what you want to do is,
double-click on this bottom point,
and go ahead and change the Size 1 value to 0,
and change the Size 2 value to 1,
and then click OK in order to accept that change.
Now, we want to reduce the Opacity of this stroke,
so you want to click on the actual stroke itself,
and notice, I want you to see something.
When we're seeing this Asterisk after the Line Weight Value,
that's telling us that we have a Variable-Weight stroke.
I just want you to notice that.
I'm going to go ahead and click on that stroke,
twirl it open as well, by clicking on it's little triangle,
and then click on the word Opacity,
and I want you to take this Opacity value down to 25%
and press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac,
so that we have this translucent stroke.
Now we're going to build it up
by selecting the stroke once again,
and then clicking on the little page icon
at the bottom of the panel.
Now, you want to reduce the Line Weight to 10;
you don't have to do anything
about the Variable Width, it's all fine.
Then click on the word Opacity and take it up to 50%
this time, and now let's make another copy
by clicking on the 10 point stroke,
clicking on the little page icon at the bottom of the panel,
reducing the Line Weight to 5 points,
and this time I'm going to click on the word
Opacity right there, and then click on the trash can
at the bottom of the Appearance Panel,
in order to restore an Opacity of 100%.
Now, I'm going to zoom out,
so you can take in the entire illustration,
and I have to once again duplicate this circle,
so you might have figured it would have been
a better idea to bring over all six circles
and modify them all at the same time,
but in my experience, it doesn't really work.
Things get all messed up.
We're just going to duplicate this guy again,
by pressing the V key
to switch back to the Black Arrow tool.
Go to your Layers panel and turn on the Shapes layer,
just so we have something to snap into alignment with.
Then go ahead and drag this guy by its center point,
until it snaps into position right there,
do it again over to this position,
and by the way, I'm pressing the Alt key,
or the Option key on the Mac,
in order to make it duplicate of these circles.
Shift + Click on that guy, and then drag him down
while pressing the Alt key, or the Option key on the Mac.
Then, finally, grab this top guy again,
and drag him down by his center point,
by pressing the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac,
in order to make that final copy.
Then, I'll go ahead and turn off the Shapes layer,
so we can take in our artwork.
That's how you create a kind of sculptural effect,
by layering multiple, Variable-width strokes,
here, inside Illustrator.