Jbones

These are delightful

Thanks very much. My initial plan is to try to get this fellow into other poses/scenarios. We'll see how it goes

Thank you so much - for the specific comments above and the rest of the post. It's really helpful!

I'm a hardcore graphic design newbie and an untrained doodler. Here are my first original e-creations (that I feel brave enough to post...)
I'd love to get some thoughts and feedback for ways you might have approached these designs differently, details you might add or adjust, obvious newbie choices/errors, or anything else. All suggestions are welcome!
For instance, shadows are still very much a crapshoot for me. I play around and hope for the best  What I need is a foundational art class, but one won't be in my future any time soon... 
Anywho, thanks for any feedback you provide!
 

Love the smoking beret man. I can see that developing into a series of characters.

Hello! I'm not too experienced myself, but here are a couple of things I noticed that could use some fine-tuning:
 
Be aware of your outlines and try to be consistent with them. To make things look more streamlined, try to keep the widths of the stroke the same and also try to keep all of them the same color (or you could try having the outlines be a slightly different shade than its fill). The guy in the first image has really thin arms that are smaller than the other outlines. Try to limit your color palette. Having too many colors can muddy up a picture. Also you want to try to make sure the colors you choose are a similar intensity. For example, try to pick only colors that are bold, or only pastels, or only muted. The rocket, to me, has too many unrelated colors. However, the witch looks pretty good as well as the guy smoking.  On top of that, also make sure to choose your colors carefully. The yellow of the smoke on your rocket is kind of green and doesn't fit well with the other colors. Of course there are ALWAYS exceptions to the rules; the trick is just knowing when it's okay to break them! Sometimes it's good to start out following the "rules" and as you learn, you can take more and more steps outside of the box.

Overall I think it's a good start! And you mentioned being worried about your shadows, but I think they actually look pretty good so far. As for art classes, there are plenty of free resources on youtube! Just keep working at it and you'll get better everyday.

I'm a hardcore graphic design newbie and an untrained doodler. Here are my first original e-creations (that I feel brave enough to post...)
I'd love to get some thoughts and feedback for ways you might have approached these designs differently, details you might add or adjust, obvious newbie choices/errors, or anything else. All suggestions are welcome!
For instance, shadows are still very much a crapshoot for me. I play around and hope for the best  What I need is a foundational art class, but one won't be in my future any time soon... 
Anywho, thanks for any feedback you provide!
 

I'm a hardcore graphic design newbie and an untrained doodler. Here are my first original e-creations (that I feel brave enough to post...)
I'd love to get some thoughts and feedback for ways you might have approached these designs differently, details you might add or adjust, obvious newbie choices/errors, or anything else. All suggestions are welcome!
For instance, shadows are still very much a crapshoot for me. I play around and hope for the best  What I need is a foundational art class, but one won't be in my future any time soon... 
Anywho, thanks for any feedback you provide!
 

I'm a hardcore graphic design newbie and an untrained doodler. Here are my first original e-creations (that I feel brave enough to post...)
I'd love to get some thoughts and feedback for ways you might have approached these designs differently, details you might add or adjust, obvious newbie choices/errors, or anything else. All suggestions are welcome!
For instance, shadows are still very much a crapshoot for me. I play around and hope for the best  What I need is a foundational art class, but one won't be in my future any time soon... 
Anywho, thanks for any feedback you provide!
 

(...)

The  simplest way to fix the kink  would be simply to delete this node + get the curve automatically repaired by Affinity.
EDIT:  Unfortunately this doesn't work yet.   Hold the opt/alt key when deleting the node to maintain the curve angles.
Thanks to the key hint of @appearsharmless in the following post I insert another clip to avoid my previous information below being misleading.

pen tool node delete opt-alt.m4v So one  the bit cumbersome option would be to delete the node + move / adjust the curve manually only, like so:

pen tool node delete adjust.m4v  
For fat stroke thickness check out the node positions first, then the Stroke Panel options for width and alignment.

Another very good tutorial is "Learn to Use the Pen Tool in Affinity Designer (Any Version)" from Isabel Aracama. This will teach you the ins and outs of the pen tool. You can find this tutorial at "Skillshare.com".
Good luck!
Chris

In this particular case, you could also use the "Delete node but retain curve shape" modifier key:
With the node tool activated, click once on the node where the "kink" is to select the node, hold down the option key (Alt on PC) and press the delete key. 

OptionDelete.mp4

If you open the Resource Manager (Document > Resource Manager) on the original computer do they show as Embedded or Linked?
If they're Linked, you should have access to them, and the Resource Manager would show you where they are. At that point, you could select them (in the Resource Manager) and Embed them, or you could select them and then Collect them. If you Collect them, that will create a new folder with a copy of the image files, which you can transfer to the new computer with the .afpub file.

What you will need to do is change the outline to be in the centre of the outline and then double the width so as to get the same width. I don't really notice if I have two separate colours. You may want to use the Change Order for the stroke to be on the underneath of the fill when you use the centre option if you use different colours.

This is caused by antialiasing.  You probably have the stroke aligned to the outside, can you live with the aligned to the center?