gdenby

FWIW, Scanner Darkly was made using an app, Rotoshop, that required immense amounts of artistic work. From what I've read, every frame was hand drawn. If you are willing to learn the technique, and spend the time, Affinity can do the job, and much better than what you show. Some of what you've posted is similar to what I used to do w. Corel Photopaint. One could run a smear brush on paths w. variations on rotation and sizing along those w. an automated routine. At this point, Affinity does not have a stroke to path or stroke mask function, or a scripting language.

Can only make a few comments. My skills w. AP are minimal. (I need lots more practice, to say the least) The base problem is that the original image was very compressed, and was full of compression artifacts. Digital garbage. Those made for the chunky edges. I don't know enough about AP to decrease those effectively. I used GIMP quite a lot, and still do, and I couldn't get anything useful from the image. Basically, it was mangled to make it really small. I tried some of my usual routines, and got no where. If I needed to, I would have had to proceed w. very tedious manual erasing. AFAIK, the file size is because AP does not compress anything, and there were 3 large pixel layers. The background hall itself was 15+ Mb uncompressed. Using .jpg compression at 90% quality, it dropped to 3+ Mb.

Hi, DirkFunk In either AD or AP, you have 2 options. Ordinary raster brushes that have a small cross section can be laid down w. single clicks. One can use the vector circle shape also at a small size, and then move it around holding down the command key, which will duplicate it as dragged around. If using the the vector circle, you will end up w. an immense number of layers, which you will most likely want to gather into groups. Note that a circle can be made into a symbol. You can make several circle symbols, and command drag them around, and then change the hue of shape of masses all at once by altering a single instance.

I've had something similar happen, but not in any way I could consistently duplicate the problem. I can select an object, and that is reported in a highlight of the layer in the layers panel. But I can't move it with the mouse, but can move it with the arrow keys. Since I've had problems w. the mouse, I supposed that may be where the problem lies. As shown in my sig, I'm using a Mac, and sometimes the bluetooth connection does not work right. Seems to be from weak batteries and outside interference. If I save, and re-open the problem goes away.

I really like the original, so concise. Adding the dot/circle between the engine and the covered plate car works. Personally, don't appreciate the smiley face. But if the client wants it, maybe put it in the trains nose shadow. Using Thomas the Train smiley face front end as a precedent, but not a copy.

I tossed those that I had problems w., but still had a d-load file. They are in a set called georgeguo. Some seem to work OK, others have this odd striping effect. Attached is a screen shot of a vertical stroke made w. one, and the brush settings dialog. I notice the usual S-curve stroke illustration is partial. Others long discarded were much worse.

I've loaded lots of .abr files, but a few have failed, and a few work, but incorrectly. My guess from looking at the files, and or download sources, is that there was a format change in .abr. Ones made recently seem to be fine, but ones from some years ago seem to break up, and become a bunch of streaks.

It is simple. Just add a step into the routine. Make the petal shape Duplicate, and rotate whichever way. Subtract the duplicate. The remaining shape can then be duplicated around a shifted rotation center. Take all the shapes, add them, and manipulate nodes as you like. In the example below, I use a tear shape, w. a pressure modified stroke. I placed it over a cloud shape so I could easily match the "ball" size of the tear to the cloud arc. Then did as described above. And a bit of fun

Hi, Lcruz84, If you mostly use Photoshop as a "paint" program, I suspect Photo will suit you a little better than Designer, tho' there is a lot of overlap between the 2 in terms of paint functions. One feature that Designer has is a "vector" brush, which will either stretch or repeat a bitmap along a vector path, allowing strokes to be repositioned and/or tweaked. I use Designer much more, and I find it easier to apply gradients and change opacity, but that may because of lack of practice w. Photo. Photo, on the other hand has more ways to deform bitmap selections.

I agree, the Affinity suite needs lots of stuff. Myself, would like to see lots more of Designer features. From what I can gather from forum postings, Serif isn't using any of the earlier code in the Affinity apps, so there is a huge amount of new programming. Also wish they could move faster. But I can't imagine that aren't moving as quickly as they can.

My wife wrote a lot, and eventually taught literature at the college level. The 1st word processor I bought for her that was worth anything, adjusted for inflation, cost $240, and only crashed about once per session. But the output was pretty good WYSIWIG, even on a 9-pin dot matrix printer.

No, just back before flowing text around shapes was available. 1st there was text. Then, in a rectangular box. And!, get this, one could move the box on the page and the text would move too! Getting text to flow in simple irregular rectangular shapes was a minor miracle. Getting it to flow around voids in the box, who'da thunk? This is a way of saying that the Serif crew is writing modern code to do something that has been around for decades, and took decades to implement. Like building a house from ground up, if you will.

Hey, Phil_rose, You make me smile. I'm old, and forgetful, but you remind me of when there was no "something so basic."

Hi, shizumiaoki, Great work in service of a great cause. Hat is off, and saluting!

