nickhughesart

@evtonic Yes it does. If you bring the pencil line close enough to the end point again it will close the shape. @herbert123 I have tried Manga Studio in the past but it didn't make a big enough impression on me to continue working in it. After looking at your little gifs ill have to give Clip Studio a closer look!

@evtonic3 What I am doing is finishing the shape with the pencil tool and then immediately switching to the gradient tool to redirect the way that the gradient is applied to the shape. I am also making quick adjustments to the gradient in the gradient toolbar, as well as the opacity throughout the entire drawing. I am using a lot of hotkeys to repeat this process throughout the entire drawing. In instances that my object/shape doesnt have a fill, I quickly select the eye dropper tool, select the gradient from another location, then adjust the gradient accordingly. Does that help?

@Crabtrem: Hotkeys are the key to my process. It's not the root of the issue for me with AD though. The problem is that there is no way to edit a path with the pencil tool on the fly. You have to stop your train of thought, go to a different tool entirely, adjust nodes at a snails pace, then continue on with your work. This is also why I want the eyedropper tool or something similar to it. If I am doing complex gradients on the fly its very important to be able to select an object with a specific fill and/or gradient and impart that to another object. In this video I only deal with simple gradients, but in other works I have done extremely complex gradients with 10 or more colors throughout, that I then impart to hundreds of objects. This allows you to create a detailed drawing with tons of depth and color variation in no time at all. @Jmac: Thanks for your support! I am hoping videos like this and sincerely interested designers such as myself can help Serif adjust their tools and add functions that effectively make Illustrator useless. Honestly, I have been working with Illustrator for over 10 years and cant WAIT to switch full time to Affinity because of the big leap forward that it represents. Competition is always a good thing, and Adobe has not even had to think about that, much less try hard in the last 5 years. Illustrator is essentially the same program that I started tinkering with originally, but with a few extra bells and whistles that nobody cares about or uses. I would hate to see the same thing happen to Affinity Designer... I would rather Serif introduce serious updates that truly beef this program up for the bulk of it's users, rather than add tons of tools that are catered toward students and junior designers that need a new way to produce simple shapes and perform simple actions. I hope Serif can take this feedback seriously and recognize how special and transformative their software could be! I am no programmer, but I feel like a lot of what is missing here could be done relatively easily because it just involves redirecting paths on the fly and copying an objects color, style, fill, or stroke to another.

Hey guys, I wanted to bring a video of me working in Illustrator into this conversation. I know that we have already touched on all of what I want to see in Affinity, but I think it helps to see it rather than just explain it with words. I saw the video that Crabtrem posted last month and I have to say while the illustration isn't bad, it's still a very basic way of approaching digital art. Like a lot of veteran digital/vector artists I started with the pen tool, mastered it, and moved towards a more free-form, expressive, layered, complex and above all fast drawing process. This is the key reason why I would love to work in Affinity Designer. I feel like the software is built in a way that would allow me to do a great deal more, if not for the fact that it is currently missing a few fundamental drawing functions. You would either spent countless hours redrawing entire shapes and tweaking individual nodes or loose your mind in the process. I have a video of me working on a client project "Art car" that I think helps illustrate how quickly I am working and how this could relate to working in Affinity Designer. I would LOVE if I could work this quickly in Affinity Designer. Serif team - I would love to be a part of the solution! Please let me know if you have any questions about how I am working this way. Keeping in mind my last post outlining some of my questions of what is and is not possible in Affinity Designer, check out this process video of me working on a summer surf meets winter snowboard culture "art car" for one of my clients in Illustrator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLHRVD3_Qzo

Thanks for the response Matt! I can't wait to see the next major update!

@crabtrem I have used the erase tool and It's not a big part of my process. I would much rather edit paths / objects with the pencil tool as I have been trying to describe. Thanks for continuing to try to help me with this, and keep up the hard work on your artwork. @schizandra I use this function so much in Illustrator I didn't even realize a vector program could be made without it. At Adobe's website they describe this feature in one sentence toward the bottom of the page. It says: Add to a path with the Pencil tool Select an existing path. Select the Pencil tool. Position the pencil tip on an endpoint of the path. You can tell you’re close enough to the endpoint when the small x next to the pencil tip disappears. Drag to continue the path. What it doesn't say is that you can edit any path starting at any point along the segment and chart a new course to finish the line. This allows you to leave the best parts of your lines intact, and only edit the areas that need tweaking. You can even start at one part of the line, edit or add to it, then connect back onto the end of the same line. If you want you could try it for yourself In illustrator. With the pencil tool try hovering over a selected line and you will see that the * symbol next to the pencil cursor will disappear once you get close to the line. If the * is there you are going to draw a new line. When the * is gone that means you are no longer making a new line, you're editing the line you have selected. This is the functionality I wish Affinity designer had, because it makes drawing with vectors and a drawing tablet actually possible. Without it you're spending your entire time editing individual nodes and line segments instead of drawing, so you're better off working with the pen tool going slow and steady.

