affinity designer Poison III

[StuartRc]

Poison III
Third drawing for Poison (Poison I) (Poison II)
All vector 1000 x 400mm 300dpi

Size expanded to 1000mm and added 100's of new elements. Really enjoying the newish tools...Vector Flood | Style Picker | Knife | Outline..Making things much easier to manage....Probably millions of nodes in this one!

Galaxy Toolkit for background. Zombie | Graffiti | Speed Ink | Monster II Scribble Brush Kits for Inking.

[Ldina]

@StuartRc Stuart, that is gorgeous; I love the colors against that deep purple background. Eye-popping and stunning.  

[AffinityJules]

Stuart. . .you're definitely a class act.

[StuartRc]

14 hours ago, Ldina said:

@StuartRc Stuart, that is gorgeous; I love the colors against that deep purple background. Eye-popping and stunning.  

Thank you so much!....I had to fight with the colours a bit...resorted to using adjustments to get the effect. Also there is a blue tint stretching across the image to introduce a small fade on left and right edges..😀

[StuartRc]

5 hours ago, AffinityJules said:

Stuart. . .you're definitely a class act.

Again Many thanks!....The inking to vector method is certainly having an effect on the drawings...Became a bit obsessed with the vector Fill Tool with this image...!

[StuartRc]

Poison III Wireframe
Wireframe View (A Bit Messy this one)
All vector 1000 x 400mm 300dpi

[StuartRc]

Mushroom Asset Set
Added a new collection of Vector Mushrooms to the Asset Toolkit Created for Poison II
Part A

[StuartRc]

Mushroom Asset Set
Added a new collection of Vector Mushrooms to the Asset Toolkit Created for Poison II
Part B

[StuartRc]

Mushroom Asset Set
Added a new collection of Vector Mushrooms to the Asset Toolkit Created for Poison II & III
Part C

[StuartRc]

Mushroom Asset Set
Added a new collection of Vector Mushrooms to the Asset Toolkit Created for Poison II & III
Part D

[StuartRc]

Ground Bases and Vector Breakdown Asset Set

[StuartRc]

Asset Collection
Added a Set of Vector Mushroom Outlines and Textures to Resources Section Poison III Asset Resources
 

[SolidSnake2003]

Excellent job on your creation

[VectorWhiz]

Are these shrooms of the poisonous kind? I love to see art that has a ton of objects, that were created using a bunch of the functionality Affinity Designer offers. It is the only vector drawing program that makes realistic complex organic shapes possible. I've worked with Illustrator professionally for decades and CorelDRAW privately for an equal amount of time and neither of them allowed me to create complex realistic drawings as accurate and fast as Designer does. Your art is proof of that.

[StuartRc]

2 hours ago, VectorWhiz said:

Are these shrooms of the poisonous kind? I love to see art that has a ton of objects, that were created using a bunch of the functionality Affinity Designer offers. It is the only vector drawing program that makes realistic complex organic shapes possible. I've worked with Illustrator professionally for decades and CorelDRAW privately for an equal amount of time and neither of them allowed me to create complex realistic drawings as accurate and fast as Designer does. Your art is proof of that.

Hi

Poisonous Mushrooms
In the Original Drawing Poison I.  Fly Agaric is ...I t has sort of featured in Poison II and Poison III but I significanlty modified its appearance. Most of the other mushrooms are based on references for the shape but little else..I tend to just sketch out what I want now and build vector objects around the drawing/idea!.

The original Idea for Poison III was to represent the first drawing as a very small element of the latest rendition...but I sort of relented and created a completely new version based on the same dimensions and structure of the original!.. (Poison II). It has been a useful exercise in that I wanted to explore the new features of V2 Affinity and try to create objects much quicker..or speed up the process. The original completed some years ago now was time consuming and slow to develop..it took me weeks!. At the time AD was struggling with all the elements and I had to resort to layered embedded files to complete it. Later drawings in the series have certainly not suffered from this. This drawing is 1000m across and build from 100's if not 1000's of objects. in a single file...

Complex Objects
I have adapted the way I work..sort of evolving processes.....but I still do constuct complex objects out of smaller simpler vectors...creating groups for layout. Gives you the option of using Adjustment Layers to tweak the colours...as it is difficult to keep changing the colours on 100's of objects
Initially I used to create a simple vector shape then increase it's complexity by adding nodes to the outline...Manually roughening the edges unit I had the shape..

The objects are created in Toolkits....really to get the variation of similar objects + to give the options of interchanging components. The edited toolkit for this project has 46 separate object sheets in 3 files

With this drawing I Inked the outlines in Pixel Personal with some of my many brushes....So I could try and achieve a sketch like or comic book appearance. For this project (and Inktober 2024!) I created a set of brushes just for the purpose of rapid inking and texturing. I saw this video Shawn Coss (Illustrator for Seether Album Covers) Where he describes brush use for inking and speed or sketching out ideas.

Then converted the outlines in Inkscape (would be nice to use AD but it doesn't have the tools!) but it is a simple copy and paste. I then followed the Comic Book technique of having a flat background and ink overlay. Which what you can see in the mushroom objects in resources. If you have the outline shape..which is really a vector fill you can usually create a flat using 'Fill Holes' on the context menu. I say usually as you need to make sure the original ink outline is 'closed'. It does have some issues such as it created a vector flat exactly at the edge of the ink overlay...The alternative is to draw manually with the pen tool.

Shading can be a pain as you cannot really complete how the final object will look until all the objects of a particular group are in their relative final positions. Somestime I put the shades in separate stacked layers..others within the objects themselves

I have not really used CorelDraw..spent years in illustrator...always thought vector working was a slow process....much much slower than designer even though the tools are a bit more limited....but the app is improving with every new version. Even though 2.6 seems concentrate on Publisher I like the new tweaks for the Pencil | Pen tools in 2.6

Tools
Relied heavily on the new tools:
Vector Flood Fill lots in this drawing...absolutely fantastic tool to quickly add and colour vectors...but have to be careful not to select the ink outline layer.
Style Picker Tool for quick colouring (hence the Style Asset Colour Blocks! in resources!)
Contour Tool for expanding compound shapes behind ink outline layers (was using scale on transforl panel but results go a bit crazy if you try it with irregular shapes!)

Full Set of asset Sheets

[StuartRc]

Asset Collection
Added a collection of colour swatches used in the drawing to resources here

(added to the Asset Block Style Selection Block Colour Assets)
 

[ClarityDynamic]

Outstanding!! I would love to see a Time lapse watching this being created piece by piece   

[StuartRc]

On 3/15/2025 at 3:03 AM, ClarityDynamic said:

Outstanding!! I would love to see a Time lapse watching this being created piece by piece   

Hi

I have not really considered creating a video of the process......I think that with the nature of this drawing how it was constructed and the overall process would be difficult to video without a substantioanl amount of time editing. I tend to visualise the process with steps or events. Each drawing contained in the final image above it just really a repeated process of simple steps or stages. Making use of the new tools has helped speed up the process. Poison I took several months to build; Poison III was much quicker but I used a raster Inking sketch process and converted the outlines to vector. Then used this a a base to add details with either the Pen Tool or Vector Fill Tool. I changed the way the Base Colour is created and made use of 'Fill Holes' to add a flat base..but had to make sure the original ink sketch was enclosed in outline, otherwise the results were unpredictable... The Vector Fill is great for infilling ink outlines...but you need to keep track of the number of nodes....I made this mistake with the 'coral' looking base element for one of the layers...and had to recreate it for the assets collection (Which is why I have not put these elements into resources yet to supplement the flat mushrooms!). Simplfy vector paths seems to have been improved recently..as you can now simplfy the shape to get around it....(Except for the weird spikes!..That I had to correct.!)

Tutorials
For Poison II I did add a tutorial to the Tutorial Section of the Forum on how to create | add a single element to one of these images....here! (Also contains the method used to create single vector objects....Explained in a bit more detail)
The only things that have changed...are the:
a. 'define colour shapes' which in the case of Poison II were completed with the Pen and Pencils tools.
b. Introduction of vector Fill (newish! tool)
c. Exchange manual scaling in the transform panel for Contour Tool create a trap beneath the inking object).... as it is more efficient! and you get better results

Notes
Most of the objects in the drawing are layered such that there is a vector inking layer and a Base layer. Usuallly all additional elements for tecturing and colouring are contained in this object. I was having problems drawing raster elements within a group...as it could go a bit mad!....but I believe this has been fixed in the latest beta update..
Colours added using Colour Style Assets and the Colour Style Picker: easier to apply colour to mutlipe oblects (Remember to lock the Ink Outline Layer)

Resources
If you want to have a play with the techniques I did add some simplified mushroom elements and colour swatches to resources..I will get to the bases to add to this soon.
Mushrooms (Vector Shapes)
Colours (Style Asset Colour Blocks for use with Style Picker Tool)
Brushes (Not added the brush sets used to create original drawings ...but these are some listed here that are avallable in resources!) (Saved me re-listing!)
 

PB 03 Big-T MIxed brushes but does include some inkers and has a small number of base textures that can be added
PB 41 Fur Just for fun!
12 Zombie Inking brushes
Camouflage Textures and Foliage

 

Hope this helps......and thank you for you comments!

[ClarityDynamic]

Thanks for the detailed response! I really appreciate the insight into your process - it’s amazing how much planning and layering goes into this. I’ll definitely check out the tutorial you linked and play around with the techniques you mentioned. The Vector Fill tool sounds especially useful! Looking forward to exploring more and hopefully improving my own vector work (which needs a lot of improvement)😅. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!

[StuartRc]

12 minutes ago, ClarityDynamic said:

Thanks for the detailed response! I really appreciate the insight into your process - it’s amazing how much planning and layering goes into this. I’ll definitely check out the tutorial you linked and play around with the techniques you mentioned. The Vector Fill tool sounds especially useful! Looking forward to exploring more and hopefully improving my own vector work (which needs a lot of improvement)😅. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!

Thanks!

The Vector Fill Tool together with the new changes | improvements to the Pencil Tool (2.6) have really helped speed up the process. I wanted to move away from the Plastic | Smooth appearance of vectors..

[StuartRc]

Added more detailed explalnation of the process to Tutorial Section
Post AD V2 (2.6) object creation in detail