In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to transform an object in perspective in Illustrator. This is extremely handy when trying to make a pattern fit a certain perspective. First, we are going to create a simple circle pattern. Select your ellipse tool, holding shift to draw a circle. Then hold shift and alt and click and drag the circle you just made to drag a copy straight across from the original. Space it about half the width of the circle from the first one.
Then, hit command and the letter D to repeat this action. Hit command and D 6 more times so that you have 8 circles. You can make as many as you like or need. Doing this also makes sure that the circles are spaced exactly the same distance apart between each circle.
Then select all of the circles and hold alt and the shift key again, but this time drag straight down to create a second row. Try to space it roughly the same amount downward as you did across. (This only matters if you are trying to create a perfectly square pattern). Then hit command and the D key to repeat this action. For our purposes, do this 7 times, making 8 rows and 8 columns of circles.
Then, with your whole pattern selected, grab your free transform tool and click and start to drag your mouse like you are resizing the pattern, and immediate hold down the command key, option and shift and depending on what direction that you drag in, your pattern will transform to that perspective. This is very handy to be able to create work in perspective, with correct angles.
