Pencil Tool in Affinity Designer

[roguewavecreative]

so I just wanted to say overallreally enjoying affinity designer I’m almost completely weaned off of Illustrator, which I’m so excited about it. It’s not just the cost. It’s just the user interface is just so much cleaner on affinity and just the way it interacts and it feels good and so on here’s a question. l

have an I put YouTube video order customize a lot of outline fonts for logos for logotypes and the illustrator really has done well in the last couple years, they’ve really improved the pencil tool so much I rarely use the pen tool because the pencil tool is so accurate. If you watch this video, could you tell me how someone would do this in designer? I just doesn’t seem like it worked the same way any help would be so appreciated. Thank you so much and hope everybody’s having a good day . 

 

[jmwellborn]

@roguewavecreativeWelcome to the Forums!  I have watched a portion of the video to the point that I think I have the idea. The process is different in Designer (Photo and Publisher) but you can certainly do what your video shows — at least as far as I went into it.

First, use the Artistic Text Tool to write your text. With that Layer highlighted, go to LAYER>Convert to Curves. You will then see in your Layers Panel that your word layer has a little down arrow to the left. Click on that and your word layer will open to an individual layer for each letter in your word.

You will be working on each letter layer separately. Instead of the pencil tool, use the Node Tool, click on a letter, and you can then manipulate your letter any way you want (i.e. the first A and the L in the example). If you want to cut out a part (such as the wiggly lines in your video — the B, N, and E), use the Knife Tool to draw your line. There will be a second layer above the letter layer  showing the part you have cut out. Click on that with the Move Tool and you can delete it.  

In order to round the sharp corners of your letters, click on the layers containing letters with sharp corners, then make a marquee selection with the Node Tool. Then use the Corner Tool, go up to the Context Toolbar and select the shape of the corner you want and you will find a little circle at the sharp corner.  Drag one little circle in or out to the amount you want and they will all follow. (In Designer Help, under Corner Tool, you will find complete instructions for its use.)

Always remember that you have the History Panel, so that if you chop or wiggle something that you don't like after all, you can easily go back to a previous state.  

This is a very rudimentary explanation of how to do this in Designer and I am sure that there are others on this Forum who will have far better ideas, but you should be able to accomplish everything I saw on the video (unless there is other stuff I missed by stopping part way through) by a different method than Illustrator.

Here is a very strange example of what I did, while experimenting. I purposely made some wild changes to show that they can be done. (Definitely not recommended as a new font!)

 

 

[StuartRc]

Hi 

You can also make use of the Pencil Tool with Sculpt mode switched on to reshape the converted outline.. Really useful for roughening up or rounding off angular edges

[StuartRc]

As an after thought....

If you want something a bit more precise or controlled...add a Mesh warp over the object (Click to create > Grid).. bend the lines. and apply 
Convert to curves and ungroup!