Our animated Valentine gif.

One of the many guilty pleasures of creating vector art with Adobe Illustrator is the “Live Effects” feature – especially the Transform Effect! The Transform Effect enables a seemingly endless variety of transformations applied to a vector shape. Each of the whimsical kaleidoscope forms in our Valentine’s Day animated GIF were originally created as vector art in Adobe Illustrator using the Transform Effect on a single vector shape Heart motif.

The Adobe Illustrator technique is simple. Select the original vector art motif with the Selection Tool, go to the pull down menu “Effect” and navigate to the “Transform Effect” dialogue box (Effect>Distort & Transform>Transform).

As demonstrated in the graphic below, we chose a Heart motif and applied 9 copies, anchored to the bottom-right, and rotated at an angle of 36 Degrees (this completes a 360 Degree Circle). Selecting the Preview Box permits viewing the Effect prior to its application. For each variable change made, reselect the Preview Box to refresh the transformation choice. Click “OK” to complete the transformation.

Adobe Illustrator Transform Effect.

Effects are Live so to continue to alter a design, select the art with the Selection Tool and revisit the Transform Effect via the Appearance Palette (Window>Appearance). Double-clicking “Transform” in the Appearance Palette reopens the “Transform Effect” dialogue box to where the settings were last left so further transformations can be created.

If desired, deconstructing the newly created shapes to further manipulate (not necessary in our instance), can be achieved by releasing the shapes to individual grouped vectors by Expanding its Appearance (Object>Expand Appearance); however, the “Live Effect” feature will no longer apply.

Now it’s time for you to have some fun! Download the original Adobe Illustrator file (Valentines_2012_DDT.ai) in which each of the kaleidoscope forms featured in our Valentine’s Day greeting were originally created from the single vector shape Heart motif. Re-envision our designs or better yet follow our lead and create an original vector shape motif to explore the amazing and unexpected designs that can be achieved with the Transform Effect.

We’ve also included the final Valentine’s Day animated GIF for you to share with someone special!

Click to download the AI file.

Click to download the Gif file.