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Step 9: We should now have a 1-2-2-1 pattern of anchor points all the way around the cogwheel. That said, I seem to be missing a couple of points myself. To rectify this, change the Minus Pen to a Plus Pen (or Add Anchor Point Tool if you want to be picky about it). Simply click the path roughly where you need that extra point. By now you'll have noticed that your tools snap to the anchor points and the path as you work your way along - one of the wonders of the guides we turned on in the very beginning. Now that the correct number of points is in place, we can allow ourselves a quick zoom out to get a quick overview. Much better already, aye? But now is no time to rest on our laurels - our vector still needs some work.

Step 10: Back at 400% zoom, it's time to do some dirty work, using the Direct Selection Tool (A) and the Convert Point tool (Shift+C). The Direct Selection Tool is a pain to use, by the way, you'll soon see why. Select it - it's the innocent-looking white pointer at the top of your toolbar - but make sure the cogwheel is unselected. Thanks to the guides, moving the cursor along the path will highlight it with blue, and snap to the anchor points. Now we'll simplify our work further, by hiding everything that's not a path. Click View > Outline, or just press Ctrl+Y. Your beautiful, fat strokes should disappear, leaving you with a thin black line - your vector path. Move along it with your Segmenting tool and move any out-of place anchor points where they belong.

NB. Between every time you move a single point, you must click outside the path to deselect it. Having selected the path, and then trying to move an anchor point just moves the entire shape. Anyway, when you're done, we'll get started on transforming those points.
 

Step 11: Select the Convert Point tool - it's in the box with the Pen Tool - and we'll get started. It's a good idea to turn off the Outline mode, so press Ctrl+Y on the keyboard again -  That way we'll be able to see our changes right away. Clicking and dragging an anchor point with this tool will allow you to transform both its handles at once. Handles determine which way the path will take from that anchor point, in both directions, to reach the next one. Keep this in mind for when you're drawing your own paths. Anyway, you can also transform one handle at a time, independent of the other. This can give some pretty funky (and unrealistic) effects, so we'll try to stay out of that for now. Try experimenting a little, and drag around the handles until you're satisfied. You should note that simply clicking once on an anchor point with the Converter tool will erase both handles, effectively turning the anchor point into a straight corner. This is useful if you're after a harder effect, of if your handle handling has gotten way out of hand, and you'd like to restart.
 

Step 12: Assuming that you are satisfied with all your anchor points, handles, curves and corners, we'll zoom out and continue. By now, it's probably dangerous for me to say this, but you could have gotten away with not editing a single anchor point and still gotten a lovely cogwheel. If you'd painted up your cogwheel in PS using the aforementioned tutorial, and stopped before adding any texture, effects, gradients etc - and just kept that simple, solid-colour cogwheel, you could have imported that, vectorized it, and not needed to think of anchor points for one second. But hey, where's the fun - and learning - in that? ;)

Select your cogwheel with the Standard Selection Tool, and get ready to resize. First move it to roughly the centre of your old ellipse. Resize it upwards, so it takes on an oblong shape, although not as much as the ellipse itself. Then do the reverse with the ellipse, shorten it a little, to match the cogwheel. Try to match the two in size and position, allowing the guides to help you out.

Step 13: The ellipse must be smaller. It will be representative for the hole in the cogwheel, as well as the letter 'O'.  Grab the ellipse by a corner, hold Shift+Alt, and drag it towards the centre. The Alt makes sure your scaling is relative to the centre, and the Shift makes sure the shape itself is not altered. Stop scaling down once the ellipse is inside the cog, like in the picture. You'll notice, however, that your stroke gets really thin, because we chose to scale strokes and effects in the general preferences back in step 2. This is not good in this particular case, so select it, and set the stroke size to something nice and heavy - 25 is a good value.

Step 14: Now for the finishing touches. Choose the regular Pen Tool (P), which is my personal favourite of all the tools in Illustrator. It severely rocks, as you will come to learn!   Using the guides to aid you, find the top-point in your ellipse, and click once. Now, simply go down to the bottom of the ellipse, 90 degrees down from your brand-new anchor point, and click once there as well. You now have a line dividing your ellipse in two halves, representing the letter 'I'. To emphasize this a little, we'll make a little circle above it. Using the Ellipse Tool (L), hover over your new line to activate its guides, and Shift+Alt-click roughly in the middle of the space that's directly up from that point. Drag out a nice little circle, and release the button. You'll see the circle, but your stroke weight is set to 25 or so - so it's huge, and completely black. Set it to 15. Now no-one can deny that the line through your 'O' is an 'I'. Currently, we only lack a 'B' to get 'BIO', and the cogwheel - a mechanical element - can pretend to be the 'rust'. :)

Step 15: Its first things last, it seems, as we begin working on the first letter in "BioRUST". Select the Pen Tool again, and find the middle of the ellipse. Do this by activating the guides, hovering the tool over the left or right anchor point of the ellipse. Follow the 0 degrees guide towards the centre, and click once where the guide intersects the straight line path of the 'I'. Click once to create an anchor point. Now, follow the 135 degree guide from this point, create a new point roughly half-way between the one you just made, and the contour of the ellipse - but do not release the mouse button! Instead, drag the mouse downwards along a 90 degrees guide, until the handle you see rising up on the other side of your current anchor point is about level with the one in the middle of the 'I'. Release the mouse button. Now, just follow the 0 degree guide from the handle you're already hovering over, until it intersects with the 'I'. Simply click once. Things should look like this now. Select the brand-new crescent shape of yours, drag it downwards and out, scaling it to look like the "belly" of the letter 'b' up against the 'I'. Set the stroke weight after scaling to 20 or so - and we're done! If you want, you could always select it, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy and paste, then move the second crescent on top of the other so as to form a "B" rather than "b". This is a matter of taste, and really... I prefer the small "b". :P

You can now save your vector for web, export to PDF, or experiment as you will with colours, fill, gradients etc. Illustrator is an immensely powerful tool, and one that no designer should ever have to be without. You've just learned to master the first, most basic steps of it - it's up to you what you want to do with these skills in future projects.

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