I cannot tell you how excited I am about the January 2021 update for the desktop version of Illustrator
The title is not a clickbait believe me,
I truly think that the new repeat features are the best thing that has happened to illustrator for a long time.
In this video, I will show you how to use Mirror repeat for intuitive symmetrical drawing
Grid repeat for creating seamless patterns and Radial repeat for building mind-blowing concentric compositions.
The repeat functions are added in the Object Menu so if you're looking for them this is where you can find them
there's Mirror, Grid and Radial options and I already went ahead and assigned
custom keyboard shortcuts for them because I use them all the time and if you want to do the same
just go to the Edit Menu and choose Keyboard Shortcuts.
Now in this logo, I want to create a symmetrical detail for the branch
so let's set that up and we can go to Object, Repeat, Mirror
and immediately we get the center of symmetry here in the middle.
There is a white circle here which you can use to move the symmetry line
and I'm just going to align it to the object in the center
but this is something you can always come back to and make changes to
and once my center of symmetry is in place
I can move the object around and see it immediately updating on both sides.
So I can also, of course, resize it rotate it around
and see the changes happening live on both sides.
If you use Mirror repeat on a grouped object
you will have to double-click to be able to make changes to individual items
so this is the same technique isolation mode
which you would normally use with other more advanced features within Illustrator
and at this point, if I wanted to I can even flip the colors on the leaves for instance
by pressing Shift+X and again see it updating on both sides
we can even do it on all the leaves apart from the branch
I just press Shift+X and immediately both sides gets updated
once I'm done I can just double-click outside to exit the isolation mode.
Now at any point if I want to come back and make changes I can just double-click on either left or right side
but you will only be able to adjust the original object which in my case was on the left
so I can come here again double-click and start moving things around like this leaf
and I just want to show you that if I want I can also, duplicate objects
so let's just say we need another leaf here at the bottom I can just Alt-click and drag or Option-click and drag
and again that new object is automatically created within this repeat object
so it automatically gets repeated on the other side.
When I double-click outside notice that in the Layers Panel it's a completely separate object
called Mirror Repeat
and you will only see the individual items inside it once you double-click on it and you are in the isolation mode.
Now there's one additional feature when you're using Mirror Repeat
and that is the angle of the symmetry because it doesn't have to be 90 degrees
it can be anything else
again double-click to come back we can now drag this little circle on the top or on the bottom
to adjust the angle.
In some cases, you might want to set this to a specific angle
for which it's best to use the Properties Panel
here you can put the number in or you can also find this in the control area
however, if you don't see these options here on the top just go to the Window Menu and turn on Control.
Now let's say you want to keep the left and the right sides slightly different
for this, you will have to release the Mirror Repeat object
that means they won't be linked to each other anymore so you won't be able to adjust them at the same time
but the option that you would expect to do this
in here Object, Repeat, Release
actually removes the mirrored object.
So that's not what you should use in case you want to keep both sides
instead, go to the Object Menu and choose Expand.
Once you do that just click Ok
and this is going to generate a group
within which you will have two separate groups for each of the sides
but now if I double-click on this one
I can easily go in and make adjustments
and just have a subtle difference here compared to the left side.
Once again I wouldn't recommend doing this only once you are 100% sure
that you don't want to continue working in symmetry.
Now here's another example of using the Mirror Repeat in this case
we will be using it for an illustration
I already have this first line here created and then I will use my shortcut to add the center of symmetry
so that was the Mirror Repeat option set it up in the center
and then I can switch to the Pen Tool for instance and start drawing or continue drawing this shape
so I can draw it here on the left side
and you will see how immediately the details are appearing on the right side as well.
So one really cool thing when you are drawing
is that if you go beyond the center of symmetry
so i'm just going to scroll down so you can see it better if I click beyond
the center of symmetry it automatically hides the details that are overlapping
so it's almost like an automatic mask that's applied there
if I want to continue drawing a symmetry but start with another line
the best thing to do is to press Ctrl or Command and click somewhere outside
then continue drawing notice that here on the top it's still saying we are inside that Mirror Repeat object
so now again I can continue the other side of that line and I can even create a curved shape
something like that and once again the overlapping parts will be hidden
and if I want I can use the Direct Selection Tool and move this point around
and really create a nice overlap between those two round details.
Now using the Pen Tool we can continue drawing this other line
let's just draw this here...
and then if I press Command or Control again
I can start another line maybe from here join these together
then draw another line once again now from here
join this in and so on and so forth.
So all of these lines will end up in the same Mirror Repeat object or group and just like before
I can always come back and make changes to them so using the Direct Selection tool, for instance, I can select these points
start moving them around adjusting the ears of the fox I can even use the corner widgets to add some roundness on them
and the left and the right sides are beautifully in sync.
Besides Mirror Repeat we have the amazing Grid Repeat option
but notice that the option is not available currently
because these objects are all linked they are actually Creative Cloud assets at this point
all I have to do to be able to use them for any repeat, features is to embed them
so that applies both to cc library assets but also any other linked assets
you have to make sure that you first embed them.
This project, by the way, was something that we worked on with our Pro Member students
we created. a color palette in a CC library and allowed them to add their illustrations to this library
and once there was enough elements added to the library we all started creating patterns
from them. So here is an example and originally I created this on Illustrator on the iPad
which by the way had these repeat features already at launch and now the good news is that there is
a perfect seamless compatibility between the repeat objects you create on the ipad and the ones
you create on desktop.
