Creating Custom Solid Vector Brushes

[Ottothom1123]

Hello, 

[This is my first time posting and thank you for your responses. I work as a designer professionally, currently only for myself but I am in the process of starting a clothing line and have chosen Affinity over Adobe after years of using Adobe products in school and in the working world. After dealing with the high prices, subscription fees and difficulty of use and keeping up with pointless updates Adobe is known for I have turned to Affinity and have seen first hand why others have cut their losses and wised up. I watched the 2020 Apple Keynote video, on YouTube, for Illustrator iPad full version (subscription version) and was shaking my head, after about ten minutes I began to read the comments and one after another everyone was saying Affinity did this years ago with no subscription, it blows Adobe out of the water etc. So this is why I’m here.]

Enough rant, here is my real issue: 

I want to make a solid vector brush with a small twist. Essentially what I need is a square brush with chisels on head and tail. I have attempted making a vector rectangle and slightly shearing it, exporting as png and sourcing the file for my brush creation. I have used the textured intensity brush, solid brush and image brush with no luck. I am fairly new to creating specific brushes versus generic looks and am fairly certain I could be doing something wrong. I have not downloaded or searched the internet for a brush that already exists, partially because I want my brush to have a certain appearance and also because importing files into Affinity Designer for iPad takes several steps and I’m not sure how common the brush files are that Affinity uses. 
 

A lot of what I need this for is to create custom fonts and marker effects in my drawings and logos. I want to make my own custom font versus ripping off someone else’s. Most of the similar fonts I like are only provided in all caps and I want the option of lowercase letters. I am working on skate and surf designs and I love the look of chiseled markers but prefer a solid brush to the textured look (some end products will be silk screened and solid lines pop and last longer on clothing).

I have attached some reference images to help clarify the end result I am going for and images of my Affinity workspace as well as the brush settings (sourced from the sheared rectangle). This is the best version of the brush I have created, yet it is still failing. It’s sort of close but won’t work for what I need. It seems to stretch the look of the stroke too much and the stroke is only visible in the center of the stroke (not along the entire vector line). I have also realized that this may take a lot of work to create the look I want mainly fine tuning the drawing with the node tool. 
 

If there is a way to fix these things and also adjust the sensitivity and smoothness that would help a lot (I realize the iPad version is more limited than desktop. I’m shopping for a new laptop currently so I can make use of the full Affinity Designer program.)

I apologize if this seems long winded but I have exhausted every effort for months attempting to create this tool that would save me countless working hours and wanted to be as thorough in my explanation as possible in the initial post. So here I am. 
 

Help me please,

Otto

[jmwellborn]

Welcome to the Forums @Ottothom1123😊.   I wonder whether you might perhaps post this question in the section Affinity on Desktop Questions as well as here. You may get a response more quickly there.   In particular, I am thinking of @StuartRc who has created an extraordinary collection of brushes for Affinity.  His remarkably generous work is available in the Resources section of these forums.   I hope that he, as well as others, will find your post and be able to help you.

[StuartRc]

Hi

I had a quick look at this one yesterday!
It looks simple but it is an awkward shape to try and control. The position/orientation of the chisel edges are sort of at the mercy of the final node positions of the vector line.

There are a few things you could try!:

A. Changing the 'caps' on the vector line in the stroke panel can adjust the position of the vector line relative to the resulting vector image...you will see what I mean if you just click/toggle the alternatives
B. Looking at the image there... does not appear to be offsets/insets for the head and tail positions (red lines!)..You will get a different result if the 'tails are initiated with repeat rather than stretch
C. Try not having a chisel edge but a curved (Round Tapered) or pointed edge like an arrow and repeat B.

If you want to play around with some existing brushes download these:
A. Ammonite
Here check out the fine line sketcher and the solid brush an paly around with their setting to see if you can get something you like!
B Project Brush InkBrush Set 07
These are mostly solid inking brushes rather than textures but there is a lot of choice here!...There are 3 different types of vector brush sets here [Render Linear and texture]
C. Vector Paint Sample set
A mixed selection of vector brushes

hope this helps!