Garytagreg Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 “Coffee Time” I’m really not very good with hand drawing (stick figures only!) so I really like the concept of vector drawing in which I can make changes after the fact and tweak to my hearts content. To learn how to use Affinity Designer (I have played with some vector stuff before in Inkscape but nothing much at all), I decided to make something look as real as I could that wouldn’t need too much raw drawing skill and I came up with “Coffee Time” : 100% created from scratch vector drawing (no brushes or pixel layers except for the use of the fx “Layer effects"). I did use a photo for reference but I didn’t do any tracing or anything. I’m really, really happy how it turned out. I tried out all sorts of things and learned a lot but it was a lot of fun :) As this is a "Learn and Share” forum, I thought I’d share exactly what I did (see the other other attached pictures). It’s not perfect and I’m a beginner, but hopefully others might be able to learn something, too Enjoy! :) My Process: 01 Create 2 sets of circle shapes to represent the top and bottom of the cup. Squish the top and the bottom with the move tool. The top circle has a smaller one on top to remove later to make a lip for the cup. I deliberately used bright colours to make the shapes easy to distinguish from each other. 02 Join the circles with the corners of a rectangle shape to form the side of the cup. 03 Shape the rectangle with the node tool. Add a handle. Clone the top circle and move it down to make the surface of the coffee. 04 Create a set of “shading shapes” to put on top of the side of the cup. These will then be given a gradient colour and transparency to give the illusion of a bumpy surface. 05 Create some circles and overlay some shading shapes . I used the the smart duplicate function to repeatedly rotate duplicates of the shading shape easily. 06 Squish the saucer with the move tool and move into place under the saucer 07 Change the colours to something closer to the final version and play with gradients and transparencies. I also blurred it to make it blend more naturally. Once I got something that looked good, I made a style of it and then applied it to the others and then hand tweaked each one. 08 Do the same to the saucer. Also added some detail (reflection of the inside of the cup and blurred it) to the coffee. 09 Add a background with a gradient. I used the noise slider to give it some texture. I also added some steam with just a hand drawn shape. 10 Add a shadow. I just duplicated the cup and saucer, blacked them out and then put them in place underneath everything and used the shear tool to project it out. I also added some fine detail on the edge of the side of the cup to add to the bumpiness illusion. Made the lip a nice shiny gold with a slightly tweaked version of the built in “metal” style. Added some self shadowing to the saucer and further deformed the circle shape it to give a more 3D look to it. 11 Added reflections and spectral highlights to the cup and saucer. Now it looks nice and shiny. For the final version, I also added some bubbles to the coffee (lots of circle shapes) and the text, converted to curves and then given a steam like style (actually the same one I used for the shading shapes!) and then each character rotated and scaled to make it look like steam from the coffee. sincetimebegan, Aammppaa, MattP and 10 others 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 Wow! Great tutorial and final product. Well done. Would not look out of place on a vending machine, especially with the wispy lettering. Quote MacBook pro, 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB, OS X 10.11.6 http://www.pinterest.com/peter2111 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted December 28, 2014 Staff Share Posted December 28, 2014 Nice work rendering the shiny ceramic material. Not easy! Thanks for sharing your process. Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
denironaut Posted December 28, 2014 Share Posted December 28, 2014 Fantastic! Personally I would tweak the lighting, maybe soften the shadows to create an area light effect. Also some contact shadows to push the realism. Really good though. Quote http://earnshaw.photography Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garytagreg Posted December 29, 2014 Author Share Posted December 29, 2014 Thanks for the comments everyone! I had initially wanted to make it part of a more complicated scene like on a table with other things in the background to look more like a photograph but I was happy with how it turned out as it is. I'll probably tweak it a bit more and make such a version later :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter Posted December 29, 2014 Share Posted December 29, 2014 I'd love to see a video of this, as a tutorial. Ps I'll have one sugar, in mine mate ;) Quote MacBook pro, 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB, OS X 10.11.6 http://www.pinterest.com/peter2111 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garytagreg Posted December 30, 2014 Author Share Posted December 30, 2014 Mmmm... a video for the whole thing might be a bit long and I've never done a video before... What bit in particular were you most interested in? Maybe I think of a simpler example for one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter Posted December 30, 2014 Share Posted December 30, 2014 Getting past stage 3. Mine looks like MS paint :( Quote MacBook pro, 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB, OS X 10.11.6 http://www.pinterest.com/peter2111 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GRScott Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Unbelievable. Nice job. Quote Gregg OS X Version 10.14.6 iMac 27" 3.2 GHz i5- 32 GB Huion Kamvas Pro 20 iPad Pro 12.9" IOS 13 AD = OS IOS, AP = OS IOS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakerlund Posted January 4, 2015 Share Posted January 4, 2015 Great job Gary :) The last step adding the reflection really made it pop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LionelD Posted August 17, 2023 Share Posted August 17, 2023 I’m late (ok, very late), but that’s amazing. Regards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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