Changing colour of the little men and/or all the black areas in this gif

[Bucephalus]

Hello

I just bought affinity design, and I want to change the colour of these little men in this icon. 
Also, another option would be to colour all the black areas (men and the border of the AAContractServices pare of the icon.
I tried just clicking on a man in the gif, but this didn't work. Do I have to use a pen tool type thing to trace about them? Should I have bought Affinity Photo instead?
What is the best way to go about doing this? I'm not a designer.

Cheers.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Bucephalus

[Komatös]

Hi, @Bucephalus

In Affinity Designer click on the pixel persona icon in the menu bar.

At the layer panel click on the adjustments icon and choose Selective Colour.

Choose from the Colour drop-down blacks and move the sliders to your need.

 

[Bucephalus]

Whoa, that's awesome.

Thankyou very much

@Komatös

[PaulEC]

If you only want the men recoloured you can (carefully!) paint out the parts you don't want recoloured by painting black, with the Paint Brush, on the mask that is created when you applied the Selective Colour Adjustment. (Or you could select just the men before applying the adjustment, although that may be a bit trickier if this the the best resolution image you have.)

[Bucephalus]

Thanks for answering the second part to my question @PaulEC

While we're on this gif, I also want to make the letters in the image white instead of transparent.What would be the best way to do this? The "A A" and the "contract services"

 

Edited May 1, 2022 by Bucephalus

[firstdefence]

Use the pen tool to draw a shape around both of the letters and place the shape below the gif, like this...

[firstdefence]

Hope you don't mind but I would suggest changing the "and" text for an Ampersand "&"

 

[Bucephalus]

@firstdefence

Yeah those are two great ideas.
I see there are two steps in your second recommendation.

1) Rub out the "and".
2) Use a text tool to put the ampersand in.

Let me investigate how to rub out the "and".

 

Edited May 1, 2022 by Bucephalus

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, Bucephalus said:

Let me investigate how to rub out the "and".

To do that in the AD Pixel Persona you could either use the Erase Brush Tool with a suitably sized brush, or use one of the selection tools (like maybe the Freehand Selection Tool) to create a "marching ants" selection around the "and" & then use Edit > Delete or the Delete key on your keyboard to delete it.

[prophet]

IMHO, this is the kind of logo that's begging to be vectorized. All simple shapes involved would be easy to redraw. It would make alterations easier and open up to broader usage case option with scalability.

[R C-R]

25 minutes ago, prophet said:

All simple shapes involved would be easy to redraw.

And just one of the men could be drawn, duplicated, & the duplicate flipped. Even better, assuming the two men are always going to be mirror images of each other draw one, make it a symbol, & drag out & flip the second one.

[Bucephalus]

Thanks @prophet and @R C-R

So when you say I should draw it - breaking down the image
1) Red triangle and blue base using shape tool.
2) "A"s using text tool or drawn? If drawn what tool? Pen tool?
3) Man with pen tool.
4) Blue ropes with pen tool.
5) "CONTRACT SERVICES" using the text tool.

Is this how you would do it? 

 

[prophet]

That sounds like a good plan. I'd do the As with the pen as they may not be a real font. And note the drop shadow on them as well.

[Bucephalus]

Ok thankyou for the advice @prophet

[Bucephalus]

As you can see i'm getting there.
I'm just looking for some pro tips with the tools here now.
I'm trying to draw the A insided the red triangle. The original designer made the sides of the A parallel with the sides of the red triangle it's embedded in.
What is the best way in this software to draw a line that is parallel to another line? Another example say I want to make the little man's upper leg parallel to the arm.
Also, not necessarily saying this is the best way, but is there a way to precisely with angles in this software? Kind of like a CAD? 

[prophet]

I'd just copy the triangle itself, a super rough idea here (darker red used to show the 3rd triangle, crossbar shortened to show the stroke.)

 

[prophet]

And then you'd want to do some boolean work on the white and dark red triangle, stroke expand on the crossbar, and merge it all to get the finished A shape.