Making Simple Shapes: Star, Cloud, and Sun
Here are some more simple shapes that you can make on Muzy.
Star
What did your teacher stick on your paper when you got an A? A gold star, of course. Muzy is a gold-star kind of place. So let’s look at how to make a simple star. A star has five points. The lines of a star are actually the same as an asterisk with 10 lines. So that’s what I’m going to draw: 10 lines arranged about equally radiating out from a center point. I’ll make one line and duplicate it and rotate it until I have the 10 lines. You have to eyeball it, so they’re not going to be exactly equal, but that’s okay.
Now, rearrange the lines into a star. Because the lines aren’t exactly 36 degrees apart (shame on me), they don’t fit perfectly.
No problem! Just fudge them a little until they look reasonably okay.
I’m going to use these as a guide to draw the star in straight yellow lines using “ctrl.” Where the star’s a little “off” I’ll make up for it with my line placement, making the small-looking point a little bigger. Turns out looking pretty good, right?
Now I’ll just color it in. I’ll add some highlights down the center of the star’s rays, and a little shading. And I’m done!
But wait! Just for kicks, I’ll duplicate the star, reduce it, and center it on the first star. Do that a couple of times, and you’ve got a nice pattern to the star. Now I’m done, for real!
Here’s the video.
Cloud
Not every day is filled with sunshine. Sometimes there’s a cloud or two, so you’ll want to know how to draw them, of course. I’m going to show an easy way to make a fairly cartoon-like cloud. First I’ll draw a big black dot, then erase a portion of it with a big eraser dot, leaving a little crescent.
Now, I’ll duplicate resize, distort, and place these curves in a cloud-shape, in such a way as pleases me.
Since I’ve got a nice outline, I’ll create a new item and fill it in with white. Then, I’ll send it to the back to complete the cloud.
Here’s a video of the process.
Sun
What else is in the sky besides stars and clouds? The sun, of course… the biggest star at all (from our perspective–actually, it’s quite small). The way to start drawing the sun, of course, is to draw a big, yellow dot.
I’m going to add some lighter shading to it. The actual sun is really very, very pale yellow, but my sun is going to be a lot more golden. But still always think light highlights make the sun look sunnier.
Now, you could stop there with a round sun, but I’m going to add rays. So the next thing to make is a ray. I’ll make an angled line, then duplicate it to make a nice symmetrical ray. I’ll trace over it and color it in to make a single “ray” object.
Now I’ll add some shading… more sunny highlights! It’s subtle, but I think it’s worthwhile.
We’re back to duplicating and rotating. I want rays of varying length, so I’m going to distort my ray when I rotate it. I’ll repeat each ray at 180-degree angles, so the sun will have symmetry.
Once the rays are in place, I just bring the center of the sun to the front, and I’m done!
Here’s the video of how it’s done.
Now that you’ve seen some ways to make simple shapes on Muzy, you can use them to make whatever objects you most desire…
