affinity designer Creating Low Poly Drawings In AD

[VectorVonDoom]

A few people have asked how to do low poly drawings in AD. So here's a very quick how to, it's not complicated to get started. Some aim for the minimum polygons and think that's the only way it should be done but there's aren't any rules, do it how want, have fun. There are variations on the theme for example using quadrilaterals and gradient fills but generally it's triangles and flat fills.

1. Pick a image. Find one that a decent size, say 4MP+. Having well defined edges makes things easier as does it having plenty of contrast. The less contrast there is the tougher it is.
2. Open the image in AD. The layer should be locked, if it isn't lock it.
3. Setup AD snapping to make life a lot easier. View>Snapping Manager..., tick Enable Snapping. I don't normally use snapping in AD so not sure the optimum settings so had most things ticked. (image below)
4. With the pen tool (keyboard shortcut P) add your first triangle with no fill, no stroke (you don't have to keep resetting to none, just the first time).  The idea is to break the image down in to areas that are a pretty similar colour/brightness (image below). That's the non-technical part and you just have to get the hang of it. You can either draw one and fill it... or draw a few then pick them in the layers palette and fill them. Obviously if you've a big area of exactly the same colour, eg black in the shadows, then you can do what you want as you're not going to see any triangles.
5. Fill the triangle using the Colour Picker tool (keyboard shortcut I) to sample the colour. Set the radius to 5x5 so you're averaging an area rather than picking a single pixel. Sometimes you'll need to make it smaller, if it's a huge image you might be able to make it larger. (image below). If you later see you need to alter the colour of a polygon just change it back to no fill so you can re-sample.
6. Once you add the first triangle group it and put subsequent ones in to that group. It's then easy to toggle visibility, for example to compare what you've done against the original. Obviously each triangle needs to fit up against its neighbour, no gaps, hence having snapping turned on. Toggle the reference image to spot the places you've left gaps or not snapped properly, there will be some.
7. Normally you'll use larger polygons say on large areas of skin then smaller polygons where you need details like eyes and mouth.
8. If it's a complicated image then break things down in to a few groups. If you do that make sure you select All Layers from the Candidates drop down in the Snapping dialog.
9. Once you're done but see horrible micro gaps between objects when you export then duplicate the poly layer and perhaps add a tiny amount of blur to the background one (normally don't need to, duplicating is enough) and they'll disappear.