Recreate air balloon in affinity designer

[goose1987]

Hi all

I'm a fairly novice designer and I'd like to recreate a hot air balloon image in Affinity Designer desktop, particularly to take advantage of vector graphics so I can re-shade and adapt the image. I've followed a long a few tutorials about changing the shape of lines and closing curves, but I'm still a bit lost at where to start with this balloon.

From breaking down the problem, I think the main thing I'm stuck on is how to curve lines to accurately match the segments shown on the image that make out the red and the beige shapes. How can I accurately draw these lines/curves to match the balloon shape? Does anyone have any pointers?

Many thanks in advance!

[v_kyr]

Hi,

1 hour ago, goose1987 said:

From breaking down the problem, I think the main thing I'm stuck on is how to curve lines to accurately match the segments shown on the image that make out the red and the beige shapes. How can I accurately draw these lines/curves to match the balloon shape? Does anyone have any pointers?

First I would place the ballon image inside on a locked and dimmed down layer, so you have a sort of tracing template you can follow. - Then there are several ways of drawing those curved segments.

You can follow and redraw the segments shape flow with the pen tool, just make sure you close drawn paths, so you can color fill etc. them later. Or you use some from the already available shapes like the half circle or sickle shape, draw one and convert it's shape to curves (right clcik menu on a shape) so you can modify (drag/move) and add nodes to that curve to rebuild one of those balloon segments.

Here as an example I used a sickle shape for rebuilding a ballon segment ...

[Wosven]

You can also watch interesting tutorials by Monez:
(the first one don't provide subtitles unless connected, but they aren't needed)

 

 

[goose1987]

20 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Hi,

First I would place the ballon image inside on a locked and dimmed down layer, so you have a sort of tracing template you can follow. - Then there are several ways of drawing those curved segments.

You can follow and redraw the segments shape flow with the pen tool, just make sure you close drawn paths, so you can color fill etc. them later. Or you use some from the already available shapes like the half circle or sickle shape, draw one and convert it's shape to curves (right clcik menu on a shape) so you can modify (drag/move) and add nodes to that curve to rebuild one of those balloon segments.

Here as an example I used a sickle shape for rebuilding a ballon segment ...

 

19 hours ago, Wosven said:

You can also watch interesting tutorials by Monez:
(the first one don't provide subtitles unless connected, but they aren't needed)

 

 

Thank you both for the input. This is really helpful and I'm considerably less confused at how to approach this now.I'll watch those videos and then crack on with tracing those curves.

Cheers!

[goose1987]

On 5/21/2020 at 3:58 PM, v_kyr said:

Hi,

First I would place the ballon image inside on a locked and dimmed down layer, so you have a sort of tracing template you can follow. - Then there are several ways of drawing those curved segments.

You can follow and redraw the segments shape flow with the pen tool, just make sure you close drawn paths, so you can color fill etc. them later. Or you use some from the already available shapes like the half circle or sickle shape, draw one and convert it's shape to curves (right clcik menu on a shape) so you can modify (drag/move) and add nodes to that curve to rebuild one of those balloon segments.

Here as an example I used a sickle shape for rebuilding a ballon segment ...

Thanks v_kyr - the only problem I'm having is when trying to create a second adjacent segment. Ideally I'd like the adjacent segment to share the same vector curve that separates them, rather than have to create it to be identical. It would also have advantages if I want to adjust the shape along the boundary. The "Add new curve to selected curves" appears to be what I want at face value, but when I try using that it one of the segment fills uses the curve that separates them, the other just joins with a straight line. Do you have any thoughts on the best way to approach this?

[PixelPest]

The Pen tool has option to "Add New Curve To Selected Curves Object"; once 1 shape is done hit "esc" and start the next one.

[v_kyr]

17 hours ago, goose1987 said:

... Ideally I'd like the adjacent segment to share the same vector curve that separates them, rather than have to create it to be identical. It would also have advantages if I want to adjust the shape along the boundary. ...

I think there are as always (or mostly) several ways possible. You can do that the way as PixelPest suggested above, or you can also combine several shapes together to first form a rough shape of the ballon, which you afterwards then finetune via the Node tools (adding nodes, forming, stretching lines etc.).

For example, I've used nested tear shapes (these are customizable) here and combined them with a XOR into one curve layer (I used APh here for demonstration, since I'm actually not on my Mac computer) ...

 

[goose1987]

On 5/24/2020 at 3:02 AM, v_kyr said:

I think there are as always (or mostly) several ways possible. You can do that the way as PixelPest suggested above, or you can also combine several shapes together to first form a rough shape of the ballon, which you afterwards then finetune via the Node tools (adding nodes, forming, stretching lines etc.).

For example, I've used nested tear shapes (these are customizable) here and combined them with a XOR into one curve layer (I used APh here for demonstration, since I'm actually not on my Mac computer) ...

 

Thanks again v_kyr, that's very helpful.