Hokusai
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Posts posted by Hokusai
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1 hour ago, WebEngineer said:
We are talking about a logo. A lot of people (real designers) here have made some excellent suggestions. You will lose business just because of an icon, trust me excellent designers only want the best.
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 -
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.
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3 hours ago, Stuart_R said:
It's an impressive drawing....like a lot of the artwork that has been posted in the forum....It's like watching something powerful evolve! over a relatively short period of time.
I appreciate both and actually and like mixing raster and vector together. It can create some fantastic effects. You just need to look at Frankentoon, Agata, Monez, Robert Harris and Paolo for the that. I think the ability to combine vector/raster in the same software is a considerable advantage and adds to the versatility of AD/AP and superiority over it's rivals.
The drawings I have been attempting for the past couple of months have however, been just vector. It's quite time consuming and I suppose in reality just been experimenting with vector textures and patterning. As I just can't leave those textures alone....
It can be difficult to mix complex colours like skin without mesh tools. Vectors alone can be limiting without resorting to effects. Initially (a year or more) I was using Gaussian blurs inside objects to mimic highlights and shadows but I have found..much to my annoyance that you can achieve better results using a combination of layered flat tints (opacity), the transparency tool, colour and subtle graduations. Creating grouped overlapping objects with varying opacity/colour worked well for me..but can be a slow process...but once you have the objects it can be fun to play around with.
It is an advantage for me personally as consequence of creating raster brushes (Texture Painters) I have a lot of seamless vector patterns which have been used a lot recently (like Letracet!....if anyone remembers that!
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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
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18 hours ago, Alfred said:
Am I allowed to say 'Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder'? No?? I thought not!!
Alfred,
Very funny! You're quite the punster.
Hokusai
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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
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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
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25 minutes ago, gdenby said:
When you mention "effects," do you mean gradient fills, pixel painting, gaussian blur, etc? If you didn't use those, how would you approximate the same results from pure vector?
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
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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
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GarryP,
Thanks for the kind words.
Hokusai
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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
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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.
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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.
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9 hours ago, Ben said:
Ok, Here are some videos to demonstrate all the snapping that I've added for handles.
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
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7 hours ago, bleblans said:
In Illustrator it works fine.
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
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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
- SrPx, MattP, TheWindowSeatistaken and 5 others
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8
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6 hours ago, myclay said:
it mimics a hypervisor and loads the needed parts of those programs into the UI and offers a vector/Draw persona and photo persona and publishing persona?
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
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Thanks for showing us a sneak peak TonyB! It looks great and I can't wait until it is released.
Hokusai
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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
- A_B_C, Reggie1958, MattP and 1 other
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44 minutes ago, Wizaerd said:
I'll probably switch back to ACD Canvas X, which handles most of what illustrator does, as well as most of what photoshop does all in one single application. Yup, vector and raster capabilities in a single application.
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.
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59 minutes ago, Wizaerd said:
Unless one is a Pro, it is highly unlikely people will have multiple applications. For example, I am not a pro, strictly a hobbyist, and I most certainly not going to install a application for just 1 feature, that's not only ludicrous, but it's cost not effective regardless if the app is free. There are other considerations, and installing a bunch of applications because they do one thing isn't something I'm going to do. Guess since Designer is lacking in so many areas, it is indeed time to put it away and get myself an illustration application that will do it all, instead of waiting for a feature that may or may not ever be implemented here. Call me when the software is actually finished, maybe I'll reconsider.
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.
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7 hours ago, daKroad said:
Free alternative is not a solution but a placebo or excuse. I don't know why is so difficult when also Serif DrawPlus, Inkscape or other very simple programs have it.
Btw this should be a post to let Affinity know how much they are in favor of introduction of this function, not to justify their lack. This kind of comments make you lose interest
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
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Byron92870,
You have to click on the image and it will take you to Paolo's website.
Hokusai
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. 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.
)
New Logo Please!
in Older Feedback & Suggestion Posts
Posted
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!