Subtitles of the Movie

There's a nifty trick inside of Illustrator that allows you to make something rotate or duplicate repeatedly by simply using a Keyboard Shortcut. In other words, let's say I want to take this star and I want to make it go around this character in a circle, or I want to make this star go in a straight line, but duplicate several different times. Well, under the Object Menu and under Transform we have this operation called Transform Again, and we can also use the Keyboard Shortcut Command or Control D. Now before I go ahead and show you how to set this up so it goes around something, let me just show you the basics of how this works. Illustrator is watching whenever you duplicate something or you transform something, so what I'm going to do is make a copy of this by, on my keyboard, holding down the Alt or Option key and then, when I see this Icon over the star, which is the double-headed arrow, I can click and drag out a duplicate. Now, Illustrator is paying attention. It knows exactly how far from the original the new one is. So, if I go to Object, Transform, Transform Again, Illustrator is going to duplicate my motion. And what I can do is on the keyboard, press that shortcut, Command or Control D. So, I'm going to Undo those, and now I'll show you how to set this up so that Illustrator will also duplicate around something. I'll put the star here and then I'm going to go to View, Outline. I kind of need to see the center area of this to make this work. Now, I can just eyeball it and choose my own rotation location myself, so I'm going to click on the Rotate Tool and then, if you look very carefully, you can see a very light blue Icon in the center of this star. This is the current and default location of this object. It's in the center. I'm going to change that by clicking somewhere else, like right about here in the middle of that star. Notice that the crosshair now moves into the center, so whenever I rotate this it will rotate around that point. So, let's go back to Preview Mode and we're going to repeat that same operation I showed you earlier where you hold down on your keyboard the Alt or Option key until you see that Icon and now we're going to go ahead and make a duplicate. Notice, by the way, how it rotates, so I can put this anywhere I want, but I'm going to put it right here for now and let go, and all we have to do is let Illustrator help us out and we're going to press that shortcut several times. So, I'll press Command or Control D and now we have a whole bunch of stars going around our object. This technique is great for creating icons, logos, buttons, or anything that you want to have full control over as far as duplicating things. It's also great for creating hair, eyelashes, leaves, grass, or anything else. So, once again, just duplicate something, whether it's going to be move from left to right, or if you want it to rotate just move the rotation pivot with the Rotate Tool, click where you want the new rotation to be and then Duplicate and then either go to Object, Transform, and Transform Again, or press the keyboard shortcut Command or Control D.