Here I am going to show you a technique to create vintage looking 3d stars in Illustrator.
1. Make the star shape
Use the Star tool and hold Shift to make a Star shape or any other shape on the artboard.
2. Extrude the shape
Select the star and go to Effect menu > 3D > Extrude and Bevel.
Check the ‘Preview’ option.
You will get something like this:
Take the ‘Perspective’ setting all the way to the right (160 degrees).
Give the Extrude depth a value of around 900 or so.
Click on the blue box and drag to get the desired rotation.
Click OK, and you will get something like this:
3. Expand Appearance
Now navigate to Object > Expand Appearance and click OK to get rid of the effect and separate the effect into individual shapes that we can edit.
Now we have individual shapes for each side of the 3D star shape. 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 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.
5. Offset the Front Face of the Star
To do this, ungroup everything until you can select an individual shape, or use the Direct Select Tool (white arrow).
Choose the face of the Star.
Navigate to Object > Path > Offset Path in the menu.
Select a negative value for the offset. (Negative = Smaller/Inside the Selected Shape) I chose -8px.
Click OK and you will see the original Star face, and the new offset one.
Click once on the blank artboard to deselect everything. Then use the Direct Select Tool to choose the new (smaller) star.
Fill the smaller star with a different colour.
6. Add a stroke around the entire group.
Select everything using Command/Control + A. Then hold Option/Alt, click, drag and release to duplicate the shape (or copy and paste).
Choose the NEW group of shapes and if they are grouped, ungroup them until you can select individual shapes.
Select all the new shapes and hit the “Add to Shape Area” in the Pathfinder palette (Window > Pathfinder).
Without leaving the selection click “Expand” in the Pathfinder palette.
Now we have a single vector path that is an exact copy of our 3d Star shape. We have to add a Stroke and Align. You can change the fill if you want, I used a dark 3px Stroke.
7. Align the 2 Shapes
IMPORTANT: To align, first, make sure the shape on the left is grouped. Then, choose both of the shapes, and hit these two buttons in the Align palette (Window > Align) in any order (uncheck ‘align to artboard’ in the palette options first).
If the shape with the stroke is on top it will look like this. To get it behind the 3d shape, click on the blank artboard once to deselect everything. Then select the top shape with the stroke on it, and hit Command/Control + { until it gets behind the 3d star shape.
This is what you will get.
You can make the front of the vintage star appear to be ‘inset’ by simply duplicating the smaller star shape, filling it with a dark colour, and nudging it up and over.
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