Tool Shortcuts and Raster Lining

[ConceptsbyPferdeort]

Just discovering affinity and getting used to the program took a hot second as my only digital experience has been a few undergrad digital painting courses with the cintiq but I primarily work on ipad with procreate UNTIL now. Overall I love Affinity so far as a comics creator, the toolsets the platform offers are just better suited to my needs as a sequential artist in general, and is the first legitimate alternative to photoshop I feel that has been offered on the IOS platform.

Inking in the platform is miles ahead of procreate in that I can get a nearly analog realistic end result just with the default brush sets alone (which I haven’t even tweaked yet).

I do have several things that have come up that are by no means deal breakers but admittedly when going through my workflow proved to be somewhat of an impediment. 

1- With tool short cut commands while using a keyboard, the limitations in the pixel persona are quite evident. You have an amazing toolset available and the ability to switch back and forth between ALL available tools with keyboard shortcuts would speed up my workflow significantly. Namely when working in the pixel persona, having the ability to use a shortcut to quickly switch to the selection tool would be amazing. Possibly a solution could be to keep the current shortcuts as they are but simply adding the neglected tools to the list WITHOUT default shortcuts, allowing the user to input commands themselves to whatever suits their needs. 

-expanding on this some more, additionally adding a keyboard function to alter brush size and opacity would be amazing, or just the option to custom bind a key to it. 

2- One thing I noticed while working was that the program struggled keeping up with my speed? (As an FYI I’m on a 2nd gen IpadPro 12.9”)  Admittedly I work rather quickly and freehanded so when doing things like hatching- if I make strokes in rapid succession the program tends to seize up slightly and takes a few seconds to register the marks, and typically when it does any indication of pressure sensitivity is gone and I have to erase and slow myself down. 

Lastly- altering the function of pressing “shift” while actively drawing. I really wish it didn't “lock” the line to either vertical or horizontal and instead treated it as a point of origin while maintaining control over pressure sensitivity and snapping to a straight line. 

Again, overall I LOVE affinity as a sequential artist and have been informing my professors and colleagues about the program with great enthusiasm- and all of them expressed keen interest when I listed all the functionality options affinity has in comparison to procreate. You guys have truly made the ipad a viable alternative to other mobile  creative platforms and I sincerely thank you!

Threw a page of inking I did in here where I was basically just experimenting with brush functionality and learning the platform in general! 

 

[Zoomie.Roomie]

I definitely second the request for additional customization options for shortcuts. Especially on IPad.

I am almost exclusively working on Affinity Designer on IPad and was recently trying to improve my workflow by integrating a bluetooth Numpad into it to use certain makros/shortcuts.

While I managed to optimize some of my workflow by doing that, there are several shortcuts/commands missing that are essential for true increase in workflow speed. Namely:

• Undo/Redo (!!!!)
• Switch between Personas (Vector/Pixel)
• Escape/Deselect (same as on the X button on the lower left)
• New Pixel Layer (New Vector Layer is already customizable, why not this one)
• Change Brush Size +/- 
• Zoom to fit
• Lasso Tool

Edited September 15, 2020 by Zoomie.Roomie