This is not the only way you can create a shooting star,if you use your imagination you can create shooting stars in lots of creative ways,but this one is the most popular,I guess you have seen this type of shooting star in lots of places.
I created the image above just for fun to show an example of how I integrate that type of star in a design and I will not show how I created it all,just the star,if I get requests for it,maybe I will show that some other time.For this look there are two methods you could use,one would be a lot of pen tool work
meaning that you would have to manually create the trails,but I will show a nice and easy method using illustrator's 3d feature called extrude and bevel.
First things first,lets create a new document in Illustrator.Size does not matter,because we create a vector graphic which is perfectly scalable without any loss in the effective resolution.But if you know what size this should be at then use that size.It will save you the trouble of resizing it later.I went with a size of 500 point on 500.Color model I used CMYK.If you plan on creating this for the web use RGB.Raster effects, if for web 72 pixels/inch will be just fine,if for print you should use 300 dpi.In Illustrator CS5 we can see a snap to pixel grid option.This becomes important if you work for the web,to insure your graphics stay sharp even viewed as pixels.However it only affects straight vertical or horizontal lines.So depending on how you create the star it may have no effect on it.I will write more about this in the future,about pixel graphics,that means graphics made out of a bunch of squares and anti-aliasing.When you are done setting up the document hit the OK button and it will create the document for you.
In the toolbar,nested with the rectangle tool we have a so called star tool to.So click and hold on the rectangle tool than choose the star tool.If you click and drag out on your artboard it will create a star for you.Before you let go of the mouse button you can tap the up or down arrow keys to add more flares(or how they call those)or to subtract from the star.So hitting the down arrow key a few times will cause the star to morph into a triangle.When you are happy with you star let go of the left mouse button and it will place the star on the artboard.
Now our star has a white fill and a black stroke applied to it by default.Then again when for print white is called paper.A printer does not use white pigment it just lets the color of the paper show trough,so you can't have white if you are not printing it onto a white sheet of paper.First of all I don't need that stroke applied to the star.The fastest way to get rid of that would be by pressing "x" to bring strokes to the front in the lower left corner of the interface and then you should hit"/",that will set the stroke to none.To change the fill you can hit "x" again,double click the fill symbol(white square) to make the color picker show up,or you could use a color from your color swatches panel(window/swatches,if you don't see it)or you can use the color panel to(window/color,if you don't see it).
Ok,so recap!
First make sure your object,in our case the star, is still selected.Click on it with the black arrow tool,witch is the top-most tool in the toolbar to select the object.As we can see in the image bellow the initial state of our star is a white fill with a black stroke applied to it.In the fill-stroke control area we can see the fill swatch rests on top of the stroke swatch,that means any color adjustment we make will affect the fill.So I just chose a green color from the swatches panel.(Window/swatches.if you can't find your swatches panel).
And here it is after I clicked on the green swatch
Now to get rid of the stroke,first hit "x" to swap the fill with the stroke,that means the stroke swatch will sit on top of the fill swatch now,and then hit "/" to set that to none,or you can hit the none button under the stroke swatch.
And now comes the fun part!
Make sure your object is still selected,if not click on it with the black arrow tool.Go to effect/3d/extrude and bevel and a dialog box should appear.
First hit the preview button so you can see what happens.The result is a true 3d object inside of illustrator,not just some effect.So you can spin your object anyway you like by spinning the big box in the window.
So,you can rotate your 3d object anyway you like by clicking and dragging over that big box in the window,and you will see the X,Y and Z coordinates change,or you can enter manually some numbers into the input fields.If you take a good look at the box,or our star you will notice that there is something funny about them.The back part of them,that should be further away from our eyes and should be slightly smaller then the front part is the same size as the front part,making it look a little bit distorted.Here is where perspective comes into play.Right now is set to zero,but it controls how small the back part of the extruded object will be.
The extrude depth controls the thickness of the object,with the cap option you can decide whether you want a filled object or a hallow object.The bevel option is set to none,that is why the height option is grayed out.My English is not good enough to explain what bevel is,but you should try out the options and see what they do.But here is a nice example of what you can do with the bevel option.
So as you can see I pushed extrude depth to the max and perspective to,then I rotated it with the help of the box in a position that I liked.I used no bevel that one is set to none.Next click on the "More options" button.In the image above it says "fewer options" because when you click the more options button the window expands to show more options and the button turns into a "Fewer options" button.Here we can set the lighting of the 3d object.By default in the area highlighted with red you can see only one light source lighting that sphere.In my example you can see two dots symbolizing two light sources.I created the other one by hitting the middle button under the sphere the one that looks like a new layer button.You can position your light sources by clicking and dragging them.As long as you have preview checked you can see the lighting of the object change as you move the light source.I used one light from the front and one from the side.Light intensity controls the intensity of the light source obviously.Ambient light,well you should think of it like the sun,or the light that lights up an entire room.So increasing the intensity will evenly lighten the entire object or decreasing it will darken the whole object.Highlight intensity controls how bright the highlights will be on an object,highlight size controls the size of the highlight on the object,and blend steps control how smooth the highlight will appear on an object.We haven't talked bout blends in Illustrator yet,but smooth highlights are achieved by blends.If you expand the 3d appearance on a shiny object you will see that the highlight on it is created by lots of shapes.
I will quickly create one just so you get the idea.
So I created this 3d star with the settings shown in the image above.By the way,hitting "Ok" on the extrude and bevel window will only create a virtual appearance for our star.That means it is re-editable.You can go to the appearance panel(window/appearance,if you don't see it).There you can double click where you see extrude and bevel to bring up again the extrude and bevel dialog.Just make sure you object is selected.
From the appearance panel you can re-edit effects applied to an object by double clicking the name of the effect,or you could delete it by clicking on the effect to make it active than clicking on the trash can icon.You can choose other effects that you wanna apply from here to by hitting the fx icon,or you can add more fills and strokes to an object.
I just realized I added to many blend steps,so I went back and reduce it to 13.If I zoom in you can see that banding on the object.That is the blend.
But getting back to our shooting star.So far so good,and its just good enough if you don't want a shooting star with a bent tail.But if you want one with a bent tail you will need to expand its appearance.Also if you want to change the color of some part you will need to expand appearance to.Now it is only a virtual appearance of the object,that is what makes it re-editable,but in order to edit the tail we need to convert it tho a physical appearance.This will make the 3d effect non editable and will brake down the object into multiple shapes.Go to object/expand appearance.
Now we want to expand this envelope distortion to so go to Object/Expand.Now we have a curved shape that still is in a group.We still need to position a few anchor points and we are done.Because the tail components are grouped together you can't select the components with the black arrow only if you double click the tail to enter the group but with the white selection tool you can still click and move individual anchor points.First make sure smart guides are turned one.Hit cmd/ctrl=U for that.Now as you hover your mouse over the screen it will appear in bright green over what you are currently hovering your pointer over(anchor,line or handle).Now with the white arrow tool click on the corners of the tail and drag them into place.When you see next to your cursor with bright green the word anchor appear let go of the mouse.The two anchor point will land on each other creating a perfect alignment.Sometimes the lines will get curved as you move anchor points around leaving parts of the tail showing from under the star where they should not be visible.Grab the handle with the white arrow tool and drag it around to curve the line in such way that it hides that part of the tail.
I did not create screen shoots about these last steps,because I already explained this in the previous tutorial,the stylish button tutorial.If you don't know what anchor points,line segments and handles are you can read more about them there.And also how to move them with the white arrow tool.
