Shadow Effect - is this overkill?

[puw]

Hi,

I've got some great eps file examples to help me learn about shadowing to create lifts and turns etc - or so I thought.

Here's an example of such (a portion focusing on just one of many shadows that follows the same pattern) along with it's shadow layered group.

My question is, do you really need to have that many layers of shadow decreasing in transparency to get this effect, or is this really OTT overkill (like someone has nothing better to do with their time lol)?