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Hokusai

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Everything posted by Hokusai

  1. Hokusai
    WebEngineer, I'm very surprised at your sudden change in direction. I looked through your posts and saw that you commented on how much you liked the program in another post and then one hour later you said that you don't want to buy it because you don't like the logo. It seems odd to have such a drastic change in such a short amount of time. If you don't like it, that is your prerogative but I can't help but feel that something else is up. Not liking a program because of its icon is similar to not liking a hammer because of the logo of the company that makes it even though the hammer itself performs exceptionally well. Designer is a great program and I feel it is unfortunate for someone to miss out on using it because of something like this. Here is what you said (sorry I didn't quote it properly) Firstly, I've just downloaded the trial of Affinity Designer and I have to say I am blown away at how brilliant this program is. You really have a winning strategy here, well done! But despite how this beats Illustrator hands down in my circumstances, there's one thing that bugs me (and Im pretty sure I wouldn't be the only one) and thats the logo. Seriously I think the logo was designed by a 4 year old kid who watches marvel splashing in gradients and clutter. Something simple and straight forward I think would justify the quality of software. And a lot of designers out there, especially Mac users appreciate a good looking icon on the doc. Am in the middle of a project right now waiting to upgrade to High Sierra. Once done so, will go ahead and purchase however, very impressed!
  2. Hokusai
    WebEngineer, If what you say is true, when Adobe released the original Create Suite and they moved to those horrible feather logos people would have left in droves but they didn't . I even find the current Adobe logos super lame but they are way better than the old CS logos. The current Affinity logos are in my opinion pretty good. As the current logos are the second version, I don't see any reason to change them for a while. Sure they will eventually have to change them but it could be argued that changing logos too often can have bad effects just as much as not changing it can. Hokusai
  3. Hokusai
    Stuart_R, I too am very pleased and excited about how nicely Designer has been evolving and I can't wait to see what they'll add with 1.7 too! With each update it keeps getting better and better. Normally I take a couple weeks to a month to work on a single piece. This piece (Absinthe) took me only a week but that is a little fast for me (but I do them in my spare time so I'm not working on them full time). My longest is 6 months or so.
  4. Hokusai
    Stuart_R, I agree with you, there are some amazing arts posting some incredible pieces of art here. I've seen most of the ones that you listed and they are fantastic, and there are two very talented users that you didn't list that I recommend you check out if you haven't already, IsabelAracama and Retrograde. Very nice stuff. You're completely right about the gradient mesh, especially if you are working with skin tones. I hope that when the Affinity team adds a gradient mesh it works better than Illustrator's. Illustrator's gradient mesh is okay and I know a lot of people like it but I never could get it to work the way I wanted it to. Maybe I wasn't using it correctly but whatever the reason, I felt it had the potential to be greatly improved upon and I hope that the developers here can offer something better and easier to use. Pure vector pieces do take longer for me to make too but most of the time when I make a piece I prefer to spend a little extra time and keep it all vector if I can. Hokusai
  5. Hokusai
    Alfred, Very funny! You're quite the punster. Hokusai
  6. Hokusai
    Stuart_R, I'm glad that you liked my piece. It was completely drawn using vectors but I did have to use some of Designer's "Effects" to get the skin tones looking like that so I don't know if this one would qualify as being 'pure vectors' but it is close. I normally avoid using anything that will cause rasterization when I export it as PDF but there are occasions when it is unavoidable. Are you a vector purist too or do you like to mix vectors and rasters? Hokusai
  7. Hokusai
    Kevin, Very nice work! Are the cars photos or did you make them out of vectors? My favorite is the image that is second from the bottom, very cool! Hokusai
  8. Hokusai
    gdenby, Thanks for the kind words. Yes, those are the effects that I'm talking about. Gradients are okay and they can be used on purely vector pieces but if you use a gradient that goes from a colour to transparent, it normally rasterizes it so I usually just use only "regular" gradients but I didn't on this one. Normally I avoid anything that will cause my work to be rasterized but not with this piece. Some of the effects you simply can't reproduce (from my experience) using only vectors but you can do things that mimic the style and still keep everything purely vector. How well they work depends on technique and also on the piece itself. The gradients in your user icon are cool, nothing embarrassing about it! When I first got into graphics, I went through a gradient phase too. Hokusai
  9. Hokusai
    This is my second Art Nouveau piece (and probably my last as I'm ready to move on to something else). I based my version on a Henri Privat-Livemore poster from around 1896 or so. As I mentioned in my previous piece, I normally don't use the "effects" in Designer because I normally work only in pure vectors but the effects worked so well with shading on the skin in my last piece that I decided to recreate this piece as well adding my own little touches along the way. I chose this poster because I liked the composition and it had a lot of shading on the skin tones and I wanted to see what I could do with it using Designer's effects. I was very happy with the results. I hope that you enjoy. Thanks for letting me share my picture. Hokusai
  10. Hokusai
    GarryP, Thanks for the kind words. Hokusai
  11. Hokusai
    Phil, My pleasure, I hope it helps. Setting up the grids takes longer to set up than a guide would and you can't do it on the fly but on the positive side, at least you can do it. Hokusai
  12. Hokusai
    I have been wanting to do my own version of an Art Nouveau piece for awhile and I just happen to come across an old poster that was originally created by Henri Privat-Livemont and I thought it would be a good one to recreate with vectors using Designer. I added quite a bit more shading and some other minor things here and there. I normally don't use any effects in my work as I prefer to keep things purely vector but with this one I used two effects to help soften the colours on the face. The effects can easily be removed and it doesn't take away from the picture much but in the end I decided that it looked better with the effects. I've also included a view of the outlines that were used.
