Cutting the edge of a shape in Illustrator

Question

Does anyone know how I can't cut the edge of a rectangular shape in Adobe Illustrator CC? I need to round a corner here and there of some letters. I believe I can "trim" these specific edges using the shape of a circle, but I don't know how to do the process.

P.S.: I don't want to round all edges, only some.

Here's an example to illustrate my question:

How do I make those cuts? I see the circular shapes marking where it has to be clipped but I don't know exactly how to do that specifically on the edge of the wings!

Any instruction welcome, thank you very much!!

Answer 1

Create your shape with hard corners, select the point at the corner that you want to round off with the direct section tool (white arrow) and then move the live corner radius widget (little circle with a dot in it) to affect the radius of just that corner. Repeat this for every corner that you want to be rounded.

Answer 2

I would use the Pathfinder tool set. First make a copy of the original shape (the bird) and save that off the art board just so you have it. Next, draw a circle over the wing as you like it then hit "DIVIDE" from the Pathfinder. This will break the shape into segments at every intersection. You can delete the sections you don't want. Keep doing this for the other shapes on the bird.