affinity designer Matt's Sketchbook

[Matthew Dickerson]

Hello! I'm going to start posting my work and W.I.P here.. I will share any cool tips and tricks I pick up along the way!

A little about me.. I've been following the progress of the affinity team since its launch, I had a different username 'MattyD' but forgot the password and email lol so created a new one, was really happy that the development team implemented my suggestion with the snap anchor to grid

, in fact they went even further and now affinity has incredible snapping features, I honestly believe this will be the industry standard software in perhaps 10-15 years overtaking adobe if they keep doing what they're doing, maybe sooner if they increase their development team, sounds like a long time but adobe is over 30 years old and Affinity around 10 . I would mainly use it for just playing around with but since launch of V2 I've been absolutely loving it, and now feel comfortable using the suite for professional work..

 

 

[Matthew Dickerson]

My latest WIP piece is for a Hearthstone art competition.. here is the discord link for any that might be interested in joining the community - Hearthstone Fan Art Brawl - https://discord.gg/XpCW2cf

 

TIPS: I've set the keyboard shortcut W for Quad warp - its great, using it all the time now.

TIP 2: Been using the Pen Mode set to Smart Anchors - and drawing 2 points close together for a sharpish curve - This mode is perfect for quick flatting.

 

[Matthew Dickerson]

I used affinity for the sketching and Flats stage but mainly painted in photoshop with some painting in affinity, mainly because I haven't sorted out all my shortcuts and workflow yet..

[Matthew Dickerson]

[Matthew Dickerson]

Mainly using Affinity for sketch and flats then painting in photoshop..

[StudioJason]

2 hours ago, Matthew Dickerson said:

Mainly using Affinity for sketch and flats then painting in photoshop..

Why would you even need to go back to Photoshop?

[Matthew Dickerson]

4 hours ago, StudioJason said:

Why would you even need to go back to Photoshop?

Workflow and Habit - I am unable to use shortcuts for actions and also there are no shortcuts for changing brush blend modes - something I like to do a lot in my workflow. Also, I think the airbrush/ soft round brush is better in photoshop - it's not quite right in affinity.. i like the pencil brushes though.

[StudioJason]

1 hour ago, Matthew Dickerson said:

Workflow and Habit - I am unable to use shortcuts for actions and also there are no shortcuts for changing brush blend modes - something I like to do a lot in my workflow. Also, I think the airbrush/ soft round brush is better in photoshop - it's not quite right in affinity.. i like the pencil brushes though.

Understandable. Was just curious. The illustration/painting has improved in APhoto…hopefully you can make the Workflow transition.
Nice rendition of a Frost Death Knight, btw.  ✌️

[Matthew Dickerson]

7 minutes ago, StudioJason said:

Understandable. Was just curious. The illustration/painting has improved in APhoto…hopefully you can make the Workflow transition.
Nice rendition of a Frost Death Knight, btw.  ✌️

Thanks very much! 😁

[SrPx]

I already can do all my painting stages in Photo 2 / Photo 1 (sticking to v1 'cause of an issue). The brushes, brushes engine and overall performance seems to have improved greatly in v2.

The hard/soft in a same brush (and so, easy blending +good hard edges) can be achieved by playing with the 'flow' pressure curve  (double clicking the brush in  the bush list window, not in the top bar), and tweaking carefully some other settings. That and also being flexible with the painting techniques. I have managed to do it all with a single custom brush (but loving as well the traditional painting ones (severe nostalgia) in both versions), but each person paints totally differently. I would rather recommend anyone to do all the works in 16bits mode, as that means no issues with gradients, and a lot more room for subtleties and  great shading. I have connected the pc by display port (supposedly providing the Eizo's 10 bit color, but can't be sure. It looks amazing, tho). Adobe RGB 1998 profile seems to be working fine, comparing with my many other apps. I have decided to only use the standard brushes from Serif (which I configure heavily, besides having my very own custom brush from a basic round one) although I believe I  have purchased every third party product in their store. But for now sticking to the default ones.

That work is very nice, congrats.

[Matthew Dickerson]

On 12/12/2022 at 7:27 PM, SrPx said:

I already can do all my painting stages in Photo 2 / Photo 1 (sticking to v1 'cause of an issue). The brushes, brushes engine and overall performance seems to have improved greatly in v2.

The hard/soft in a same brush (and so, easy blending +good hard edges) can be achieved by playing with the 'flow' pressure curve  (double clicking the brush in  the bush list window, not in the top bar), and tweaking carefully some other settings. That and also being flexible with the painting techniques. I have managed to do it all with a single custom brush (but loving as well the traditional painting ones (severe nostalgia) in both versions), but each person paints totally differently. I would rather recommend anyone to do all the works in 16bits mode, as that means no issues with gradients, and a lot more room for subtleties and  great shading. I have connected the pc by display port (supposedly providing the Eizo's 10 bit color, but can't be sure. It looks amazing, tho). Adobe RGB 1998 profile seems to be working fine, comparing with my many other apps. I have decided to only use the standard brushes from Serif (which I configure heavily, besides having my very own custom brush from a basic round one) although I believe I  have purchased every third party product in their store. But for now sticking to the default ones.

That work is very nice, congrats.

I agree the default brushes for affinity are very nice and work well, I tried importing my Photoshop brushes and they don't work as expected, I'm sure I could try and tweek them but I can't be bothered, I'll just stick with the defaults. Yes maybe 16bit will give me better results with the airbrush, I'll give it a try

[Matthew Dickerson]

W.I.P - Rockin' Orc

Working in 16bit has given a lot better performance with the airbrush, I've really enjoyed working in affinity - and have stuck mostly in affinity for the whole process for this picture, i'm beginning to develop a fun workflow that is efficient - having shortcuts for blend modes in 2.1 is a nice help - Would be great if we could have a 'flip view horizontal' option - it's really handy for illustrators/ designers for spotting errors in their work. and Ideally it would be great to have the Mixer brush in Affinity designer as I had to keep switching apps just for using that tool and sometimes this would cause the app to crash - possibly because i'm working in Beta 2.1.