Jmation

Thanks Dazmondo77, I haven't tried Publisher. I switched to Designer for its great exporting. It makes it a very clean process to update images for animation. It looks like Publisher might be able to do more than I realised, if Publisher has json export it might be a good addition.

I thought this might help a few people as a workaround. It can be slow so start small. How to vector pattern fill using tools in Affinity Designer 1.9 lets fill a circle with a vector pattern as an example. - create a circle - now create a small box that will contain your pattern template - within the box area draw anything you like (make a smaller box with a different colour for testing) - select the box and everything inside it and create a group - with the new group selected turn it into a symbol (using symbol panel) - drag the new symbol from the symbol panel onto your page and create a grid of symbols - select all the grid symbols and copy/cut them - now select the circle and paste them inside with control+alt+v - you now have a live vector pattern that can be changed on the fly including drawing inside it. Affinity Designer _vector_pattern_fill.mp4

Performance really lags behind Illustrator and inkscape which can perform the below video without any lag (pencil tool). I've also tested on different machines with the same outcome. The performance gets worse the longer I use it. This is the best I can do to show the immediate effect. Default installation document 1920 x 1080 pixels 300 dpi win10 GTX 1070 Affinity Designer 1.7.1.404 Affinity Designer 2019-06-24 17-54-28_Trim.mp4