Search the Community

Viking I make a very small income on my drawings to buy toys... Image is not to be used for commercial use, Image is to be seen on affinity.serif.com only Thank for understanding. ©2014 William Mabey. Images may not be copied, printed or otherwise disseminated without express written permission of William Mabey.

Tonight I decided to see if I could render an entire product in AD using basic illustration techniques. The following image was complete created with AD the only thing I did not create was the logo. which I could have but it was late and I ran out of steam. It is simple but elegant product. The more I tinker in AD the easier it gets. You can pretty much illustrate anything in this application you just need to focus on understanding lights, shadows and how light falls off a given material to get it right. I used a image from google as reference to create this. *tip: create palette from document is your best friend when matching colors of an existing product.

If you have already seen Tracy, this is another robot - Tester

Hi all! Thought I'd share a work in progress. This is one character sheet for a possible webcomic, Glorious Junk. The purple character is Sashai and the bat is still looking for a good name (suggestions welcomed!). Basically this was a test to get a good feel for using Affinity Designer. As far as testing goes, I'd call it a major win. The best thing that I finally got was that Layers are storage for curves and objects. The Layer_org.png is a screen cap of Sashai's layer structure. I made extensive use of the masking abilities that curve objects offer: the legs, arms and head all use them. All shading (except for the gold yellow arm band) is from closed filled curves with gaussian blur FX and I used the Transparency Tool a lot (way cool tool, btw). I'm not too happy with the shading on the arm with the gold band, but that's why this is a WIP. :) For the interior curves (the detail on the hands and the spirals for the knees and elbow were done by just making a curve and then selecting the curve with the Node tool and adjusting the pressure profile. It took a bit of playing around with to get a good handle on how best to use it, but once learned -- it's a really wonderful feature to add some life to curves. When the pressure sensitivity of tablets are working better (in the next beta for AD if what I've read is correct), then it should be just awesome to use in order to really fine-tune line thickness. The Move and Node tools are better than any other equivalent tool in other vector apps. Only minor gripe, is that when a node is smooth the indicator changes from a square (for corner node) to a circle. The fill color for the indicator is the color for the layer (right click on the layer's name and in the contextual menu is where layer colors can be selected). In some instances when there's a lot of nodes, the I clicked on the "wing" of the node and accidentally created a new node when I thought I was clicking on a node. If the node "wings" (the actual name escapes me at the moment) indicators could be filled with a lighter tint of the layer color it would be easier to see which is which. I like how when clicking on the handles, when the handle indicator turns red, it's aligned with the opposite handle and if I let go of the cursor then, the node is now a smooth one, if I continue moving it remains a corner node. Absolutely brilliant usability feature that took no time at all to appreciate and take advantage of! One thing that has stopped me from doing a lot of art in vector apps was the struggle between what I wanted to do and what the interface allowed me to do. In Affinity Designer it's like the interface makes it easier and quicker to do the art I want to do, in the way I want to do it. Sure there's this and that thing I wish AD could do, but for a first release version, it's the most stable (have yet to crash on me!) and easy to figure out app I've had the pleasure to use. To go all Spinal Tap, I'd give this app 6 out of 5 stars!

I really Love Affinity....

So, I was browsing the Iphone App Store and came across this beautiful Dieter Rams inspired app called WTHR By David EIgena. I wanted see if I could recreate one of the screen entirely with Affinity Designer. Part of the reason I am doing this, is to see how I can utilize Affinity in different situations and workflows. Of course I don't have time to design an entire app for in a few hours but I can recreate the look for study purposes.Doing this sort of thing shows me where Affinity Designer is strongest. Working in different workflows also gives me a better understanding of how this application can replace other tools in my arsenal. After completing this exercise, the only thing I would wish is the ability to add multiple artboards in one file. Everything was created with Affinity with the exception of the IPhone Image which you can download here: http://www.teehanlax.com/tools/iphone/ Credit to Andrew Vega for supplying the iphone link resource in his Affinity training video

A very quick hand-trace of my original logo sketch for my upcoming comic Thingies: First I placed the hand-lettered concept sketch into its own layer. Then, I just made simple pen lines (with a stroke of 30 pt/px) and made each individual stroke the curve I wanted. Next, expanded strokes and added shapes together to form completed letters and then with the "i" letters I did an combine on each one and the letters they overlap. Finally I made the whole word a combined shaped. Added a conical gradient to a layer underneath it all to make sure the combine/compound shape was the way I wanted it. Pretty happy with it. BTW, Thingies is about sentient salamanders and I really kept their biology in mind when I made them into "funny animals". Depending on how Affinity Publisher works, I may want to use it to letter my comic rather than ComicLife (which is a fine app, but somewhat limiting in how it can fill shapes with bitmaps and such.

Relaxed drawing of a classic topic. Wanted to get the outlines right so it took some time. Used 2 different textured brushes for overlays and clouds. Half of them with a 50% Gaussian Blur. Always thought that cat in the story is great - so it got a Martini ;)

So, my buddy who is a big time comic book geek was going off about how there is going to be a Superman Vs Batman Movie. Anyway, every time we chat about comics I always confuse which superheros is in Marvels universe and which superheroes are from the D.C. universe. Anyway, Today was his Birthday so I decided to make him some original art. He is a big Batman fan so I thought this would be fitting. My process is still the same. sketch on paper. shoot it, import it, trace it, and color it.

