AD Textured Intensity illustration brush experiments

[Craig Deeley]

Happy 2020! If a little late.

I am posting some interesting experiments with Texture Intensity brushes for Affinity Designer:
http://i-toons.com/archive/CD_illustration_brushes2020.afbrushes.zip

These were exported from the 1.8.1 version.

This set has several focuses. 

1.
A fascination with Dave Coopers ink line where a stroke expands and shrinks (pressure) as it is drawn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj3BxL85UUE

2.
In the olden days of Creature House Expression 3 a feature that produced wonderful textured edges on fills was a favorite of mine for adding… wonderful textured edges to fills!
The “edge” was applied to a fill and mapped along the edge of the fill. E3 used a similar technique as ADs textured intensity brushes… The trick to make the edge texture was to have basically a half brush stroke. One edge flat. The rest feathered or textured out as desired. The flat edge mapped directly to the fills edge. There was a little extra voodoo with pixel color at the strokes edge as well…) AD doesn’t have this edge feature - but something like it can be sort of faked. ADs brushes map to fills in a different way - they sort of center the stroke halfway over the edge of a fill. To get a brush to “join” to the fill - I made a brush that mirrors itself - with a 100% dark center. The brush must also meet at its ends so it wraps horizontally as well. The mirrored version seems to blend nicely with a fill - and can wrap in either direction (reverse curves).
Some sample of how this looks are in the attached image. Sadly the stroke and fill don’t share the same “intensity” - if transparency is dropped… But the textured edge done this way can look ok.
Brushes that don’t mirror like this extend out from the fill but often show hard fill edges. 
A future AD feature in the making.

3.
I had been experimenting with hatch and dot pattern edges - looking for an illustration style I admired - and straying into a dot like airbrush look… See attached brushpower image. The hazy moon glow and sand dunes. 

AD has a lot going for it. The textured intensity brushes are the main reason I dig this software. The brush engine has a long way to go as I have mentioned in the past:

Affinity Designer Brush UI enhancement:
Affinity Designer brush-ui enhancement

Identify and switch Brush and Stroke attributes option/tool:
Switch brush

With a little more power in the brush features - this would be such a stellar tool!

Here's to 2020 and maybe making an illustrators wishes come true!

; )

If you happen to use any of these brushes. Post an example. I love to see how the brushes are used! Enjoy!

Craig

 

 

[Pepperdog2]

Thank You.  Imported into AD 1.8.0 OK.