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Thanks Kasper-V. I like spoof stuff so I'd be interested in seeing your work when it's done. (Joe basically stole most of the poems off Bert to make some quick cash selling the book in the village shop and Bert's actually in one of them - under the name of "Albert Sprat" - as someone who can't plough straight. He would be horrified.)

For a bit of fun at the weekend I thought I'd make some basic book covers, all set within an overall main theme but with each as its own story and genre. I've tried to match each cover with that which can be seen on existing books with the same sort of story/genre. The stories are (vaguely), in no particular order: * Animal Farm 2 - Intrigue and revenge behind the pig arks; * Comes Around - A gritty tale of abuse, betrayal and consequences; * It's a Policeman's Lot - A whimsical story of a "Bobby on the Beat"; * Stealing Henry - A thriller where a cruel father tries to kidnap his son; * Bartleby's Wake - A collection of awful poems by a grizzled old farmer; * Gin Galore - A hapless dreamer tries his hand at being an artisan distiller. Listeners of a certain long-running UK radio drama might be able to guess the overall theme (particularly from the authors' names). They're all silly throw-away experiments - just a few hours of messing around so there are probably lots of problems with each - but if anyone has any suggestions or comments I'd be happy to hear them.

You're welcome.

Nice. I like the colours, the artwork and the design. If I had commissioned you to create this for me I would be very happy with it.

Very nice and, from a quick Google image search, it looks very much the cars in the game.

I'm not sure where I was going with this one but I quite like the result. Not sure what musical genre I would put it into though. If anyone thinks it can be improved - and I'm sure that it can - then please give suggestions.

Bento, the more possible solutions the better so I'm glad you gave yours. I'm certainly not saying the one I gave is the best. The user can choose which one they prefer or is easier for them. (Creating the new document wasn't an integral part of the workflow, it was just a quick place to start and a blank page is easy to align to. You can do the whole thing without the new document or aligning anything.) R C-R, that's good news. Kudos to the developers. uncle808us, all of this is on Designer. Maybe someone - like me, probably - should have mentioned this earlier.

I realise that this is an old post but this is the first time I've seen this work. Stunning. Absolutely stunning. Nothing I ever do will be anywhere near as good as this. I think I might hang up my mouse and go back to potato prints.

Bento, I'm not a huge fan of that solution as you end up having a lot of extra circles (if I've interpreted what you're doing correctly). That would not only give Affinity more work to do drawing unnecessary objects (granted, not a huge overhead in this case) but they could - under certain circumstances, "interfere" with each other, E.g. if the blend mode was anything other than Normal. I'm not saying that your way is the wrong way to do it, just that it's not really an optimum solution and it could cause other issues that might be difficult to track down later on. It does no harm for people to know about lots of different ways to do things. If you know that you need a certain number of stars of a certain size and they're not going to change much then my solution is pretty straightforward. On the other hand, if you want to keep things fluid and experiment with different numbers and shapes then PixelPest's solution is good - but you might need to tinker with various settings to get things just right (and you are limited to the glyphs in whatever font you're using). An alternative would be to use symbols but that goes a bit beyond the scope of the original question.

A nice alternative solution PixelPest but I guess it might be difficult to get the spacing between the stars just right. For example, on your left-hand sample, the gap between the stars at top-centre is slightly bigger then the gaps between the other stars. Hardly a catastrophe, but for perfectionists - or people with exacting (or just plain picky) clients - it might be a bit of an issue. A technique that's well worth remembering all the same.

Glad to help czechman86. Thanks for pointing that out Alfred.

Welcome to the forum czechman86. You can achieve what you want fairly easily. * First decide on the number of stars that you want, then divide 360 by this number. This gives you a rotation value in degrees that you will need later. * Now create a new document. * Draw your first star using the Star tool. * Align the star to the middle of the page horizontally but put it higher than the middle vertically. The idea is to use the middle of the page as a rotation point. * Move the rotation point of the star to the middle of the page. * Duplicate the star (CTRL+J) and rotate the duplicate by the number of degrees you calculated earlier. * Then start duplicating the last duplicate star (CTRL+J). Designer will automatically realise that want to do the same thing again and it will eventually create a ring of stars as you keep duplicating. You might need to do this a few times to get the correct ratio between star size and ring size but it's not very time consuming to play around with. I hope this was what you wanted.

Welcome to the forum SmullDesginer. If you're talking about the trailer here: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/designer/and the movement seen around timecode 0:27 then you need to use Symbols. You can find out how to use them here: https://vimeo.com/channels/affinitydesigner/182383520 They are really easy to set-up but to achieve the sort of thing on the video you need to do a bit of planning/tinkering to get it right. The trick to getting the same sort of movement you see in the trailer is to move the rotation point of the object within the symbol. I've attached a simple document with two different symbols. To see the movement, select any symbol and then expand it and select the ellipse or curve inside the symbol. Then move or rotate the ellipse or curve (not the symbol). The ellipses rotate around the centre of the yellow ellipse while the squiggles move around a point that is slightly offset. Try moving the rotation point of any ellipse or curve - not the symbol - and see what happens. symbols.afdesign

Oh, so very good. Bottom-middle is my favourite.

