Seamless Pattern Design Issue - Affinity Designer V2

[KLD14]

• Software: Affinity Designer V2.4.0.2301 for iPad
• Goal: Create a seamless repeat pattern

I am attempting to create a seamless repeat pattern using Affinity Designer V2 for the iPad. Below are the steps I’ve taken and the issue I’ve encountered.

1. I have hand-painted my pattern elements (strawberries - see attached photo). I scanned my artwork, isolated each individual strawberry, and removed the watercolor paper background in Affinity Photo V2 for iPad. 
2. In Affinity Designer, I created a new document with 2 artboards.
   • Artboard 1: 3000x3000 px
   • Artboard 2: 6000x6000 px
   • DPI: 300
3. I created the Symbols — I used the rectangle tool to create a square on top of artboard 1, and made sure that it was same size as artboard 1 (3000x3000 px) and the same position on XY axis.
4. With the square selected, I opened the Symbol studio panel, toggled on “Sync Symbols”, and selected “Add Symbols from Selection”.
5. I then copied the Symbol and pasted 4 times into artboard 2.  In artboard 2, I repositioned each Symbol to sit in each quadrant of the 6000px square.
   1. X: 0, Y: 0
   2. X: 3000, Y: 0
   3. X: 0, Y: 3000
   4. X: 3000, Y: 3000
6. I then added my raster strawberry pattern elements by copying them from a separate Affinity document and pasting and arranging them in the center of artboard 1. 
7. (**This is where I encounter the issue**) I then attempted to add strawberry elements to the edges of my pattern design in artboard 1.
   1. I moved a strawberry to an edge (NOT a corner)
   2. With the strawberry element still selected, I created a duplicate
      1. I repositioned the duplicate to the exact opposite side of artboard 1.
         1. Example: Original strawberry’s position on the Y axis was 162.3 px. For the duplicate, I added 3000 px so that the duplicate was positioned at 3162.3 px on the Y axis.
      2. I grouped the 2 duplicate pattern elements together in the Layer studio

ISSUE: The program is exhibiting odd behavior when I attempt to position edge pattern elements. In some cases, the edge pattern element won’t even sync from artboard 1 to the symbols of artboard 2. In other cases, they do sync, but the colors don’t match at the seams. 

• I have attached a photo and a screen recording. In the recording, as I move the 1st group of elements, you can see that the colors do not match up along the seams in artboard 2. As I move the 2nd group, you can see that the strawberry in the top-right quadrant of artboard 2 exhibits odd behavior (crosses the boundaries of the other Symbols), while the others do not. I would be happy to provide the file for further analysis, but need a private link to upload the file to.

Note: I suspected that my raster strawberry objects might be the problem, however, I was able to replicate the issue with a vector element.

Thank you in advance for your help!!! 

[Alfred]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @KLD14.

You seem to be encountering transparency issues, leading to anomalies like this

and this:

I think the strawberries all need to be fully opaque and the backgrounds need to be fully transparent.

In the second example you can see another problem: the foliage is cut off, so that that strawberry image is unable to tile properly. This is because you’ve used artboards, where anything that spills over the edge becomes invisible.