Ok, body starting here.

Note: You could theoretically complete this tutorial by drawing directly on an SVG document. If you do that, your SVG element is the "root" of your document and should have these attributes:
 
  
 
 
Because the SVGs in this demo are intended to be dropped into an HTML page and manipulated with CSS, I will be leaving these attributes out. For more information, check out the W3Schools SVG reference.