doomy

Apologies if what I said was in any way taken as a jab at you all. I don't expect you to update status, I was just remarking that it was from 2016 since many things can change in 3 years - though I don't expect an update. My reply is more aspirational than anything else; again - I am not saying I expect you or your company to provide me with software I specifically want to buy. If that was your business model I don't think it'd last very long. 
I have no clue how your company is structured nor where efforts are being focused - it's possible for all I know that Serif has a million employees all working on new creative applications with a release date near in the future. It's also possible that you have a small team and are choosing to support the products you already have released. Or it's even possible it's just one very, very tired programmer in a 100sqft apartment. I wouldn't know.
In other words, I greatly enjoy Designer and Photo, and I'm a big fan of Serif's business models and focus on improving UX. You can't blame me for wanting Serif AE
I appreciate the response.

That's sad to hear. Where did you get that info that they are not looking into an AE inspired software? I only can find a thread from 2016.
There is no After Effects alternatives, full stop. Natron is ambitious, but it's more similar to Nuke, and also is not actively developed (or at least it needed a maintainer for quite some time so it's on the way to abandonware).
I've done several hours of search for some hypothetical non-adobe video alternative, and it simply doesn't exist somehow. If you want to do motion graphics or video effects, AE is legitimately the only way to do that. 
I really hope Serif chooses to make an Affinity Video some day so I can finally cancel my Adobe account once and for all. 

Affinity Design Crashing when the Slice panel is clicked on in export persona.
It's not happening in all files - but happening with some files.
I have attached one dummy file to which is crashing on my system.
Steps to reproduce the bug: Open the attached file. Go to export persona. Click on the slice tab - and it crashes!

I am running affinity designer on Windows 10 64Bit, Intel i76700 16 GB ram and 6 GB Nvidia Graphics GTX970M card.
 
 
Business card bug report AD 2019-09-07.afdesign

Apologies if what I said was in any way taken as a jab at you all. I don't expect you to update status, I was just remarking that it was from 2016 since many things can change in 3 years - though I don't expect an update. My reply is more aspirational than anything else; again - I am not saying I expect you or your company to provide me with software I specifically want to buy. If that was your business model I don't think it'd last very long. 
I have no clue how your company is structured nor where efforts are being focused - it's possible for all I know that Serif has a million employees all working on new creative applications with a release date near in the future. It's also possible that you have a small team and are choosing to support the products you already have released. Or it's even possible it's just one very, very tired programmer in a 100sqft apartment. I wouldn't know.
In other words, I greatly enjoy Designer and Photo, and I'm a big fan of Serif's business models and focus on improving UX. You can't blame me for wanting Serif AE
I appreciate the response.