This is a continuation of Learn Sketch tutorial. Here’s the Part II: Learn Sketch: Part II

08. Beveling

Now that we have a nice bevel on the center piece, it’s time to add it to the base piece so they blend together better.

In your “icon base” folder, select your “base” layer. What we’ll need to do is following the same light direction, light on top, darker on bottom which here means white on top, pink on the bottom.

Start by adding a first Inner shadow with the color #E187FF with 90% alpha, X:0, Y:-5, Blur 6 and no spread. Add a second inner shadow, this time pure white(#ffffff) 100% opacity but instead of making it go up, make it go down with a a value Y:5 (38).

Now let’s apply this to the little knob. Select your “knob base” group and then the “oval 2” layer.

Apply a first #8D1799 inner shadow with 48% alpha, X:0 Y:-1 and blur:3.

Apply a second #ffffff 100% alpha inner shadow with X:0, Y:2 and Blur:3, it will create a nice shine on top of the knob(39).

The next step is to carve the knob a bit to make it feel more “touchable” and give it some depth. With your oval tool, draw a circle in the middle of the knob of 48*48 (40). Remove the borders and fill it with a black (top) to white (bottom) gradient. Finally, set the white color to 0% alpha(41).

Instead of picking a color for this carving to work, we’ll rely on the overlay blending mode. Set the Blending more to “overlay” for the entire layer (42).

And just like that your knob just took another dimension.

09. Shadowing

My favorite part. Something that surprised me about Sketch 3 is how well it handles them. There is several ways of creating shadow: using the shadow tool in the layer panel, simple gradients or using blurred out layers.

We’re going to use both the shadow tool and the blurred out layer here.

Start by selecting your “Icon base > Base” layer. We are going to add a total of three shadows, from sharp and close to the base to soft and far away from the base. Add the shadows as follow:

• 000000 Alpha 42% X:0 Y:10 Blur:16 Spread:0

• 000000 Alpha 34% X:0 Y:4 Blur:14 Spread:0

• 000000 Alpha 24% X:0 Y:2 Blur:2 Spread:0

You should end up with image 43.

The last thing we are going to do to this base is to add a strong drop shadow. Do to so, duplicate your “base” layer. You can “right click+duplicate” on the layer, copy and paste it in place or click and drag while holding the “alt” key to do so.

Once it’s done, you notice that the effect got copied as well. Remove all of them. To do so, uncheck the box close to the item and then hit the “trash” icon on the right of the section label (close to the “+” symbol). Clicking this icon will automatically remove all unchecked effects(44). Set the fill layer to #000000 and you’ll get the image 45.

In the layer panel, rename this layer “Big drop shadow” and move it under the “base” layer (46).

Now we’re going to position the layer 30px down. Select your layer, hold shift and hit the down arrow key 3 times. “Shift + down arrow” will make your selected layer move by 10px steps (47).

Last step for this shadow, set the layer opacity to 20% and set the gaussian blur to 7px (48). You base now has nice shadows.

Time to add similar shadows for the Knob.

Into your “Knob base” group, select your “oval 2” layer. Copy this layer, pull it out of the group, set it in his own group that you name “Knob shadow” and drag this group under the “knob base” one (49).

Remove all the effect from this layer, set the fill to a flat #000000 color and move it down 10px(50). Once this is done, set the layer opacity to 10% and the Gaussian blur to 4px, the result will be very subtle(51).

Let’s make fancier shadows. Copy this layer and bring it back 10 px up to align it with the knob. We are going to modify the shape of this circle. With your new layer selected, press “enter(return)” and you will see 52. You are now editing the path. Notice that your right panel has changed.

If not already selected, select the bottom anchor (as on image 52). Move this anchor 10px down(53). Once this is done, click “finish editing” at the top of your vector editing panel to come back to the regular view.

Set the layer to 20% opacity and 8px gaussian blur(54).

For the last shadow, duplicate the layer we’ve just worked on and set its opacity to 40%. In the right panel, in “size”, make your new layer 68 width by 80 height and center it on the knob, top to top(55).

Finally, set the layer blending mode to Overlay to get a nice dark blue shadow(56).

We are going to finish the knob shadowing by adding direct effects to it.

Select the base layer of your knob “Knob base>Oval 2”. Start adding 3 shadow effect like so:

• 000000 60% alpha X:0, Y:1, Blur:2, spread 0. Set the blending mode of this shadow to “Overlay”.

• 000000 14% alpha X:0, Y:3, Blur:4, spread 0.

• 000000 50% alpha X:0, Y:2, Blur:4, spread 0.

You should see this (57).

We are now done with the shadows.

10. Final details

To finish, we are going to add tiny thing to make it an on/off switch.

In the Knob base group create a rounded rectangle using the “U” key or “Insert>Shape>Rounded” (58) of 8*2 with a radius of 3 or more. Place it on top of your other knob layers and name it “pointer thingy”, I couldn’t find a better name.

Align it vertically and 8px from the right side of the knob base(59).

Remove the borders and apply a flat #CA2DEA color at 40% opacity.

To give it some depth, add a shadow: #FFFFFF 46% alpha X:0, Y:1, Blur:0 and an Inner shadow: #000000 40% alpha X:0, Y:1, Blur:0. Set the inner shadow blend mode to “overlay”, you will get the result in 60.

In you “color base” use your “oval” tool (“o” key) to create an 8*8 circle that you will place 10 px to the left side of the knob, centered on the width of the visible color base. Name it “OFF”(61). Remove the border, fill it with #ffffff set its blending mode to overlay (62).

To really make it look like “OFF”, let’s cut it in the middle. Create another circle on top of your “OFF” layer. This time make it 6*6. remove the border to see it better and center it perfectly on your “OFF” circle(63).

Select both your “oval 11” and “OFF” layers. Combine those layers using “substract” in your toolbar (64). You should get the result in 65.

To create the “ON” circle, duplicate your “OFF” layer. Rename it and move it to the other side of the Knob, same distance (66).

Click the triangle on the left of the layer to expand the vector group, select “oval 11” (67) and delete it (68).

You are now done!

11. Exporting

The last thing I wanted to show for this tutorial is the way to export an artboard to several DPIs at once. I think this is an excellent feature.

Let’s say you want to export what we just did here in both 1x (the current size we designed for) and @2x.

Select your artboard “colorful switch”. At the bottom of the right column, you will see a button “Make Exportable”. Click it and you will get image 69.

1x indicates the baseline, i.e the size your designed in. Click on the + on the right of “Export” to add a new export multiplier. It should automatically be populated with @2x. You can also change the suffix and the format. (70)

When you click “Export colorful switch” It will generate the 1x, automatically scale your artboard to @2x and generate it in the chosen format and voila!

You can directly download the final source if you are having trouble with some steps.

Here’s a timelapse video of the entire tutorial: