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Mandala Designs with Affinity Designer Beta


garetmckinley

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Hello :) I am a huge fan of both affinity designer and photos, and own both of them! I just wanted to share some of the work that I have done using the new symbols tool in the Affinity Designer beta. When I got into sacred geometry mandala illustrations, I used smart layers inside photoshop. In the last month, I've recreated some of my past works and created new designs using the new betas.

 

I'd love to thank all their development teams for creating such incredible and intuitive vector applications. You allow me to effortlessly create designs in Designer and quickly export them to Photos to add nice image/gradient masks and effects before submitting the final render.

 

Here's some of the works I've created. I have them all on my Instagram as well (@garetmckinley).

 

 

 

14287974_100576830406676_244274702_n.jpg

14272158_300833246956217_1888899377_n.jp

14262821_1137275416310255_2104076038_n.j

14276381_1817102361860233_559764876_n.jp

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Nice work. Precision is good.

 

I'm still trying to ground myself in the fundamentals of 1.4.2, but the 1.5 symbol function looks incredible from the few examples of work I've seen. Have you had any or many nasty bugs, or the application hanging?

 

As a btw, traditionally the buddha's eyes are slightly open. Neither focus on outside or within.

iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb,  AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb

iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil

Huion WH1409 tablet

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Thanks a lot everyone!

 

 

Nice work. Precision is good.

 

I'm still trying to ground myself in the fundamentals of 1.4.2, but the 1.5 symbol function looks incredible from the few examples of work I've seen. Have you had any or many nasty bugs, or the application hanging?

 

As a btw, traditionally the buddha's eyes are slightly open. Neither focus on outside or within.

 

 

Nothing too bad. At one point I had a bug that was consistently happening whenever I would undo a certain function (can't remember exactly which), but they literally had a fresh beta out the very next day that cleared the issue for me. 

 

With the frequency of their beta updates, it doesn't make me nervous at all working with them. But obviously make backups before importing your existing designs into the betas :)

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Nothing too bad. At one point I had a bug that was consistently happening whenever I would undo a certain function (can't remember exactly which), but they literally had a fresh beta out the very next day that cleared the issue for me. 

 

 

Thx for the response. I suppose I will be dloading the 1.5 beta fairly soon. If you care to, could you give a quick run down of how you have used symbols? They seem to be a set of instances of various objects, with various attributes, such as size, distributed across the set. 

 

3 out of 4 of the examples I've seen, yours included, show them displayed symmetrically arranged. Any reason why, other than maybe its the most obvious implementation?

iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb,  AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb

iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil

Huion WH1409 tablet

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks a lot for all the kind responses!

 

 

Thx for the response. I suppose I will be dloading the 1.5 beta fairly soon. If you care to, could you give a quick run down of how you have used symbols? They seem to be a set of instances of various objects, with various attributes, such as size, distributed across the set. 

 

3 out of 4 of the examples I've seen, yours included, show them displayed symmetrically arranged. Any reason why, other than maybe its the most obvious implementation?

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by the last part. Symbols are basically a reusable asset that only keeps the inner-content. Meaning, everything you add inside the symbol object automatically gets added and edited to all the other instances of that symbol. But everything you do to the actual symbol is unique to that instance. Meaning that you can use symbols to create mirror-symmetry for creating perfectly symmetrical faces or objects.

 

Or you could just use them as a reusable asset library in large illustrations.

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Thanks a lot for all the kind responses!

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean by the last part. Symbols are basically a reusable asset that only keeps the inner-content. Meaning, everything you add inside the symbol object automatically gets added and edited to all the other instances of that symbol. But everything you do to the actual symbol is unique to that instance. Meaning that you can use symbols to create mirror-symmetry for creating perfectly symmetrical faces or objects.

 

Or you could just use them as a reusable asset library in large illustrations.

