Hey gang. Tonight finds me at Photoshop World in Las Vegas. Earlier today I taught my four-hour “precon” workshop, Photoshop 3D Fundamentals, and I’m happy to report, it was a scintillating sold-out success. Afterward, I had a beer with a member of the Photoshop 3D development team who filled me in on some upcoming developments. I can’t share details, but it all sounded very encouraging. (Suffice it to say, it sounds like everything I pissed and moaned about in either my session or my Photoshop 3D videos for lynda.com is begin addressed.)

I mention this because, well, it means that I’m getting around to posting this week’s Deke’s Techniques many hours later than normal. Fortunately, the technique is worth the wait. This week, I show you how to design a magically updating pattern in Illustrator. The movie (which itself is quite magical) is a kind of two-parter. In the first three and a half minutes, I show you how to fill a page with a repeating pattern using Illustrator’s best and most powerful dynamic effect, Transform. After that, I show you how to update the entire page by editing a few base path outlines. Along the way, I integrate another dynamic effect, Roughen.

Here’s the official description from lynda.com:

In this week’s free episode of Deke’s Techniques, Deke shows you how to set up a repeating pattern in Adobe Illustrator that you can update quickly and efficiently. He starts by creating a repeating pattern grid with the Transform effect and then applies it multiple times to fill the document with a single element.

Why would you do this rather than create a standard tile pattern? Well, by using the Transform effect to create your pattern grid, any changes you make to the source graphic are dynamically updated to all its “clones.” Change the color, the shape, or even add another dynamic effect to your master graphic, and it will disseminate throughout your grid of replicants. The result is a pattern that can change with your needs and whims.

Illustrator magic this week on Deke’s Techniques! See you next week for another free technique from Deke.

What’s up for next week? Auto-collapsing a selection outline. See you then!