JimmyJack, dragging a node away and then back again until it turns yellow is a great little tip, thanks for sharing. Alfred, unfortunately, as JimmyJack said, deleting the extra node does ruin the curve - at least it does every time I've tried it - so that doesn't seem to be good if you need the shape to stay the same (with curves at least). It would be nice if AD could realise that the two end nodes were co-incidental and close the curve without making a new connecting line segment. P.S. I've just noticed that pressing the "comma" or "period" key with a node selected breaks the curve at that node. Not particularly mind-blowing but could be useful to someone.

Ah, I see, that's a good point and well worth knowing about. Those little - mostly hidden - loops can cause lots of problems if you're not careful. I'm not entirely sure that neigh actually needs to close the curve - even though they said they want to - but I think we need them to show us exactly what they're trying to do. Otherwise we might be giving advice about something totally different.

gdenby, I don't see how the result of all that is any different to simply breaking the curve at any node like I said earlier. It sounds like it uses extra steps for no advantage. Am I missing something?

You can close the shape with the close icon (next to the break icon) but - as far as I know - Affinity always creates a new line segment between the start and end points. A "closed" shape should always have a continuous outline so that makes sense. You can also join two curves but the resultant curve will only have one stroke. It's a single line so that makes sense too. Adding the lines together also creates a single stroke and that's expected too. I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve. If you can show a good example - something that's not simple - (any kind of mock-up or something you've seen elsewhere) then it might be easier to come up with a solution. I can't think of why you would want to close the curve after you have got the result you wanted but there's a good possibility that I just don't understand your requirements.

You're welcome Bodo B. Glad to help. The fix works, and that little change makes all the difference. Most authors would be very pleased to have such a nice cover on their book.

As you said you're up against time I can offer two simple suggestions: * For circles you can just rotate them so the starting point moves around. * For more control you can try converting the shape to curves and then adding a break at a node (or creating a new node and breaking at that point). Not sophisticated but they might work good enough for what you need.

Nice. My only concern would be with the eyes of the birds. The one on the tree looks a bit menacing with those "dead" eyes staring out and the one on the ground seems to have some form of strabismus. Nothing bad or wrong with that of course but it's not something that I would expect to see on a poster (if, indeed, it is a poster) unless it was something the image was specifically trying to portray. To try and say that a bit better: Images usually show things in a certain light within the context of the image and it's not usual for medical conditions to be seen unless that's what the image has been specifically made to highlight. For example, blind people with guide dogs are not normally shown in images other than images specifically about blind people (or guide dogs). I'm not saying that's right, or the way it should be, or anything like that, it's just what generally happens. Maybe we should see things like this more often so it just becomes usual. Maybe - probably - it's my (society's) expectations that need to change. No offence to anyone was intended by my pointing this out, and with my eyesight I can hardly throw stones at other people's glasshouses (to paraphrase a well-known saying). It's just something that came to me that might be worth keeping in mind. Some people find it easy to mock others that are different to them and, on other occasions, offence can be taken when none was intended. Anyway, as I said, nice work.

Great work. My main concern - and it's quite small - would be where the red "splotches" go over the text. I don't know what's wrong but I just think it spoils it a bit. Are the splotches in the foreground or the background? If they're in the background then surely they shouldn't cover the text. Apart from that, it looks just like any great book cover I'd see on a bookshop shelf (and better than most). A professional job. P.S. To echo Georgeacles, the ladybird (with the shadow of the grass) is a nice touch which gives it that extra "something".

At first I agreed with JET about putting the Studio menu items in the Windows menu but not if they're in a fly-out sub-menu. Putting them in a sub-menu just replicates the problem that the original poster (and others) brought up - unless they can also be selected in another, quicker, way. Putting the Studio menu items themselves directly in the Windows menu might be better but that menu would then start to be a bit unwieldy. Currently each panel has a little "drag control" (I don't know the correct term) in the top-left-hand corner that lets the user drag the panels around. Could a menu/pop-up be activated - by right-clicking this control (not currently utilised) - which lists panels for the user to select? No extra screen space would be needed and less "mousing" would be necessary. It's just a thought. Personally I like the idea of Personas. They help to keep the UI clean by only showing the tools and panels needed for what I am doing at the time. Without them, the toolbar would have lots of greyed-out icons that don't apply to what I was currently doing and I would have to keep opening and closing different panels. Some applications might call them "Workspaces" (e.g. most SDKs have an "edit workspace" and a "debug workspace") but I'm fine with Personas. If you think of the whole UI as the Studio - I.e. the room where you do your work - and the Personas as "hats" - e.g. you wear your "export hat" when you want to create output - then it all kind of works, for me anyway.

Very nice.

"Thumbs up" has been hit.