Olympic Rings

Today I worked on Illustrator to make these Olympic Rings.  I first downloaded an image of the Olympic Rings that I used for a tracing layer.  I opened Illustrator and made an 11 by 8.5 horizontal artboard.  Then I went to File, Place, and I placed the tracing image onto my artboard.  In the Layers tab, I locked the tracing layer in place so that it would not move and so I could hide that layer when I was finished with the real Olympic Rings.  I then added another layer, which I would use to draw on.  I named the first layer “Tracing” and the second layer “Olympic Rings.”  I started with making a perfect circle by using the Ellipse tool and holding down the shift button as I dragged out the first circle on top of the blue circle on the tracing layer.  I made sure this was the exact size by lowering the opacity.  I then made another smaller circle inside of the first circle, this one white.  I again lowered the opacity so that I could make sure it was the exact size I needed.  I selected both circles, and used the horizontal align center and vertical align center tools to make sure they were exactly spaced out.  I then found the Pathfinder palette, selected both circles, and then clicked the button labeled “Minus Front.”  This caused a donut shaped ring.  I then copied this shape and pasted it 4 times.  I dragged each donut on top of a ring of the tracing layer.  Their opacities were all still lowered so that I could place them as perfectly as possible.  Once they were on top of the tracing layer, I placed their opacity back to 100%.  Then I made five new swatches using the Eyedropper tool on the tracing picture, and I used the “Live Paint Bucket” to ensure that I could easily paint each ring the specific color it was supposed to be and for ease.  I then selected the three top rings and clicked the buttons labeled “Vertical Align Center” and “Horizontal Distribute Center” to make sure the rings were precisely spaced out.  I then did the exact same steps with the bottom 2 rings.  Now, to make sure the rings were interlocked in the correct way, I selected all 5 of the rings and opened up Pathfinder, where I clicked the “Divide” command.  This made each overlapping section its own shape, so I was able to make the overlapping shapes the right color by using the “Live Paint Bucket” again.  At this point, I tried to do the effects of 3D Extrude and Bevel and Stylize Drop Shadow, but for some reason there was a mysterious white circle blocking the effects’ full potential, so I decided to keep my rings as they are because it looked better without the effects!  Overall a great day where I learned so much about Illustrator and its functions!