Thanks for sharing Crabtrem. The video is a good example of how you can sketch and then "vector ink" a drawing in the same program, but it's a little bit basic compared to what I want to achieve with this program. However, I really do appreciate your patience and suggestions. To go back to my original questions - my main question is about being able to edit a line segment on the fly with the pencil tool by restating over the line and correcting the path. Is there a work around that anyone knows of? I understand this software is new - but is this a possibility? And if not, does anyone know if this is going to be implemented soon? In my opinion anyone who draws freehand with the pencil or brush tools will be turned off by this program unless this issue is resolved. The solution shouldn't be to stop what you're doing, switch to the pen tool and adjust nodes manually. With the amount of layers and objects and strokes that I create it would take me 10 times longer to achieve the same quality of work. You can see what i mean on my Instagram account. A lot of my vector artwork is full of complex gradients, dozens of layers, and hand drawn strokes. I could never achieve this with the pen tool. There's just so much geometry there that it would literally take hundreds of thousands of clicks and countless additional hours to complete. instagram.com/nickhughseart I would love to make Affinity Designer my new best friend. I see so much potential in what it has to offer. If I could just make it work as fast as my process in Illustrator..

Hey everyone, I apologize if I posted these questions in the wrong place. The roadmap/requests area wasn't helpful in answering my questions. I wasn't requesting any changes to the software, because I don't know if it can do what I want it to do. This is why I posted in the questions forum, where it says you can ask any question about Affinity. Is there a staff member of Serif that can touch on my original points? Omission of these features makes this otherwise amazing program feel unusable. I would love to be a part of the solution! Lets talk!

@crabtrem Thank you for the fast response. The artboards information is helpful, but I still cant figure out how to replicate the eye dropper and smooth tool functions from illustrator. Not being able to use either of those functions on the fly really limits how this program can be used by artists. Being an artist who has transitioned from the pen tool to using mostly brushes and pencil tool fills for a rapid workflow, there's no way I would ever go back to adjusting individual nodes or line segments. Stopping my work flow to adjust a line segment or node that is out of place is the last thing I want to do. This goes hand in hand with being able to "restate" a line with the pencil tool in Illustrator. You don't always draw the correct shape.. Why can't you restate a selected segment to impart that change? Why must I edit with the bezier tools? It's 10 times slower and strictly mechanical - it doesn't capture the nuances and organic quality of a hand's stroke. I really hope there is a work-around somewhere, because outside of these issues this software is exactly what I have been hoping to see for over 10 years!

Hello, I am what many would consider an Illustrator master. I have been using it at a very fast clip nearly every day for well over 10 years. During this time I have pushed the program to its absolute limits, taught high-level art classes with my techniques, and printed thousands of art prints, murals, artistic vehicle wraps, t-shirts, etc etc etc in various sizes for hundreds of amazing clients. I now lead a design team of some of the best designers in my region, and constantly output beautiful work at a very high level with all of Adobe's products. That being said.. somehow I just found out about Affinity Designer this past weekend!!! I am so overwhelmed with the possibilities I can't even contain myself. I would love nothing more than to switch myself and my design team over 100% to Affinity designer. There are only a few minor things about the software that make it clunky for me, because I work extremely fast in illustrator and keep finding myself road blocked by these issues. Where is the eye dropper tool? Being able to quickly select a color from an image source or impart a color/style/gradient to another object is CRITICAL to quickly working with vectors. In my work flow I manage multitudes of complex gradients by keeping them consistent throughout the entire piece. Being able to select them with the eye dropper tool is the only way to do this. Can you edit paths by "restating" a line like in Illustrator? In other words, if my line isn't exactly what I wanted do I have to use the anchor points and pen tool at that point to adjust it into what I want? Being able to quickly restate a pencil stroke in illustrator is just as critical to my fast-paced work flow. Along the same lines as question 2, is there a smooth tool in Affinity Designer? Being able to select that tool on the fly, smooth out a stroke to my desired effect, and transition back into drawing mode is the one way to stay "in-the-zone." Can I draw outside of the artboard? Is there a way to turn off the artboard? I prefer to think of my workspace as an infinite plane with no boundaries or obstacles, then size my artwork down once it is complete or once I know where the boundaries should be. Creating artwork in a "framework" is a great way to stifle creativity and limit options in my opinion. If I could only resolve these 4 questions I would switch my workflow, and the workflow of my entire staff, to Affinity Designer. I love the other features that it offers.. I just cant get into the flow the same way because of these feature limitations. Any help on this subject is greatly appreciated. Thank you,