STEP 6. Select the red circle. Click the Fill Tool icon and from the Fill Type drop down menu on the Property Bar, select Circular. By default this uses the circle's fill for the solid color and creates a soft white center. With the Fill Tool still selected, drag the center of the fill (see the green arrow) up and to the left as shown, to create the illusion of the ball being lighted from above. Select the shadow ellipse, then click on the Transparency Tool (the Bordeaux glass icon--do I have French wine on the brain, or what?) and change the slider value on the Property Bar to 25%.

STEP 7. Make a duplicate frame by marquee-selecting all the elements in Frame 1., dragging them to the right, and clicking the right mouse button (before releasing the left mouse button) to drop a duplicate. Repeat this process twice more so that you have four frames. Step 8. Referring to this image, modify the three duplicate frames as shown. In Frame 2., move the ball down and use the Transparency Tool (The Burgundy bowl glass icon) change the transparency of the ellipse to 50%. Move the ball down to the bottom in Frame 3. With the ball selected, use the Selector Tool to drag the top, center bounding box handle downward reducing the height of the ball by about 60%. (The squares that surround the selected object are called the bounding box, the individual squares are called handles) Change the transparency to 0%. Modify Frame 4. by reducing the height of the ball to about 80%, positioning it as shown, and changing the ellipse's transparency to 50%.

Step 9. Draw a circle the same width as the ball. Draw a rectangle the same width as shown. Select both, and from the Arrange menu, select Combine Shapes--Add Shapes. This creates one single shape. Use the Color Editor (click the small color wheel to the left of the screen palette) and change the RGB values to: R=255, G=255, B=204. Bring the ball in front of the pink shape (select the ball and hit Ctrl - F to bring to ball to the front). With the pink shape selected, click the Transparency Tool, (the Beaujolais glass icon) select Linear from the Transparency Shape drop-down list, and drag the direction arrow as shown, slightly in from the end of the pink shape. This make the shape appear a pinkish blur. The end of the arrow is 100% transparent, while the opposite end is totally opaque. Adjust the depth of the blur (as shown in the small frames above) by dragging the control handles on the pink blur shape. Save your work and meet me at the London Wine Bar on Sansome Street, San Francisco, for a quick quaff of claret. When we return, we'll turn our drawing into an animation. A Votre Santè!

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©1998 Gary W. Priester
This lesson may not be copied, altered, republished or distributed in any type of media without the express written permission of the author.