affinity designer Reflected Skyline (Versions 1 & 2)

[Nikhail]

Here are my two attempts at the "Reflected Skyline" illustration project from the Affinity Designer Workbook. Hope you guys enjoy! Any feedback is much appreciated

 

V1:

 

V2:

Edited October 16, 2023 by Nikhail
Just tidying up the post a bit ;)

[v_kyr]

If you leave a little more sky above the sky, it creates a good background base for applying a New Year's Eve fireworks...

 

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Nikhail

Nice work; I prefer V2, particularly the lighting effects.
We can see that a lot of time and effort went into this.

Some things are missing from the reflections, e.g. in V1 and V2, the pink-ish horizontal lines on the left near the water line, and in V1 there’s a small rectangle at the middle-right near the water line which looks out of place (maybe a rendering problem?), but that’s just me being picky.

Nit-picking aside, well done.

[Nikhail]

16 hours ago, v_kyr said:

If you leave a little more sky above the sky, it creates a good background base for applying a New Year's Eve fireworks...

 

Ah, okay. Thanks so much. I never knew you could add that in lol. Will definitely check it out if I ever get around to doing a V3 ;D

[Nikhail]

7 hours ago, GarryP said:

Welcome to the forums @Nikhail

Nice work; I prefer V2, particularly the lighting effects.
We can see that a lot of time and effort went into this.

Some things are missing from the reflections, e.g. in V1 and V2, the pink-ish horizontal lines on the left near the water line, and in V1 there’s a small rectangle at the middle-right near the water line which looks out of place (maybe a rendering problem?), but that’s just me being picky.

Nit-picking aside, well done.

Thanks a lot Garry. I think the pink-ish lines were left out because of the way I did the buildings. Wasn't too sure how to fit those in but I'm sure there was a way. The small rectangle in V1 is out of place for sure. I re-opened the project and realised it was just something thrown in there XD

[GarryP]

I don’t know how you created the reflection as I don’t have the Workbook which you are following but it seems possible, unless I’m missing something important, that you could create the buildings once, put them in a Symbol, and then duplicate the symbol to create the reflection (after some further modifications for flipping, blurring etc.).

By doing so you only need to draw the buildings once and the reflection will change automatically, so nothing needs to be forgotten.

See my attached video where I have put an embedded document into a symbol which allows me to change the graphic equaliser and have the reflection change without me needing to remember to do anything else.

Note: You don’t need to use an embedded document in the symbol.

Edited October 18, 2023 by GarryP
Added clarification.

[Nikhail]

10 hours ago, GarryP said:

I don’t know how you created the reflection as I don’t have the Workbook which you are following but it seems possible, unless I’m missing something important, that you could create the buildings once, put them in a Symbol, and then duplicate the symbol to create the reflection (after some further modifications for flipping, blurring etc.).

By doing so you only need to draw the buildings once and the reflection will change automatically, so nothing needs to be forgotten.

See my attached video where I have put an embedded document into a symbol which allows me to change the graphic equaliser and have the reflection change without me needing to remember to do anything else.

Note: You don’t need to use an embedded document in the symbol.

 

Hey, Garry. Wow, that's so much simpler. Thanks for sharing that. Here are the steps according to the workbook:

Reflection Base

• On the Layers Panel, create a new layer called Reflection base above the top-level Roof highlight layer. For a dark foreground base, draw a black rectangle (HSL 255,95,5) covering the whole lower half of the page, with its top edge just touching the bottom of the foreground buildings.

 

Making the reflection

1. On the Layers Panel, select the following layers, keeping the cmd ⌘ key (Mac) or ctrl key (Win) pressed:

• Front Building
• Foreground scrapers
• Midground scrapers
• Background scrapers

2. Duplicate the selection (Edit > Duplicate) then group it.

3. On the Toolbar, select Flip Vertical, then drag the group down so a reflection is formed. Use the shift key (⇧) while dragging to constrain vertically.

4. Create a new layer called Reflection above the Front building layer and drag the group into it.

5. In the reflection group, select the Front Building layer and drag downwards to align with the bases of the other reflected shapes.

6. The entire reflection group can then be moved up to be closer to the main scene.

7. To give the reflection a realistic diffuse look, use the Effects Panel to apply a Gaussian Blur of 7.8 px to the group. For the reflection tail off, draw a dark rectangle across the lower half of the reflection and apply a gradient from HSL 230,81,4 to 0% Opacity.

 

I wish Affinity would do more workbooks about every three years or so with new projects every time. One day? I love the video tutorials but I'm more a book guy 😅

[GarryP]

Those instructions seem to be pretty close to what I did but instead of duplicating things at the start I made a Symbol.

You can see in my video that I have some layers called “<something> Fade” which I use as overlays on top of the symbols in various ways to get the “tail off” as mentioned in the workbook.

I generally prefer books to videos too but I’m guessing that the time/effort/money/etc. needed to produce a book every few years is simply not worth it to Serif, especially in the ‘fancy’ form in which the last workbooks were produced.

[Nikhail]

12 hours ago, GarryP said:

Those instructions seem to be pretty close to what I did but instead of duplicating things at the start I made a Symbol.

You can see in my video that I have some layers called “<something> Fade” which I use as overlays on top of the symbols in various ways to get the “tail off” as mentioned in the workbook.

I generally prefer books to videos too but I’m guessing that the time/effort/money/etc. needed to produce a book every few years is simply not worth it to Serif, especially in the ‘fancy’ form in which the last workbooks were produced.

Right. That's a shame though. They're really useful. Still hope something can work out down the line but it is what it is.