Next I want to start a brand new composition so I move to the pre-comes folder and then in the composition pull then window select new composition. This will bring up a dialog box asking me what I want to name the composition, the composition size, frame rate and the duration of the comp itself I simply named this by highlighting the comp name and typing in shape blare. Using enter or return or selecting the okay button at the button of this dialog box will set up a new composition. I have got no layers in this composition but after effects CS3 will allow me to create new layers using shapes on the vector tools.

In the vector tools in the toolbar I click on the rectangle and navigate down to the ellipse tool this creates circles. Because I have no layers selected we will see that this also creates a new shape blare if I navigate across I will see the options for this new shape blare or fill and stroke. Each one of this can be modified here or later on after I have already created the shape blare. Let us modify those now, by clicking on the word fill I can bring up the fill options I can choose no solid, linear or radio gradients. Here I will choose linear gradient and select okay. Clicking on the stroke option, I will select none from my stroke and select okay.

Now when I click and drag, I will draw a new shape blare, which is a vector shape inside after effects. You can see that it shows up in the time line as a new layer with its own layer icon. Each one of these layers has several options attached to every vector shape by twirling down this arrow next to the name of the contents I can see all of those different parameters. Here I can see I can change my path, the stroke, the gradient fill or the transformation for this vector shape. First, I will change the transformation, twirling this down I can see that the position is off by several pixels or modify this zero for the first position and zero for the second position.

This center is it on the lair I close this back up and modify my gradient fill rather than modifying the gradient fill from the parameters inside the layer I can use the move tools from the toolbar to change the gradient, clicking here brings up a graphic user interface for the start in the end of my gradient fill. Now I can click in the composition window and modify the linear gradient by clicking and dragging either one of these small dots.

I duplicate this ellipse by selecting the ellipse shape in the time line I will use command D on the Mac or control+D on a PC to duplicate this ellipse shape inside the contents layer. With the second ellipse I move it around, simply by using the move tool and clicking and dragging inside the comp window I can use the transformation handles on the box outside of this vector shape to change the scale. We will down the shift key well modifying this transformation to constrain the proportions again, I can use the arrow key to change the gradient by clicking and dragging on the small circles inside my vector shape. We will do this one last time by clicking on one of this ellipse shapes using command D on the Mac or control+D on a PC to duplicate the vector shape.

This time I will move it to the top and scale it down. I will change the gradient in again by moving the small handles. We will close all the ellipse parameters by twirling up the small arrows next to their names. Here I move the last ellipse made in between ellipse one and ellipse two simply by clicking and dragging ellipse three down to the area between the two vector shapes.