How To Make 3D Vector Vintage Stars

1. Make your star shape

Use the Star tool and hold Shift to make a Star shape (or any shape you want, really) on the artboard. (everything you see here is exact size).

2. Extrude your shape

With your Star selected, in the Effect menu go to 3D > Extrude and Bevel.



Check the ‘Preview’ option so you can see what you’re working with.



Now you should see something like this:



Now take the ‘Perspective’ setting all the way to the right (160 degrees)




Now make your Extrude depth something like 900 or so.




Click on the blue box and drag to get your desired rotation.



Click OK, and you should have something like this:

3. Expand Appearance

Now that we have our 3D shape, we will most likely want to have a little more control over it. Go to Object > Expand Appearance and click OK to get rid of the effect and separate our effect into individual shapes that we can edit.



You’ll notice that we now have individual shapes for each side of the 3D star shape (and the effect s gone as well, which is good). Great! Now lets make a few more changes.

4. Fill the Sides with a Gradient.

To do this, you can either ungroup (about 3 times) until you can select the individual shapes, or you can use the Direct Select Tool (white arrow) to select the individual shapes and fill them with a gradient.




Do the same for all of the sides.



This is pretty much a 3D Vintage Star already, but there are a few extra touches we can add to take it a step further.

5. Offset the Front Face of the Star

To do this you will, again, either have to ungroup everything until you can select an individual shape, or use the Direct Select Tool (white arrow).



Select the face of the Star.



In the menu, go to Object > Path > Offset Path.



Choose a negative value for the offset. (Negative = Smaller/Inside the Selected Shape) I chose -8px.



Click OK and you will see your original Star face, and the new offset one.



Click once on the blank artboard to deselect everything, then use the Direct Select Tool to select the new (smaller) star.




Fill this smaller star with a different color to add something a little extra to your vintage star design.

Take it a step further:

6. Add a stroke around the entire group.

Hit Command/Control + A to select everything, then hold Option/Alt, click, drag and release to duplicate your shape. (or you can copy and paste if you like)



Now, select the NEW group of shapes and if they are grouped, you must ungroup them until you can select individual shapes with the black arrow. DON”T SKIP THIS STEP.



Now, with all of the new (individual) shapes selected, in the Pathfinder palette (Window > Pathfinder) hit the “Add to Shape Area” button.



Keep everything selected the way it is and immediately hit the “Expand” button in the Pathfinder palette.



Sweetness! Now we have a single vector path that is an exact copy of our 3d Star shape. Now all we have to do is add a Stroke and Align. You can change the fill if you want, but you won’t be able to see it anyway. It’s up to you. I chose a dark 3px Stroke.

7. Align Your 2 Shapes

IMPORTANT: To align, first, make sure your shape on the left (the ‘3d’ shape is grouped). Then select both of your shapes like below, and hit these two buttons in the Align palette (Window > Align) in any order. (you probably want to uncheck ‘align to artboard’ in the palette options first).



If your shape with the stroke is on top it will look like this. So all you have to do to get it behind the 3d shape is (with the black arrow) click on the blank artboard once to deselect everything. Then select your top shape with the stroke on it, and hit Command/Control + { until it gets behind your 3d star shape.



Now it should look something like this!



That should be enough to get you started, but I have one extra tip for you before you go…

Extra Bling

You can literally do anything you want from this point, but here is a quick tip to take it one more step:

You can easily make the front of your vintage star appear to be ‘inset’ by simply duplicating the smaller star shape, filling it with a dark color, and nudging it up and over. Like this: