I am trying to recreate this section in a tutorial I completed earlier this week. I start off with a trace I made that is comprised of paths and paths with custom width profiles and strokes applied. The whole drawing has been grouped.
Now, following the tutorial (reference starts at 3:58), I expand appearance to convert the strokes into shapes, and expand the entire composition to convert the paths into shapes giving me individual shapes that are overlapping each other.
It is my understanding that now I click unite to attach all shapes involved into one single vector composition. But, when I click unite, it turns into a black square.
I have tried rereading about the unite function, and I have checked for masks, because I had one on earlier (which I released), but I can't figure out what I'm missing.