Please forgive the awful design. I just wanted to test out some Designer brushes, both vector and raster, with no planing whatsoever. It started from just a few strokes, and evolved to this. Next one will be better, I promise :). Other than inabiliy to change the brush size when locale not US (no easily accessable brackets in HR layout), I really like Designer for concept art so far.

Today I have checked out as many tutorials as I could find and I thought it would be time to start my first project. I am featuring this as a work-in-progress because I need some support. This is not an original work. I used a photograph from Stefan Grosjean as reference (not sure if this is allowed, copyright-wise?) because it looked extremely simple to edit. The women looks as if she is really enjoying some music - only the earphones are missing, which I will add digitally. ;) My next work will be based on a drawing or photograph by me, but first I want to finish this for practice. As you can see, my first difficulty is how to remove some of the background color. I used two large circles to color the woman. For the parts where the colors are correctly in place (e.g. lips) I created a filled area along the black lines. But this will be a problem if I decide to make the lines thinner. It will create a space between the line and the filled area. In this case, it won't be a problem because some of the lines are actually too thin. But I would like to know what the correct method of editing is for future projects. I have attached the actual file for you to better understand what I mean because I am still lacking the necessary vocabulary. The file needs a lot of polish, some lines didn't work out as smooth, but I noticed how the vectors got better (with less points) the further I got. It's actually a lot of fun! The layers are a mess and lack groups. Sorry for that. Secondly, I noticed when scaling the vectors, the line thickness doesn't scale along. Is there a way to make the line thickness scale with the rest of the picture? Say if in the future, I create a web graphic and decide to print it as a poster, how do i correctly change the image size? Thanks a ton for your support! Eargasm.afdesign

The japanese Kitsune is one of my fav. subjects. Often taking a female shape to contact the mortals- sometimes good, sometimes evil. Always near a foxshrine. I really love the textured brushes. They are a bit slow, but that will give you an authentic watercolor feeling. Just love it. One drawing without overlay and zoom to show the details.

Really love the precision of AD. Had lots of fun with this. The star is a new character for a vinyl sticker. Fascinated by the infinite zoom - everything is so crisp. Used the layer fx alot. Great to have the possibility to give different fx to different elements on ONE layer in such an intuitive way.

My apologies in advance if this feature is already part of Affinity Designer. Is there a way to create templates in Affinity? For example, is it possible to preset the background size and resolution settings and then save the settings for future use? For example, a website setting for 1070px by 800px at 72dpi and then be able to save it as "website-1070" for future use? And thanks again for all the help I have received from this forum. - - - WiLd

Hey Gang.. :) Having a blast learning A.Designer. This is my first take on a vector drawing. I'll show more as soon as i get the time to work on this :) Oh, did i mention this is ALL freakin' VECTOR? yeah.. the light rays too... that seamlessly blend with the background :O the biggest wow for me was.. a layer above every other layer, which has a gradient, noise, and overlay blend mode.. it ties everything together sooo goood... i think im falling in love with you Affinity -.- but i have a girlfriend, darn...

I actually posted this on Twitter earlier today, before realising it looked a tad phallic, was'nt that bad, but once I saw it, I could not unsee it ;)

Sunday afternoon illustration...(well and a bit of saturday evening too)

My first masterpiece created in Affinity Designer. Behold.

I'm still working on it, but here's a drawing of a Miura for you to play with in Designer. If anybody fancies improving it and sending it back that would be fantastic! :) Miura.afdesign Cheers, Matt

So started playing with paint brushes today.....I vectored up a sketch I did a while back and played with some things - this is what happened

I continue testing Affinity Designer. It's an illustration for the "about" page on my website. It shows some of my hobbies and important people in my life : my girlfriend, my dog, computers, sailing, cycling, travels, retrogaming... and obviously octopuses ;) i'm waiting hard the next release and new features. I'm in love with pixel layers, it's a real time saver ! And I really like having one and unique file with my vectors and my pixels ! Higher resolution here

I have been using the Beta Affinity Designer and before downloading the paid for version of Affinity Designer I tried to delete the Beta AD App icon but it wouldn't delete. I then downloaded the paid for version of AD and now have two AD App icons. Any ideas of how to delete the Beta version AD App?

Below is my first try at a Manga Girl's face. Not done yet. Helping me to learn vector drawing. One thing I think would be nice to have is a spray can in pixel persona.

Sneak peak of the piece Im working on at the moment...It's got a tad complicated, but I have to report the software has not lagged, frozen or crashed once. So pleased with it, I had to finish a couple of projects in illustrator earlier and missed Affinity.

First, I want to let you know that I purchased a copy of Affinity Designer from the App store this morning. I love this program. I only wish that you had released it earlier so I could have avoided spending $80 for Sketch 3 in June, but this is one of those events in life that is out of my control. It's great to own a vector program that is stable and isn't buggy. Now, my question is when will the beta versions stop working? I own a MacBook and an iMac. I have installed Affinity on my MacBook, but also need to use it on my iMac. I plan to purchase a second license, but it would be great if I could get another month to use the beta. Thanks again for the great product and making it affordable.