RocketBoots

Getting up to speed with Designer on iOS. I’ll hopefully rig these two in Unity when they’re done - which is another thing I need to get up to speed on.

Apple are probably going to announce a new iPad Pro around March, so it could pay to hold off to pick up a discounted / second hand of the previous generation. I don’t think you need to worry about the display on the iPad 7th gen - it still looks like it’s going to be good, check it out in person to be sure though. They both use the 1st generation of Apple Pencil, which isn’t as comfortable as the 2nd gen because it’s heavier and longer, which for me would be a good reason to aim for a more recent iPad Pro if you can, but it hasn’t seemed to bother other people I know so... 🤷‍♂️ However, if your choice is between 7th gen iPad, and the Pro 9.7 it looks like the iPad 7th gen is a better bet - it’s faster, and has a bigger display, which means less time showing/hiding menus and zooming in and out. It’ll take a while to get used to designer on iPad if you’re used to desktop - the UI is similar, but in different places. I find it slower to do things without a keyboard, but it’s perfectly useable without one. You can connect any Bluetooth keyboard you already have to it (I use an old Logitech k810), it has almost all of the shortcuts of the desktop. Hope that helps!

So I have a gradient, and I want to simply use an exact copy of an existing colour on it. Ideally I’d just like to be able to quickly drag the colour swatch onto the gradient - simple, job done! However, as the colour I want to use does not appear in "Recent Colours" or 'Quick Colours" the current method required is to select colour picker, drag it over the area of the gradient I want (the big circular swatch right next to the eye dropper icon isn’t pickable on iOS ), attempt to pick the colour (this is fiddly and often isn’t an exact match), hope I’ve got it, and finally click the colour swatch next to the icon to apply it to the gradient. This is an even longer process if there is another shape above the one with the gradient. Is there a better, faster way to do this that I'm missing?

Yup! This would be really useful. One thing I really miss from illustrator is the free transform + perspective distort tools.

So I have a gradient, and I want to simply use an exact copy of an existing colour on it. Ideally I’d just like to be able to quickly drag the colour swatch onto the gradient - simple, job done! However, the current method required is to select colour picker, drag it over the area of the gradient I want (the big circular swatch right next to the eye dropper icon isn’t pickable), attempt to pick the colour (this is fiddly and often isn’t an exact match), hope I’ve got it, click the colour swatch next to the icon to apply it. This is an even longer process if there is another shape above the one with the gradient - I often make shadows with shapes using a multiply transparency, as can be seen on the canister. Is there a better way to do this that I’ve missed?

I've been having this same issue as well on the current 12" iPad Pro + Apple Pencil. This causes the path to start in the wrong position. I've also noticed that when using the Apple pencil with the pen tool Affinity will often place the point above or below where I have clicked - this happens near paths I've already drawn, as if affinity does not want me to start a new path on top of an existing one.

I'm using the current 12" iPad Pro.

My first impressions after half an hour of use is this: 1 - Great work! My rather complex files seem to open with no problem! I can get work done with this. 2 - Moving points feels a *little* laggy - what I mean by this is that there's a small (perhaps a 1 or 1/2 second) delay before the point moves when dragged with the Apple Pencil. It's not a deal breaker but makes the app feel a bit "sticky". 3 - Full support for all keyboard shortcuts would be excellent, and really speed up my workflow. Some seem to work, while others do not. Examples of keys which do not work are: modifier keys - using shift to with the select tool to pick multiple objects, or "i" to bring up the colour picker.

Hi Sean, thanks for the fast reply - I've figured it out the situation which causes this: the bottom most layer was outside of the artboard. I still don't understand why moving the shapes would cause them to change their hierarchy in the layer pallet, but adding the layer back into the artboard makes things work as they should

I've run into an odd bug which happens like this: I copy and paste shapes from one layer, to a layer below. When I try to move those shapes with the mouse, or the arrow keys they jump up to top layer. Using the latest Windows version of Affinity Designer, Windows 10, most recent automatic updates installed. Cheers!

Hi there, I have about 60 assets which I need to export as SVGs in colour, and in grayscale. Is there a simple way that will allow me to export SVGs in grayscale without 1) Rasterising them. 2) Requiring me to manually recolour every shape in each asset. Cheers.

Hello, I'm Trevor White, a professional character designer and Illustrator living in London. I've worked in games and animation for over 10 years. You can find some of my work here - https://www.behance.net/trevorwhite I started using Affinity when I became freelance, and when Illustrator went subscription only. I've been using Affinity for professional work for about two years, though sometimes I still need to bite the bullet and sub to Adobe for a month or two for certain projects. Looking forward to see Affinity grow and become more capable. As well as holding out hope for the elusive iPad Pro port!

Thanks - done!

Yes, please send me the upload link.

No matter what I try some shapes simply go missing, and some remain but change position. Shapes are: just vectors have no layer effect applied - glow, blur etc. Grouped/ungrouped makes no difference. shapes are closed - no un-joined vertices. are not using any overlay modes such as soft light, overlay etc. I've also tried copying the illustration into a new document and exporting. I'm using this software professionally so things need to work. As it stands it looks like I'll need to sub to Illustrator and re-do a lot of my work.