December 2013 - Tips and Tricks - Creating A Compass Rose-Style Star

Creating A Compass Rose-Style Star
by Gary Bouton

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Twinkle, Twinkle Compass Rose
Everyone gets a star to wish upon this month: Gary takes you through the steps to building an elegant, classic star in the style of historic compass roses. Put the Conical fill to work in combination with Constraint angles and transparency overlays. Learn how all the pieces fit together to make a fabulous, fun, festive and other alliterative design adjective piece!

Show us how you mark the way with your compass rose-style star.

Gare thanks also for this tutorial,

Well but I have to admit that have been lost somewhere in the ambitious try to create a 7 point star, when came out some fractal with the 360/7 to set the angle :) Also has been lost with the different colours, something came out but just with the very heavy applying of Shape tool with your mentioned "it can reposition the control points that are at the ends of the segments. With Snap to objects enabled..." As with the angles was not able to execute.

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So the result is more failure than success, but inspite of that learnt from it of course.

I see it as a nice design rather than a failure, csehz.

And so should you!

51.428 is a hard number of degrees to resolve for this sort of compass rose star example! :)

But your star looks attractive and I'd put it on my Christmas tree any day of the week, especially Wednesday!

My Best,

Gary

Just got round to doing this Gary, been busy reading your links on typography, fascinating reading. My Compass Rose effort not so fascinating :D Not used the Conical fill much, need to get in some practice to get the colours and overlaps right, but a great little tut this to start me off.

Stygg

Hi stygg—

"not so fascinating"?

I really wish you'd lose the self-deprecatory comments, man!

With the exception that the centre is visibly off with one or two of the stellations, it's a warm, handsome piece that anyone—especially anyone in the military—would be proud to print and hang on the wall.

Keep up the good work!

Gary

Watching that picture I also felt yesterday that if there is some issue with that star, that is only that double point in the centre. The sides came out very nice.

And yes Stygg you are the most conscientious and humble XaraXone student in the academy :D

Anyway generally I had the same impression that rather was struggling with the star. For example when centered the middle, somehow the two bottom handle points did not get to the straight horizontal ruler line, or if yes, then somehow the top did not fit. I do not know, probably because tried 7 points one and if in the angles some fractal number came out, then also the end points follow that or something.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by csehz

For example when centered the middle, somehow the two bottom handle points did not get to the straight horizontal ruler line...

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Hi csehz—

I couldn't resist this sort of challenge, especially when you pointed out that one of the ruler guides was a little off.

Did you know that you can draw on the Guides layer? So you can put any angled line on the Guides layer to follow, like this?

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See attached, and when you need a guide to the stars in the future, there's a guy in Hollywood who runs a bus that will take you around to Deniro's home, and Robert Downey's house, and...

:)


Gary

Gare thanks very much, yes that 7 pointed star is perfect. Also for the tip to draw on the Guides layer

Thanks for the tip and file Gary, I wished I'd known that before I started my off centre Star :D

Stygg

You're all welcome, and you can copy or move any vector path to the Guides layer.

That's how I correct typefaces and other auto-trace renders that have control points that are off or there are too many control points. I put the shape on the Guides layer, lock it, and then on a new layer I trace the paths that should be in the shape. Because Guides auto-snap to, I'm not introducing any error as I correct a path.

Enjoy, Academians!

:)

Gary