Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

three. Group the squares into a single ornament by pressing

Ctrl+G (-G) or by choosing Object➝Group.

That’s it for the tonalpohualli for now. You’ve seen the start of what

you can do armed with only the scale tool. Save your work, grab a

snack, maybe get up and stretch—or dive right in to the next ex-

ercise, where the real magic of power transformations and series

duplication shines.

Rotate, Refl ect, and

Series Duplication

The ancient Aztec calendar still has some wisdom to impart—

namely, the use of the transformation tools to quickly recreate the

repeating ornaments around the circles of the calendar, also referred

to as series duplication. The current art contains just one of each of

these elements. In the Lesson 2 fi les, I had pre-created the bulk of

these ornaments; here, you’ll learn the secrets of how I made them.

1. Open the art in progress. If you have your artwork

from the last exercise, by all means, use it. Otherwise,

make your way to the Lesson 05 subfolder inside the

Lesson Files-AIcs5 1on1 folder, and open the fi le called

to rotate.ai. You’ll see just a smattering of ornaments; by the

end of the exercise, you’ll have recreated the full set.

2.

Tear off the rotate and refl ect tools. In this exercise, you’ll

be switching between the rotate and refl ect tools, which share

a spot in the toolbox. But there’s a better way to access them.

Click and hold the tool, and when you move over the tear-off

bar, as shown in Figure 5-43, release the mouse button. This

creates a fl oating minitoolbox that you can position anywhere

on the screen.

3.

Turn on the Guides layer. Click the far left column next to the

Guides layer to turn it on. You should now see two guides,

bisecting the horizontal and vertical centers of the art.

4. Select the ornament and set the origin. With the black

arrow tool, select the ornament you grouped in Step 16 of

the last exercise. Press the R key to switch to the rotate

tool, and click at the intersection of the two guides to

set the transformation origin, as shown in Figure 5-44.

(In the fi gure, I’ve changed the origin point to orange to

make it easier to see; by default, the icon will appear

in the same color as your guides.)

Figure 5-44 .

Figure 5-43 .

157

Rotate, Refl ect, and Series Duplication

5. Rotate and clone the square ornament. Drag the

ornament clockwise around the calendar, as shown

in Figure 5-45. Add the Shift key to constrain the

rotation to 45-degree angles. Finally, add the Alt

(or Option) key to clone the shape, and then release

the mouse button.

6. Clone the ornament again. The cloned ornament

should still be selected; repeat the preceding step,

this time dragging counterclockwise. Your smart

measurement should read 90º when you release the

mouse button, as in Figure 5-46.

7.

Refl ect the three square ornaments. Now that you

have one half of the ornaments complete, it’s time

to clone them to the other side:

•

Switch to the black arrow tool, and add the

fi rst two square ornaments to the selection by

Shift-clicking them; all three ornaments should

be selected.

•

Switch to the refl ect tool by pressing the O key,

and click somewhere along the upper part of

the vertical guide.

•

Next, Alt-click (or Option-click) somewhere

along the lower part of the vertical guide, as in

Figure 5-47.

Figure 5-45 .

Figure 5-46 . Figure 5-47 .

P E A R L O F W I S D O M

It may seem counterintuitive, but for rotation purposes, positive

values rotate the object counterclockwise and negative values

rotate clockwise. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it stems

from the polar coordinate system (that forgotten lesson from

high school geometry), which is the same system Illustrator

uses to calculate rotations.

158

Lesson 5: Transform and Reshape