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and start your Free Trial today and now let's head back to the tutorial.
So once we have the elements embedded
we can use the Grid Repeat option which essentially is a seamless pattern creator
and it's so much more intuitive compared to the original pattern maker that we have still in illustrator
however, I wouldn't recommend using it anymore this is just so much more fun.
So once you have your Grid Repeat
you can start adjusting the spread how far you want it to go how many instances you would like to see
and also you can adjust the spacing between the tiles
so this is the horizontal spacing
and this is the vertical spacing.
If you want to be more specific
you can also add these numbers here in the Properties Panel but more importantly we have
additional options here like the Grid Type we can set this to be brick by row which will create a
slight shift between the lines or we can create brick by column when again it's the same thing
but shifting the columns instead of the rows. Using these options are always useful because they can help
to keep things a little bit more random but what you can also do to avoid that repeated look
is to use either flip by row or flip by column. So if I choose flip by row then every other row
will be flipped horizontally and similarly to this we also have flip column and you can even
have both horizontal and vertical flip on at the same time, in this case, I think that's not working really well
but having both column and row flip horizontally helps a lot for randomizing our grid.
The best thing though is that we can easily make amends to any of the elements by double-clicking on them
and then start moving them around
and we can easily mess up our spacing if you move the objects too far away from each other
but I'm just going to place it here and also we can resize
the owl make it smaller rotate it around
and even duplicate it just like before without Mirror Repeat that's also an option here
and then we can repeat that individual object again from the Properties Panel quick action
and then maybe have this version of the owl smaller
and then if I want to move another object I can just click on the Grid Repeat up here
to go back one step so I'm still in isolation I just went up one level
meaning that I can now move these other elements around and adjust the spacing scaling and even the overlap
so for instance if there's one object that you wish to have in front of others or behind others
just use the Layers Panel and just like normally you would move things up and down here you can do that
or use the shortcut Cmd or Control square brackets with which again you can move things in front or behind other items.
now I would recommend not to include the background color in your actual Repeat Grid
instead add that as a separate object
like here on the right side I have that purple rectangle
which we can again put behind our new pattern
and this way it is just much easier to handle it.
And last but not least let's take a look at the third option the Radial Repeat
which works very similar to Grid Repeat but probably it's even more fun.
So here I have these objects which I would like to use for that radial concentric
repeat or array of objects
and for more complex repeat elements like this one
I would always recommend to use a separate layer
like here you can see I have the text separated and the background
and both of them are locked so I'm not accidentally going to make changes to them
and I have all of these additional items which I will use in the repeat on this separate layer
but they are not grouped together intentionally
because I want to be able to go in and make changes really fast
so it just saves me an extra double-click or extra layer of isolation if we don't have a group to begin with.
So let's just go to the Object Menu
and choose Radial Repeat this time
which creates this really fun composition here
and for now, I'm just going to turn off the text just so you can see better what's happening.
So the first thing that you can do is to resize the whole object
but if you don't want to change the size of the elements
what you should do instead is to use this little circle here in the middle with which
you can contract or expand the pattern
and by the way it also works to rotate the elements around
and we can move the whole thing down a bit
just so you can see it better so once again we can get them closer or further away
like exploding out and if we want to reduce
the intensity or the amount of instances
for that, we can use these arrows here on the right
so we can have less repeats or more densely repeated elements
and of course just like before we can also go in and make changes to individual items
by double-clicking
and now all I have to do is to move these objects around.
So if I move maybe this one here
further in the center
we will see it there and again we can duplicate rotate
resize whatever we want to do.
Now there's one slight difference between using repeat on the iPad and on desktop
currently
and that is on the desktop you will have to make sure that you find the tile that you can make changes to
so all the repeated elements you won't be able to select
so you will have to make sure that you select the right object
you can see this one I can move around but the instances I won't be able to select.
Hopefully, that is something maybe in the future, we will be able to do because it's
already working like that on the iPad
however, I'm not complaining because I'm so happy that we have these amazing repeat options on the desktop.
And there is one last thing I wanted to show you
in some cases like here you might want to hide some of those details in the center and there is
something again that you can do with the radial repeat by adjusting these sliders you can break
up the pattern and split it up and maybe just have one half of it on the top and another half
at the bottom however it can be sometimes tricky to do it especially if you have a complex style
repeated on a circle so instead, what I would recommend to do is to use a Clipping Mask so using
the Pen Tool you can just draw around the area where you wish to see the objects.
So all of this I would like to keep here on the top and maybe let's just move these points in
so we can hide those items that are close to the text and I'm just going to draw another shape here at the bottom
again highlighting the details that I wish to keep
maybe all of this can work
and then select these two shapes turn them into a Compound Path
you can do this from Object Menu, Compound Path Make or Command or Control 8
and then having that still selected hold down the Shift key and select the Radial Repeat
and then press Command or Control 7 to create the Clipping Mask
or you can obviously go to the Object Menu and choose the option from there.
So as you can see this cleared up the composition really nicely
and if I want to I can always come back and make changes to both the mask I can even turn it off
or turn it back on or come back to the Radial Repeat and start shifting things around
and by the way, this illustration was created by Marina a very talented illustrator
also known as Molesko Studio
you can find the link to her portfolio in the description below
and also we have a dedicated video coming up soon when we will be looking at
how she is creating the illustrations
that she's selling on stock sites like Adobe Stock.
So if you don't want to miss that or our other upcoming tutorials make sure you subscribe to the channel now.
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have fun learning guys and I will see you in the next one