Surianee

In this tutorial you will learn how to create the star burst vector illustration in Expression Design.

This tutorial is loosely based on hugh roper’s illustrator star burst ray.If you’re a Illustrator user who is learning this software, you can use his tutorial as a comparison.

Step by step tutorial

1. First create a new file in Microsoft expression Design. File > new… Give your file a name, and just take the default presets for this exercise.
2. We start of our tutorial with drawing a simple star.To do this, go to your Toolbox on your left hand side of the screen, find the rectangle > click and hold … select the polygon tool under this tool group.

3. Click and drag the shape on your art board.Don’t worry if it doesn’t look anything like a star yet.With the polygon tool still selected, go to the properties panel on your right hand side, scroll down to find Edit Polygon.Enter this value : Points : 16, Inner Depth: 50% and leave the twirl value to 0%.Give it a color in the appearance panel (also in the properties panel).

It doesn’t matter what color you choose, as the star will be cut out later.We just want it to be visible.You should get something like this:

4. Now put the star aside first, create an ellipse using the elipse tool.make it slighly smaller than the star.Also apply a radial gradient just to make it interesting.

5. Select both the star and the gradient ellipse, there will be an option at the bottom of the screen to align them together using align Vertical centers and then Horizontal Centers.

6. We are going to cut the star out.To do this, at the bottom of the screen, there should be a path option.Click it and select Front Minus Back

this will give you:

8. Now to a little bit tedious part, you must select the anchor in the inner radius of this shape.Get the direct selection tool from the toolbox.

Click once on the artboard to deselect all the anchor.While holding the Shift key carefully select each anchor in the inner radius.

Take note that the selected anchor will be solid in color, while the others should be white in color.

9. To scrunch the anchor points to the center you got to scale it.If its in illustrator, you right click and transform to scale, but in expression design, you need to go at the bottom left, lookout for a cogwheel symbol.Click it and select scale as percentage

Make sure the width and height are linked to each other, then set the W: 5%.

There you have it.

10. Another variation of it is to apply an illustrator version of clipping mask called clipping path. To do this, add a square with white fill and no stroke on top of your star burst.

Select both shape, Right click > Make Clipping path> With to path

and you get the square version of it.

This concludes the tutorial.Any corrections or suggestions are welcome.

I thought up of this tag line a month ago.But then today I came across this presentation.What do you think of it? The title is Shift Happens.
I wasn’t surprised as the tagline isn’t too hard to come up with.Must have ran across everyones mind.

Thus its time for me to change it to something better.

The easiest way to learn is to view the sample files. Here are the crystal report asp sample files if you’re using Report Designer Component ( RDC )

A tutorial,short and it uses version 8.5

A forum entry about this topic

We have 2 more fruits to go: durian and the cute flower.

This tutorial is a part of the series of

Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 1)
Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 2)
Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 3)

The spikes on the durian

To create the initial shape, You must follow Procedure B in Part 1. The reason is because of the scale dialog box.

We are creating an organic shape here which involves guesswork.The preview / unpreview option on the scale dialog box enables us to adjust the shape of the fruit.

1. Create a star shape with about 20-24 points
2. Select all the inner anchor points using the direct selection tool
3. Right click > Transform > scale …
4. Only the scale dialog box can provide you with a preview when trying to scale the anchor.This proves very useful when you have to guess your way into creating the shape that you want.After a fair amount of tweaking I settled with scale at 170 percent
5. Add a small rectangle in light brown as it’s stem.

While I was working on this tutorial, I found a very nice packaging for a durian product.Looks yummy!

Continuing to our last section, create an ordinary stars with 8 points.

Go to the menu > effects > Distort & transform > Pucker & Bloat..

Set the effect by sliding it to pucker 55 percent

You’ll get a lovely flower petal.Create an ellipse in yellow and place it in the center of the petal.

Your simple flower is completed.

This is the end of part 3 and the end of the fruits tutorial.

Let us continue with two fruits which is a slice of orange and a very simple star fruit.

This tutorial is a part of the series of

Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 1)
Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 2)
Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 3)

Create a slice of orange using the illustrator star tool

we start with the segments for the orange.For this we need to use Procedure A from the Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 1).Set the Radius 1 = 100pt, Radius 2=8pt and Points=12

Set the fill to orange.You’ll get something like this.

Once that is done create using the elipse tool create a shape with W: 250 H: 250 and stroke: 20pt

Assemble everything together, center it using the align panel.duplicate a few slices and there you go, you’ll get slices of oranges!

The obviously easy star fruit

You just need two stars for this.Use Procedure A in part 1 of this tutorial to create a star W:200 H:200 Points:6 and W:260 H:260 Points:6.

Select both of them.

Align using the align panel : horizontal align center and vertical align center.

Using the elipse tool, create six oval shaped pits in white and arrange them freely as you like in the middle of the star.

Hope you can follow through this tutorial.Feedback is most appreciated.This is the end of part 2.Proceed to Part 3

This is tutorial on how to make a simple illustration of a tomato, orange, durian, star fruit and as a bonus a dainty flower.You can also regard this as a basic tutorial of what you can do with the Illustrator Star tool.

I’m going to use Illustrator CS3. Worry not though as you can follow this instructions in almost any version.

This tutorial is a part of the series of

Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 1)
Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 2)
Draw fruits using the Illustrator Star Tool (Part 3)

Before we get to jump straight into it, let me show you what the default star looks like.It is accessible via Illustrators Toolbox:

The default star and the anchor points.

Now, what if we want to create a shape like this?

There are two ways to manipulate the star shape.I’ll label it as Procedure A and Procedure B
so its easier for us to refer to it later during the tutorial.

Procedure A: Manipulate using Star dialog box
Select the star from the toolbox, click once on the art board (without dragging) and this dialog box will appear.

Insert the values for the inner radius and outer radius of the star.Click OK. A star with the setting above will appear on the art board at the point where you first click on artboard.

Procedure B: Select and scale the Star Anchor point

Select the star tool > left click and drag a star shape on the art board. Do not let go of the left click. Use the keyboard Up arrow to increase the number of points on the stars.

Using the Direct Selection Tool Select the inner anchor point of the star while holding the Shift Key.

Right click > transform > scale > Uniform : 20%

The inner anchor will scale inwards.

Resulting in the same star as the one in Procedure A.

So if that is the case, why bother have these two ways of creating the shape? I’ll explain when we get to the durian illustration.For now we will start with the first fruit .. or is it a vegetable? I present you the tomato.

Swirly Star as the tomato leaf

1. Using Procedure A Radius 1 : 100pt, Radius 2: 10pt, Points: 5.You will get a shape like a star.Give it a green fill.It looks like a leaf, but somewhat inedible.We’ll make it look organic.
   
2. Go to the menu > effect > Distort & Transform > Twist. Set the angle to 60 deg.
   
3. Create a circle with red gradient using the ellipse tool.
4. Assemble everything together by centering it using the align panel and you get a tomato.
   

This is the end of part 1.Proceed to Part 2

I found a new crystal report blog Crystal-tips Blog.The post is short and straight to the point. Here are my favorites (updated when they update)..

• If you need to keep track of how long it takes to generate one report you can try this : time generating formula

Although I don’t like mathematics but this speech is interesting.Its about fractals and how it appears in the african buildings, decoration and even divination.

I put it up especially for fabian who asked about congkak.Not sure what it has to do with it but theres a part of the speech where the mathematician point out a game in africa similar to congkak that use fractals.

Upon searching on google. I came upon Mancala in wikipedia.Mancala is the term used to describe the game .This game can be also be described in combinatorial game theory.