need help with some java

so i recently started and need to figure out this problem.  I need to make a  java app that takes an input (int) and a character (*) and makes a diamond shape, with the int value as the middle of the diamond and decreasing by 2 as it goes up and down.  it needs to be done using some kind of loop.  any help?

it should look something like this (without the - because it won\'t display correctly without it:

   

     
---*
--***
-*****
*******
-*****
--***
---*

coding scares me. bump4u