cluelessn00b

@carl123 Awesome! Thank you. I feel really dumb but I'll console myself that I'm still figuring out all the tools. The zoom options are great.

Not sure what I'm searching wrong, but can't figure this out. I'd like to do the following: 1. Shortcut key to zoom out the artboard and center it to screen. Sometimes I move around in the artboard and would like to come back to a centered position, but can't figure out the shortcut to do it. 2. Shortcut key to zoon a selected object to the center of the screen. Is that possible? Let's say I have ten layers, and I select one that's to the left of the artboard. Some shortcut key that would then bring the objects in that selected layer to the center of my view (i.e., the shortcuts shifts the entire artboard to the right, not actually move anything inside relative to the board) 3. And if anyone knows... is there a way to move the artboard using the Wacom tablet / Pen combo? I have to drag the horizontal/vertical scrollbars but surely there's a way to grab the board and move it (like how I can do it on the mouse by click and drag) Thank you!

Coming back to report on how I'm doing with the workflow. 1. I've setup my main pages on AP. I realized I don't really need the grid options... 2. I first do the backgrounds and script on the frames I draw on AP (and use AD for some vector stuff) 3. I do my drawings on a general artboard on a AD, and once satisfied, just transfer the vector to the publisher, and where I need to reuse, I add it to assets. I'm still learning all the different possibilities, but this is working great for now. Love learning and I recently purchased a Wacom Intuos Pro Medium, and it's enhancing my enjoyment. Lot more to learn and figure out, but so far so good. Thanks everyone!

Love all the inputs here! Of course, I'm more of a beginner so some of the outlined concepts are harder for me to understand, but I'm sure with practice I'll get there. At this time, learning from the various posts, I think I have a reasonable setup that looks like it could work (I tried it). My intention is to draw a comic book of about 20+ pages. Each page has a few panels--anywhere from 3 - 5. Here's what I am going to do: 1. AD - 1 Artboard per page. And on that Artboard I will use different grids that act as panel separators (the boxes around a drawing). 2. I will use Assets to keep my various Comic stuff - like the grid layouts, dialogs, commonly used backgrounds etc. 3. I will draw inside each panel. In terms of the flow, 1. I will be writing out the script first (i.e., what I expect each panel to have) 2. Draw 3. Place dialog bubbles. Each panel will get a Layer with a numbering scheme: (PgNum]-[PanelNum] for example, 1-3 2-5, and that Layer will have all the sub-layers of the actual drawing. This way, I have 1 page per Artboard, all panel drawings within the board that makes it easier to manage. And the AD file would have 20+ artboards. I should be able to use APub as well, with each page and the same grid asset dragged on it, and draw using AD persona. The advantage here is APub provides the master layout facility. But that's the thought right now... Thanks once again,

@thomaso Yes, what you've outlined satisfies my use case. @v_kyr this could be a more complex case where the overflow does not show on the adjacent panel, but that's not an issue for me. Thank you both!

Thank you all! This is enough for me to take another shot at setting it up. Have a lot to learn, so appreciate the patience

Apologies for a basic question. I'm getting used to the tools and drawing concepts, and layering/masking still vexes me sometimes. I'm trying the concept below and seem to be doing something dumb, but I can't get it to work. This is what I'd like to do: Let us say I want two layers, T (top) and B (Bottom). T is a grid with nice thick borders. Imagine a 3 x 3 grid, where the inner rectangles are like windows and the borders are white. B would be a blank transparent layer on which I want to draw stuff. What I want is the T is on top of B, providing a grid overlay (like in comic book pages) And when I select B, and draw, whenever my drawing goes beyond the border of the window, I don't want it to show (as if the white border is on top). The other way to think about it is I have a white paper with 9 rectangular holes cut into it, and I place it on another paper, and I draw on the paper below. How do I set this up? Thank you!

Wow, you're talented I'll go through it all.

@StuartRc Great suggestions and insights. Based on these posts, it looks like I should pay special attention to how I could the different apps efficiently, given how integrated they are. It's been a while since I've explored all the features, so I intend to do that with an eye on how those would work for my setup. If I eventually find a good method, I'll come back and post about it (will be a couple of months maybe... I'm just getting started.) Super appreciative of how responsive this forum is!

That's great to know. I'll give that workflow a shot. Thank you.

@Old Bruce Thank you, that's a great idea and simplifies it significantly! I intend to draw on the iPad. Does the Affinity Publisher on iPad Pro support the designer personas? (I remember seeing it on the Desktop though I've never used it).

Hi all, I'm looking to create a comic book and have been having a hard time getting good examples of how digital artists setup their workflow, especially using Affinity products. I have the full Affinity Suite v2, and am wondering if anyone has examples of how to set oneself up. For example, using artboards on Designer as if they are pages, placing panels in each artboard and drawing. And then placing each artboard image in pages in Publisher to create a book. Would that be a good way to do it? Do folks have other suggestions/examples? I'm not looking for tutorials on how to draw cartoons or comics, but more how I would set up the process to produce effectively and efficiently. Thank you cn

Still learning, and I know what I want to do, but I don't even know how to search for/ask for it. (I'm using Affinity Designer for Mac Desktop) All I want to do is: I have a background layer with some images on it. Let's call it B1 I then pasted a smaller image on top. This image has a face, and then flowing hair (black color) and is surrounded by white border. Let's call it F1. All I want to do is make remove all the white from the foreground image so that it's just the face/hair showing on the background. I know how to add a mask layer to F1, and then use an eraser to wipe as much of the surrounding of the face - but it isn't perfect because it's really hard to clear out the fine spaces between hair etc. Is there a way I can erase by color - so for e.g. can I choose "white" and remove all white color from the foreground image so that it's just the image i want showing up on the background. I don't even know if I explained it right but please help. I think it's a simple ask... but who knows

You are awesome! Thank you so much. There goes many hours of my life

Hi v_kyr, Thank you for responding. How do I fill vector text with bitmaps? Is there a tutorial or an article I can refer to? Please treat me as a completely clueless, untalented beginner - I have a need but need a step or two to get started and explore. Should I look for "how to create text styles" or "how to fill text with bitmaps" or something like that?

I'm very green when it comes to artistic design. I need some guidance/high-level steps/approaches. I can then go off and try to do them. I'm willing to put effort but I don't even know where to start. Right now I'm really clueless. I have Affinity Designer on my mac and I also have Affinity Photo on iPad. I'd prefer to do what I want on Designer. Here's what I want to do: I want to create a metallic/grungy text using one of the existing fonts like Garamond etc. Basically, the text would look like a nice movie poster font or a book cover font. I'm not looking to create a new font - I just want to use any existing font but make the text look awesome. I've purchased some nice high-res metallic and grunge backgrounds. So what I need to know is how do I type text, apply those textures to the text-fill, so the text looks like rusty, metallic. If I could put some cracks on the side that would be even more awesome but let me not get ahead of myself considering I'm struggling to even explain what I want, let alone having the talent to do it. I want the text to be vector so I can scale. Some examples of what I mean https://ltheme.com/words-of-lord-psd-text-effect/ http://freephotoshop.org/2011/01/grunge-layer-styles-fx/ I hope I explained it OK... Thank you!!

Noob here! Such a great piece of work, thank you!