Frankentoon Studio

Hello guys!
 
Just wanted to let you know that today I've released a FREE eBook for Affinity Designer: Creating a Stylish Jungle Scene
 
For $0.00 you'll get:
22 Pages PDF eBook FREE Assets Library  Color Palette Original .afdesign file  Click on the image to subscribe and get your download link. If you don't want to receive further emails from Frankentoon, just un-subscribe after downloading the eBook, no hard feelings :)
 
Enjoy!
 

We use the same iPad models in the studio for primary work. 
I agree with you. As a trilogy of cross-platform apps, Affinity is powerful and has much growth potential. I understand that these new versions have been written from the ground up, and it's understandable that many issues might arise as we use them daily.
However, expecting most users to be patient enough to wait for suitably stable versions is quite a challenge. We're crossing our fingers that these issues get fixed as soon as possible because we love using all Affinity tools in our studio.
- Enrique
 

I have two iPad Pro's. 1 x 12.9" 5th generation (primary), and 1 x 11" 2nd generation (for sketching, reading, etc). They both crash regularly while importing brushes, but not always with the same brushes.
I can imagine it's frustrating as for many new users they probably believe that it's your brushes and assets that are causing the issues. I'm disappointed that not only has Serif not address this bug yet, but they've also neglected some of the brush rendering issues that have appeared in v2—particularly with some brushes with wet edges not rendering at all (or even rendering in the brush list). This has actually led me to move more and more of my illustration work to Procreate where the brushes (including 3rd party brushes) are a dream to use, and the app not only feels 'right' on an iPad (not a desktop app shoved into an iPad), but it also is incredibly stable. With the new default iCloud storage coming in Procreate things are only getting better. Sadly, this is not so with Affinity.
Also, Serif are mad to be neglecting their 'developer' (for now brushes, assets, etc) community, or burning their goodwill with long-standing v2 issues. Their apps don't exist in a vacuum, and without a rich, diverse, and thriving ecosystem the Affinity apps will increasingly look less capable than other alternatives.

Might be directing to a possible cause - we had other functions specifically breaking on M1/M2 iPads only
Solved in V2.1 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/180157-designer-on-m1-ipad-unusable-with-pencil-or-touch/#comment-1040068
Unsolved:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/187093-v21-barely-usable-on-m1-ipad-layer-boundary-and-adjustment-ui-vanishes/#comment-1091141
 
 

For what it's worth, I am not having any problems deleting manually-add brush categories from 2.2 (only tested in Designer, though).
But at least once, Designer froze while adding brushes. They were successfully added, but I had to force quit the application and restart it.

I'm not getting any crashing when deleting brushes, but for me the apps regularly crash while manually importing brushes from 3rd parties such as Frankentoon, Retro Supply Co, and True Grit Texture Supply. While the apps crash, the brushes have actually been imported and are actually present when the app is restarted. This isn't a new bug, it's been with 2.x from the very start.
It's a rather confusing user experience, and I suspect one that new users will find very frustrating.
FWIW I don't purchase anything from the Affinity store beyond the Affinity apps themselves, as I prefer to buy all brushes, assets, etc directly from the 3rd parties that produce them. So for me, everything is installed manually, and crashing on import is sadly a much too common part of my Affinity workflow now on iPadOS.

Hi Dan, thank you!
- Enrique

Just to confirm, I've 'bumped' the development report for the issue with this thread now - I can also see that it's been tentatively fixed by our team already, pending internal testing & therefore should hopefully be resolved in the next update

This bug happens to both Designer and Photo. When you attempt to delete any brush pack, no matter the size, both apps just freeze. When you close and restart them, the brushes are still there.
By the way, importing brush packs still crashes both Designer and Photo. However, after launching teh apps again, the brushes that caused the crash are installed.
- Enrique
 

Not necessary. They'll just link this one to the same bug report.

I can replicate this crashing issue when importing vector brushes into Affinity (iPad) 2.1.0
Import brushes from the hamburger menu The usual confirmation dialog appears After clicking ok the app crashes After re-launching brushes appear installed correctly

Sir Andy Somerfield vs the Accumulation Golem ... 🤪
 

I have reopened the two recently closed bug reports regarding Brush Accumulation. 

I don't have 1.8 anymore and 1.10.6 is currently broken too, but from your 1.8 Brush Editor it looks as it should be (even if I guess you have Wet Edges On from your canvas).
Flow could stay off, since it is not needed and could be confusing.
As @,,, wrote above in 1.10.6, 2.0 and this 1732 Beta  you need at least one of the HSL Jitters enabled(*) in order to make Accumulation work.
You can clearly see it here.

 
This is a 1.8.x which had a Hue jitter too. It looks as it should, but if I turn H off typing 0 or setting to None...

It turns Accumulation OFF again.
Please check these tools as attachment.
(*) It seems to me an ancient bug, I somehow remember it at certain point during very first iPad Beta.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Accumulation Issues.afbrushes

I can confirm what Paolo has shown above, so there's no point on adding anything else to those issues. Hopefully this can be solved anytime soon 😊
- Enrique

Hi All,
We are pleased to make available the next update to the 2.1 beta (2.1.0.1736). This will be available for you shortly on auto-update. Below are some of the main changes in this update...
WebP and JPEG XL now available in batch export
As has been commonly requested since adding these new formats to V2, we have now made them available as batch format options in Affinity Photo.

