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Retro style poster illustration [AP]


Frankentoon Studio

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Hello there!

 

Just wanted to share a recent commission I finished a couple of days ago using Affinity Photo and a couple of custom brushes. The Ad agency wanted to have something in the 80's horror movies fashion, with a couple kids fighting against each other during a roadtrip from hell. I really don't know what will be the final use for this, but I had lots of fun making this type of illustration. Any comment good or bad, will be welcome as always!

 

roadtrip-color4_zpshvytdvis.jpg

 

And here are some previous layout sketches. The original title was a little bit weird haha...

 

roadtrip-sketches_zpsbtfakfk2.jpg

 

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You're making me reconsider to get proficient using affinity tool for painting. Currently I use Krita for Drawing and Paintstorm for painting purposes, and waiting for Affinity software to become a little bit better with the painting mechanics, but damn man. 

 

This looks dope. 

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You're making me reconsider to get proficient using affinity tool for painting. Currently I use Krita for Drawing and Paintstorm for painting purposes, and waiting for Affinity software to become a little bit better with the painting mechanics, but damn man. 

 

This looks dope. 

 

Yes, Enrique is "quite" good at this, isn't he!

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Yes, Enrique is "quite" good at this, isn't he!

 

Yeah he knows how to utilize the software, and make his own tools. Will have to check that out. The thing that is making me hesistant so far is that :

1. I can customize almost all the shortcuts and even brush shortcuts in Paintstorm

2. Rotation is intuitive in both of the software I mentioned

3. Decrease/increase brushes feels less clunky in either of the two softwares

4. Color picking feels more natural 

 

I don't know man, after using these 2 softwares the painting mechanics just feels right. The plus side for AD is that you can switch between raster/vector easily and also the gradient mechanics and layering system.

 

-

 

@Frankentoon 

When doing these illustrations, do you do them in CMYK or RGB color format for printing purposes? I have been trying out Redbubble, and they mention they print only CMYK, but suggest to upload as sRGB JPG on their site, and mention to use like color calibration (CMYK) to see how close your color is.

 

So in scenario like this, do you feel its best to just design straight with CMYK, or am I losing some of the rich colors by sticking to CMYK and later save it to sRGB for the web?

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Thanks guys! 

 

Honestly, this is the first complex illustration that I've done from sketch to finish in Affinity Photo (full rendered semi-realistic characters, 12"x18" @300ppi, a bunch of adjustment layers...). And it took me a while to feel really comfortable with the software. Why? My actual annoyance had nothing to do with the brush engine or the general speed (which is pretty good)... what really, really, bothered me, until the end, was the inability of flipping the canvas properly...

 

Let me explain myself:

In my regular workflow, I tend to rotate and flip the canvas A LOT! in Affinity Designer I have no problem at all when rotating the canvas, but unfortunately there's no shortcut there to flip it, unless you're only flipping one layer or the entire Artboard and if you have a couple of layers there, you need to keep selecting the entire Artboard constantly to flip the illustration vertically or horizontally.

 

Affinity Photo has the ability to do that, but unfortunately the graphic engine (or something) crashes and your image takes AGES to make the tile refreshing after flipping the entire canvas. So I felt very 'handicapped' during the whole process in that matter (I'll try to add a GIF showing this problem).

 

The brush engine and physics could improve (compared to Procreate or Clip Studio), I know, but I've managed to make them work very decently by tweaking a couple of parameters here and there.

 

 

@BrianHermelijn

Regarding the CMYK question, I never work in CMYK for illustrations for one reason: I use several blending modes and adjustment layers all across my layers and I have noticed that some of them don't work very well other than in RGB. What I do instead, when a client asks for a CMYK version is to make a flat version of the RGB and convert that flattened one to CMYK.

 

This conversation is getting interesting isn't it? :D

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Just wanted to add: when you convert from RGB to CMYK there's no change (or almost) in the appearance, but when you do it the other way around, all of the colors tend to differ a lot from the original version.

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Very nice work :D a puntual question... Did you tweak something special in the brushes? I'm using an IntuosPro but the lines I get are not that smooth... 