Hi, szimm, While I did start using Illustrator about the same date as you, it was only a small part of my job. And, the last time I used it at all was at least 8 years ago. Thus, I'm unfamiliar w. how the 3D effect letters would have been formed in Illustrator. I suppose that if you have been doing a 90+ fold resizing, the forms are re-rasterized at printing time to the printer's resolution. A MEB said, the AD screen image is dynamically rendered, and it would indeed be useful if that info could be passed to an output device as needed. As mentioned, the AD 3D fx is a raster depiction from the beginning. There is a way in this case to improve the output, tho' it requires more work. As above, change the document resolution so the dpi equals or exceeds the output device's resolution. When rescaling the text, change the fx parameter "radius" by the same proportion. IE, a radius of 50 px is changed to 100 when the object is scaled 200%. This keeps the FX shading/modeling effect properly scaled. For single letters, the letter can be duplicated, and the top most vector emptied of any fill. That can be down sized just a bit, maybe .995%. After nesting the layer that will be rasterized into that, the smaller vector outline will clip away the antialiased raster fx at the edges. As far as I can tell, the .pdf export routine compresses the raster render, and makes artifacts, no matter what the resolution. Myself, I don't know how to change the compression parameters. One can export as .tif and have no artifacts, but the file will be on an order of magnitude larger.

Here is another method that may work, tho' I've not tried using it enough that I'm entirely happy w. the results. This is for irregular shapes, as well as regular ones. Select an item that has only a fill. Duplicate it a couple of times. To each duplicate, add a dotted stroke, using different point sizes, intervals, phases, etc. Expand the stroke on each, and add the expanded stroke back into the parent shape. Add the parents together. Continue as you like till the edge is as irregular as you might need. At that point, one might select all nodes, and convert them into smooth, and perhaps run the smoothing routine on those. Alternatively, instead of smoothing smoothing, just add a bit of blur.

As firstdefence mentioned, there AD doesn't have a smooth tool a'la AI.But if you use the stabilizer function of the pencil tool, that does something similar to what AI does to constrain lines as they are drawn. The node smooth function sometimes does simplify and make more gradual curves. But it won't turn a sloppy square into a circle. If you are trying to smooth something with sharp corners, like letter shapes,the corner tool is the simplest way to form arcs.

Also, using power duplicate and symbols. These started w. 1 curved line, with pressure change stroke size, and color gradient. Made quickly, 4 samples in of 8 made in 8 minutes.

Hi, MiLeung, Company branding resources are typically highly structured for legal reasons. It is not just a matter of good design. It is so no one can infringe on the brand identity by using a slightly different color or font, among other things. As far as using AD, there are many tools which can facilitate making exact structures. For starters, check out the grid manager, snapping options, and the transform dialogue, particularly the ability to use mathematical expressions to size objects. Then move on to constraints to keep graphic elements in defined arrangements.

Hi, ErichBoehm, Text to path: Select text. The context tool bar across the top will have an option to click at the far right "Convert to curves." That does it. In the layer panel, you will see a new group of curves where there was a text layer. Replicate/blend is on the 1x road map. Promised before version 2. Looking back over the previous version upgrades periods, sometime in the next (+/-) 18 mo.

Good work. What happens w. different color gradients, considering different color have different luminosity values?

I think the selection problem is because you have groups inside groups. On the right side of the pond, the grouping is three levels deep, which would ordinarily require multiple clicks to get down to the individual curves. There is some other problem, tho'. If I completely ungroup the curves, I can only click select the one that was top most in the hierarchy. Command clicking allows me to step thru that grass cluster. Clicking on the soil dots activates a section of some root cluster. If I zoom in close enough, I can marquee drag across individual curves. Grouped, I can make a selection by stepping thru the layers, or switch to outline view, and click on specific vectors.

I rarely use art boards, so I can't help w. any problems w. those. Am I understanding how you are working? I'm guessing you are making artistic text, and converting it to curves. These groups may be positioned such that the letter forms are overlapping in space. If using the move tool, the 1st click will select the group. A double click will pick out the member of the group. From what I can tell, after the single curve is picked, one can continue picking other items from within the group. If clicking out of the group, you need to go thru the double clicking again. If the groups are nested within each other, one must go thru a series of double clicks to dig down. Sometimes if I have a particularly complex set of groups, all entangled in the same area, but in layers that are far apart in the hierarchy, I will switch to outline view mode, and click directly on the vector line I want. That way I can get to any single item without digging down in the groups

Hi, polyflow, The vid goes by pretty quick, but at least some of what I saw can be done rather easily. It is just a matter of nesting the stroke effects inside parent layer(s). A quick example. The strokes can be re-positioned, re-shaped somewhat, colored, blurred, etc.

Hi, Albo, I don't have the time now to step thru this fully. I mostly use Designer, not Photo. Here's what i would do in Designer, I suppose the same might be possible in Photo. Create the vector shape array of diamonds, and half diamonds. Be sure to have them in accurate position. Group them. Use the fill tool, choose bitmap, and place an image onto the group, sizing appropriately. In export persona, double click each geometric shape, and use the context mouse menu to "create slice." Repeat as needed. I don't understand what you refer to when you say the PNG's will be imported into a film, but the above should make the PNGs one at a time, but need to be numbered/named as needed.