New left swipe options on iPad layers panel
You can now access lock/unlock, rename layer and change compound type (if layer in question is a compound) by swiping left on a layer as shown below:
RPReplay_Final1680080397.mov
 
Brush panel improvements
Texture brushes in Designer persona can now be viewed in thumbnail view (i.e. you now have ability to uncheck "Show as list") Alt-Click on raster brushes now changes brush while keeping your current brush width as well as ignoring associated tool. If you just want to ignore associated tool then use shift-alt-click Auto-select
With auto select turned off you can now hold cmd (Mac/iPad) / ctrl (Windows) to temporarily turn it back on to make another selection on document.
Also note: We have encountered some problems with auto select being off with multi-page documents. For that reason it is currently disabled with a multi-page doc, we are hoping to have a fix for this soon.
Vector flood fill tool
When your bucket is loaded with a colour / fill you can now just click on any object to fill it even if it is not selected. In this case this will just fill the whole object - if you want the fill tool to take into account intersecting shapes and curves they all need to be pre-selected as before. While in the tool you can now just click on an asset or stock item to load your bucket with that bitmap texture (i.e. without having to drag drop as before). This is currently only implemented on desktop, but will be added to iPad in too in the next update. There are new controls for whether you want to add as an additional fill or replace the current fill. To be honest there is still some outstanding work which needs to be done with this, so we will talk more about this / what the expected behaviour is in the next update. A new option to "fill to visible boundaries". This means if any of the objects in your selection are obscuring any line segments from other objects, these can now optionally be ignored by the tool. In the example below - without the new option checked there are 12 possible areas you can fill to, but now you can alternatively choose to just show the 6 areas on the right. 
Crop tool
Cmd / ctrl / shift constrain modifiers are now available when in unconstrained mode as promised.
Dashed lines
We now accept zero as the 2nd and 3rd dash value to give different options, particularly when in combination with balanced lines. This example was discussed on the thread - the left option begins with a dot and when balanced dots are in the rectangle corners. The right option begins with a dash, but the 2nd "dash" can now be set to a dot (zero value) to enable dashes in the corners in this case.

Pencil double tap option for quick menu
If menu is already visible a second double tap will now dismiss it.
Rename Layers
You can now double click / tap on an artboard name to rename it!
 
Plus as usual lots of bug fixes as listed in the fix list thread!
To comment / give feedback on any of these changes please go to the relevant thread for that feature which is linked to in each of the headings above.

Thanks,
Ash

I'm not getting that on Windows 10.

Hi Frankentoon

Thanks for letting us know. I can reproduce this on macOS (but not Windows as also reported).

I'll get this logged!

Thank you

Yes, I’m seeing this too, no option in Designer persona to display Brushes as List, seems that can only be set when in Pixel persona?
Also agree the vector thumbnails look odd, like they are negative images of how they should look.

Thank you! Me and my wife moved to Madrid last year, in July. The rest of the team is still working from San Salvador

Good to hear from you, Enrique!
Off topic, I see that your location is stated here as Madrid. When did you move from San Salvador?

Are you sure? 
On macOS low spacing it is even worse...

Screen Recording 2023-03-15 at 09.03.37.mov Here you can see a different tool and background colour (one layer painting), you can see also other issues such as the "blocky" effect or the mixing that happens "before" crossing colour areas.

Screen Recording 2023-03-15 at 09.24.15.mov It is true that I'm not a photo retoucher, and AP is "photography-first" so for sure its behaviour is useful for these channel and frequency separation tasks/workflows.
Speaking as an illustrator, I find it a bit "confusing"
For sure illustration is still perfectly feasible...

...but is a bit hard and the design strategy of the preset needs to be different, since the 80% of tablet's dynamic is disabled and the only parameter which rules the interaction (Strength) does not have its Jitter and needs to be changed manually.
 
 
 
 
 

Thank you for this option!
I'd try to use this thread to share some digressions I've collected about this tool, coming from both users and personal experience.
I think it has an impressive potential but I'm still struggling in making credible tools for this one... 😅
Probably there are some wrong expectations from my side, but using it "as is" it still looks more like an "advanced" blender than a painting tool (to me at least...).
The behaviour of the Strength slider is non-linear

It seems to start acting as a paintbrush close to the end of the ramp

mixerBrush.mov  
In order to make it more realistic you need to paint into a filled layer, so it needs a "one layer" approach for illustrations.
Also, using tablets only Nozzles Interpolation and "Geometry" Jitters work properly.
Maybe HSL Jitters or Wet Edges are skipped by design, but Flow's variation does nothing at all (both Jitter and its context bar value).
Texture works in Nozzle mode only(*) and  Sub Brushes > Erase mode does not work too.
In short some dynamics allowed by the engine are totally bypassed and it has been this way since the very first AP release.
On the other side the Affinity team keeps on adding cool features such as this one and the mixing Model: so is the actual behaviour something by design? 
 
Because in this case I need to choose different design strategies.
(*) Texture works in both modes this morning... 😅
My fault, I was using a over-sharpened paper
 

Hi!
I was about to create a new thread about this, but since this one has been opened during all this time... I'll try to give it a shot as well. We've been trying to create some performance Macros in the studio and, sadly, the simple copy-paste (from clipboard) feature hasn't been implemented to Macros, even in V2. 
Maybe this is not a priority, but sadly... many useful automations and fancier Macros, could be created if this function was added.
- Enrique
 

Love them! Impressive work
- Enrique