Look this:

3JmXXcosp9Re.jpg

 

Left affinity designer and right clip studio... And even trying a tool "Lazy Nezumi Pro" to smooth the lines I draw I get that result.

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Did you tweak something special in the brushes? I'm using an IntuosPro but the lines I get are not that smooth... 

 

Nope, no special settings, that jittering (I don't know if that term is correct) happens to me all the time. Those sketches have been worked at a very high resolution, so I suppose that when the images went shrunk down, the pictures gained some quality... but if you look at them at 100%, the lines are not smooth at all.

 

That 'blocky' effect on the clean strokes, happens very random and that behavior is beyond my comprehension. Below there's a screenshot that I've just made using the very same brush I used for the poster sketches. I've marked with letters the strokes that came out smoother.

brush-tests_zpso8cnuhpc.jpg

 

As I told you, that 'bug' happens most of the times. I just try go with it. If you want to try this brush, I've attached 2 custom brushes I made for sketching in AD and AP. The brush shown here is the second one.

 

Cheers!

Frankentoon - Basic Drawing.afbrushes.zip

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Nope, no special settings, that jittering (I don't know if that term is correct) happens to me all the time. Those sketches have been worked at a very high resolution, so I suppose that when the images went shrunk down, the pictures gained some quality... but if you look at them at 100%, the lines are not smooth at all.

 

That 'blocky' effect on the clean strokes, happens very random and that behavior is beyond my comprehension. Below there's a screenshot that I've just made using the very same brush I used for the poster sketches. I've marked with letters the strokes that came out smoother.brush-tests_zpso8cnuhpc.jpg

 

As I told you, that 'bug' happens most of the times. I just try go with it. If you want to try this brush, I've attached 2 custom brushes I made for sketching in AD and AP. The brush shown here is the second one.

 

Cheers!

 

Wow! thanks! I will try those brushes right away!

Hope the lines will be fixed on the next versions 

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Interesting commission. The kids really like intense!

 

Also, this raises my hope about what I wanted to do: use Photo as the painting program. It's a matter of styles, and this illustration matches perfectly on the style I want to develop.

 

Thanks for sharing!

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... this raises my hope about what I wanted to do: use Photo as the painting program. It's a matter of styles, and this illustration matches perfectly on the style I want to develop...

 

Thanks a lot my friend!

 

Yes, that's what I'm trying to do. I've been using Clip Studio for bitmap illustration for 4-5 years, but I really like Affinity's workspace and interface, so I'm using AP and AD more and more for this type of 'painterly' works.

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Very interesting thread and beautiful work by the way. I have been involved in threads where Affinity's brush engine has come under fire so it is nice to see an example of high quality work. I agree with the canvas flip and would like a Krita like set of tools on the buttons of my intuos stylus. Later release hopefully. As an aside for those who do not know human children are not nice. This is an apt design. I'd better edit this :) my partner has three, two twin girls who are ADHD. We work hard ... they call us names..such is life. x

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...would like a Krita like set of tools on the buttons of my intuos stylus. Later release hopefully.

 

...As an aside for those who do not know human children are not nice...

 

Thanks a lot for such nice comment, means a lot to me! that Krita like set of tools sounds like a sweet idea!

 ...and that comment about 'human children' just put me to tears haha... they can be pretty scary

 

Cheers!

• Frankentoon Studio - Tutorials and Resources for Designer, Photo and Publisher

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Thanks a lot my friend!

 

Yes, that's what I'm trying to do. I've been using Clip Studio for bitmap illustration for 4-5 years, but I really like Affinity's workspace and interface, so I'm using AP and AD more and more for this type of 'painterly' works.

 

Neat. I had some class on Photoshop for painting and I've tried Krita but now my focus will be in the Affinity line.

 

Keep rocking!

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Nice job Frankentoon on this piece!! Love it.

 

AD and AP are replacing everything else for me for the painting needs I have. I like the toolset, the ability to work seamlessly in both and the way the vector/pixel flow is handled... and it's only gonna get better, I think. :-)

 

PS is no longer sitting in my dock. ;-)

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