How would you do...

[Marco D]

Good challenge Marco!
Here's my attempt:

Very nice Egg, the real challenge from my point of view was indeed how to manage the color shading, couldn't figure out at a first glance at an easy solution.
Looking forward for the explanation on how you managed it.

[ernie-f]

Oh a challenge! I will do it too.
Here is my attempt to the design:

[RKissane]

Well I have failed miserably. Looking forward to explanation.

Ray

[Jonopen]

I'm stumped, although I think I'm beginning to understand how it might be done. I'm not at my PC at the moment and had to use AD, so obviously this entry should be ignored.

[Egg Bramhill]

We appear to have tackled it very much the same way Ernie.

As folks seem to want to know how I went about it:

VIDEO

[ernie-f]

Yes, I drew it like that too.
First I drew a segment, then doubled it and filled in the gradients.
Finally the shadows. That's it.
Here is my Xara-File to help understand what i did.

Aaron Draplin Design.xar

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes Ernie great.

Here's an alternative with a ruffle3 bevel applied:

[Marco D]

We appear to have tackled it very much the same way Ernie.

As folks seem to want to know how I went about it:

VIDEO

Thanks Egg, for the video explanation on how you did it. You are always very knowledgeable and inspiring.

[Marco D]

This is my solution to the problem, unlike Egg I built the curved piece of the design in a completely different way and repeated it around the reference center by rotating it by an angle equal to 360/7 (set in snap mode to be as precise as possible).

draplin_star_talkgraphic.xar