 

I've been working w. symbols some the past few days, and am beginning to get a grasp on how they work, and what they can do. At the simplest level, a library of preformed shapes that can be easily replicated and updated. An improvement on the "paste style" command. But then, because geometric transforms also apply, both symmetric and semi-symmetric transforms are quick.

iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb,  AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb

iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil

Huion WH1409 tablet

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These are so intricate and awesome! I love the colours you have used!

 

Thanks so much! Currently working on more that I'm almost ready to share!

 

 

I've been working w. symbols some the past few days, and am beginning to get a grasp on how they work, and what they can do. At the simplest level, a library of preformed shapes that can be easily replicated and updated. An improvement on the "paste style" command. But then, because geometric transforms also apply, both symmetric and semi-symmetric transforms are quick.

 

 

Yup, they have definitely made my life easier! They even work (dare I say... better?) than Photoshop's smart layers.

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  • 2 months later...

Hey guys, I just wrapped up another mandala <3

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPLMsthj38l/

 

Once again, I want to thank the developers at serif for creating such a brilliant vector application! It's lightyears more intuitive than illustrator, and seemingly keeps improving (at a rather fast rate!). I would be nothing without the tools you've empowered me with  :wub:

OkFr1LK.jpg

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 I would be nothing without the tools you've empowered me with   :wub:

 
yes, in AI this job is not easy like AD but in AI you can use guidelines with more flexibility, depends on the job. the circular cloning is great in AD.
 
This type of job is perfect for AD, Seems watermark banknote, nice.
 
The symbol is powerful, (although has few options) but is perfect for this purpose, just learn from this kind of works.
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yes, in AI this job is not easy like AD but in AI you can use guidelines with more flexibility, depends on the job. the circular cloning is great in AD.
 
This type of job is perfect for AD, Seems watermark banknote, nice.
 
The symbol is powerful, (although has few options) but is perfect for this purpose, just learn from this kind of works.

 

 

Thanks! I'm not sure I know what you mean by circular cloning though, is there an easy way to do that in Affinity Designer? I'm currently using the new-ish symbol tools. I first create a "slice" and then define the symbol, set the pivot point to the center of my document, and then duplicate/rotate the symbols. It allows me to live-edit the entire array of symbols at once, which is the best part IMO. 

 

I had been previously using smart layers in photoshop to achieve this, but the lack of live-updates (and a vector canvas) make it a hassle. Not to mention my mandalas would usually be over a quarter gig, hogging a ton of memory. I've only had one mandala that surpassed 100mb in AD so far. No choking on large canvases either, even when live-editing a curve with 20+ duplications. The performance is the most critical thing for me, as I'm not a true "artist". I design based on my perception, so the ability to live previous the duplication array allows me to continuously make changes until I'm satisfied with the result.

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Hi garet

 

What Michelangelo meant is the duplicate function (Ctrl/Cmd+J) and it's "memory" function.

 

Let's say you draw a rectangle. Then you hit Ctrl+J to duplicate it and then rotate and make the new copy a little smaller.

If you now hit Ctrl+J again the new instance will also rotate and scale the same ammount as the last one.

 

This way you can do circular patterns very, very quickly.

 

(I hope this was not too confusingly written... :S)

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Hi garet

 

What Michelangelo meant is the duplicate function (Ctrl/Cmd+J) and it's "memory" function.

 

Let's say you draw a rectangle. Then you hit Ctrl+J to duplicate it and then rotate and make the new copy a little smaller.

If you now hit Ctrl+J again the new instance will also rotate and scale the same ammount as the last one.

 

This way you can do circular patterns very, very quickly.

 

(I hope this was not too confusingly written... :S)

 

Ah, yeah I am aware of that feature. It's definitely convenient!

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  • 2 months later...
  • 9 months later...

Looks great @PasoPasi!

 

Haven't updated this in a bit, but I still do design mandalas in Affinity :)

 

26158864_1572203426220434_59789926839248

 

I quit my job to pursue art full time this year. I've been uploading a new design every day to my instagram, if you like what I do please take the time to check it out! Not all my stuff is done in affinity, so I won't be updating this thread with every post.

 

 

@garetmckinley on instagram

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