  13. Hokusai
    Phil, I agree that having more control over the guides would be a wonderful addition. Until they add that, have you tried setting up a grid with angles? It isn't nearly as easy as being able to have guides at angles but it might work in some situations. Hokusai
  14. Hokusai
    Bokan, Instead of creating a new thread for this, why not post again in the original thread you created last year? Here is the link and as well some insightful comments from the developers.
  15. Hokusai
    Ben, Thanks for sharing the videos and thanks for the hard work! It is much appreciated. The videos looks great, I can't wait to give it a try. Hokusai
  16. Hokusai
    The developers have stated that they will add a trace tool to Designer sometime in the future. The developers have also indicated that they don't want to settle for tools that are only just okay. They had a tracer in DrawPlus but they said that it wasn't as good as they wanted so they are taking their time to make sure that they get their tracing tool to be as good as they can make it before adding it to Designer. I can understand that it is hard to wait for some people but luckily there are some decent third party options to tie them over until tracing is added to Designer. Hokusai
  17. Hokusai
    Just thought I would share a vector illustration that I recently did in Affinity Designer for some nengajo (Japanese New Years cards) that I was working on. For those not familiar with the Daruma (doll), they are normally sold at temples (and some stores carry them) and people buy them when they have a goal that they want to strive for. When you buy the Daruma, it has two blank eyes and you draw one eye in when you start trying to achieve your goal and then you draw the second eye in once you have achieved your goal. I remember reading that the Russian Matryoshka dolls were inspired by the Daruma doll but I don't know if this is true or not? Hokusai
  18. Hokusai
    MattP, Publisher looks great and as far as the question that you asked, I'm siding with @myclay's guess that the icons on the top will allow users to use parts of Designer and Photo within Publisher. If it is just a link to them, that isn't different from what has been available from Adobe since CS 1 but you said it was something nobody else offers and they can't because their programs don't have a common code base like Designer, Photo, and Publisher. Whatever it is, I'm very excited to see it! Hokusai
  19. Hokusai
    Thanks for showing us a sneak peak TonyB! It looks great and I can't wait until it is released. Hokusai
  20. Hokusai
    MattP, Thanks for all the hard work! I just wanted to tell you that I am so happy with the "Hide/Show All" and the "Lock/Unlock All" commands! It really helps me to be more efficient! I do have one request though and I think it is similar to or possibly the same as a request that Retrograde had made sometime before. Would it be possible to make the "Show All" only show all the objects that are hidden and not show the layers that are hidden? Right now when I do a "Show All", it shows all the hidden objects and hidden layers as well. What I'd like to be able to do is have those two commands separated so I can do a "Show All" which would show all objects but not layers. Then have a "Show All Layers" command that would turn on hidden layers. A "Show All" would turn on the visibility of the hidden objects that are on non-visible layers but we wouldn't see them until we turned on the visibility of those layers. Thanks to you and all the other developers for such amazing work! Hokusai
  21. Hokusai
    ACD Canvas X is expensive for a hobbyist. Even the upgrade price is high. For that kind of money you might as well go for Illustrator and save yourself some money. If going with Adobe will save you money, then something is wrong! You talk like being able to do vector and raster in a single app is limited to Canvas X only. Did you use Designer? It does both quite well.
  22. Hokusai
    Wizaerd, I can't help but feel that you've made up your mind and nothing that anyone says is going to change it. Just in case I'm wrong (about your unwillingness to change and I hope that I am wrong and that you'll listen to reason) I'll point out that there isn't any logical reason not to install a free app that takes up a very small amount of space on your hard drive. Why wouldn't you? It is free, so what is holding you back? The application Potrace was mentioned before is free and it is very small ( in terms of size). You don't have to worry about it taking up much hard drive space so what's the reason not to use it? If you aren't a pro and you want a software package that does everything, get your wallet out because it is going to cost you an arm and a leg. There aren't any software packages out there that come close to what Designer has to offer for anywhere near the price with the exception of Inkscape. While Inkscape is free, I'd gladly pay money for something that is a little more polished. It is obvious that you haven't tried Inkscape but go ahead and give it a try. I wish you the best of luck with your search to find a vector app that is a fully featured, powerful, cheap, and as easy to use as Designer. I don't think you'll be able to find one but good luck.
  23. Hokusai
    daKroad, I can understand how you'd prefer to have vectorization built into Designer and I agree, it would be nice but it is more difficult than you think to make it. I recommend that you read through this whole thread from the beginning, it has a lot of useful information in relation to vectorization. If you go back and read through this thread, you will read what the developers have said about it. You will also read about how difficult it is to create such functionality. The developers (from Serif) have said before that they did not feel that the vectorizer in DrawPlus was good enough, they want something better for Designer. The developers have said numerous times that they don't want to just add functionality that doesn't work well just to say that it is there. This is a good thing. Hokusai
  24. Hokusai
    Byron92870, You have to click on the image and it will take you to Paolo's website. Hokusai
  25. Hokusai
    If you have ever used Inkscape then you'd know exactly why someone would not want to use Inkscape all the time. Hokusai
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