Creating a detailed illustration in Affinity Designer with RSKT

hey friends i'm RSKT i'm a freelance artist based  on the sunshine coast in queensland australia   i do a lot of graphic design and video  production and various other kinds of   artwork but over the last couple of years  affinity designer has been my go-to app   i've worked with tons of different creative  applications but affinity designer seems to be   the one that suits my workflow the best earlier  this year i started a youtube channel to help   demonstrate some of my processes to other people  and the response so far has been really positive   especially from the affinity community affinity  were kind enough to reach out and ask me to host   one of these creative sessions and i'm really  excited to be able to share my workflow with you   so in today's video i'm going to be showing you  how i went about creating a piece of artwork   using both the desktop and ipad  versions of affinity designer   so when i was asked to make this video i started  brainstorming for a lot of different ideas for   what it could be about i mean there's already a  ton of videos out there that show you how to go   about creating digital art and a lot of those  already focus on affinity so for this video   i really wanted to create something that would  not only appeal to people who are using affinity   designer already but also to complete beginners  who may be new to the world of digital art   see when i first got into digital art when i  was younger i actually found it quite difficult   i would watch hours and hours of video tutorials  but i never really seem to get anywhere   sometimes i do my best to follow along but my lack  of understanding of the basic tools and different   workflows available really slowed me down i really  started to worry that the way i was going about   making digital art was the wrong way and quick pro  tip there is no right way and there is no wrong   way all that matters is the end result so for this  video i thought it would be interesting to show   you how i go about creating a piece of artwork  from start finish starting with the brainstorming   phase and coming up with ideas all the way to  the end result but how is that useful to you   see i often find myself watching other people's  processes and while i enjoy it sometimes it's   difficult to follow along it's difficult to  understand their thought processes and more   importantly it's difficult to understand how to  apply their methods to your artwork so along the   way i thought it might be a good idea to throw  in some mini tutorials just to get everybody up   to speed with the basic tools how they work  and a little bit about the user interface   now if i'm being completely honest when it came  time for me to edit this video together i realized   that there was actually a lot of footage missing  of me going through the design process which is a   huge bummer and it wouldn't be very fair of me to  just leave those sections out for you so i've gone   ahead and created a completely separate tutorial  that follows the exact same processes but instead   of creating a really big and detailed piece  like this we're going to be creating a carrot yeah that might seem a little bit underwhelming  but it follows the exact same process that i used   to create this other illustration and it should  actually be a lot easier to follow along with   this carrot is a super simple shape that  gives us more than enough detail to work with   that and carrots are good for you eat your carrots  so we will literally be jumping back and forth   between these two projects throughout the video  and you'll get to see how it's all put together   i am really hoping that this video is appealing to  both beginners and advanced users and by the end   you should have enough information to help bring  your artwork to life in a digital environment   so before we get stuck into the actual  artwork i'd like to take some time to   introduce people to the basic tools and interface  of affinity designer just in case they're new here   if you're an advanced user feel free to go make a  quick cup of coffee this shouldn't take too long okay so here we are in affinity designer and the  first thing you're going to want to do is start   a new document this page can seem kind of scary  for some people because there's a lot of different   options to choose from fortunately i've set up a  preset for myself that makes it a lot easier to   get started every time i want to work on a new  piece i like to have my page width and my page   height set to 5000 pixels each and if you can't  see pixels and you have a different measurement   you can select that from the drop down menu here  i always have my dpi or dots per inch set to 300   this makes it really high quality for printing and  the only other setting that i really worry about   is the color format right now it's set to rgb8  i'm going to change it to cmyk 8. the reason that   i'm choosing cmyk is because i want this design  to be printed so it's good to have it in a cmyk   color mode because that's what printers will  use if you were designing something for the   web that's strictly going to be seen on the  web then you could go ahead and choose rgb8   these don't really make a big difference at  the end of the day you can still put something   on the web in cmyk and something printed in  rgb however you might find that there is some   slight color variation when you go to export  it for either one of those things so i'm just   going to leave this to cmyk for now once you're  happy with your new document settings hit create so i want to give you all a really  quick rundown of the basic ui here   now i don't want to go over every little feature  and every little detail because i think it would   be kind of pointless if i'm just going to be using  those things and explaining them later anyway but   if this is your first time using affinity designer  hopefully this section will be helpful to you   along the top row we have a series of buttons  and these all have really important options   for starters we have a designer persona and a  pixel persona there's also an export persona but   i wouldn't worry about that for now the thing  that really makes affinity designer stand out   is the fact that you have these two modes  basically switching to the pixel persona   you can see that some of my toolbar has changed  here on the left and if i jump back it changes   back to what i had before basically what  you're seeing is the designer persona   which is made for vector artwork and a pixel  persona which is of course made for pixel artwork   if you don't know what the difference between  vector and pixel artwork is here's a quick rundown vector artwork involves having objects that have  a fill and a stroke if fill is the inside color   let's make this one blue for now and a stroke  is the stroke color or in this case you can   think of it as a border color now at the moment  it's set to none but if i increase the weight   we can see that a thick border  starts appearing around our object   we can also change the color of this  independent to what the fill color is vectors are actually really cool for  a few different reasons and i think   the most obvious one is is that you can zoom in  infinitely and they will never reduce in quality and to demonstrate the other useful feature i'm  just going to select the node tool over here   and convert this to curves now i can independently  grab the edges of this object and move them around   even though it's already been created this thing  is fully customizable i can add in new strokes   and even get these bezier handles so that i can  create any shape that i want vectors are really   useful for creating graphic design content  such as logos and flyers and things like that   because they can be scaled to infinite proportions  so you know you might make a logo for somebody   and it can look really good on a coffee cup and  you can blow it up and still make it look really   good on a billboard with all that said though  we're still going to be using vectors today to   create a really detailed piece of artwork  i might also point out that we don't just   have to use shapes in order to get vectors we  can also select a vector brush tool over here   i can select a brush from any of the  brushes in this list and start painting we can get some really intricate line work  and the beauty of it is that we can go back   and we can edit this line work if we've  made a mistake or we want to make changes we can even edit the color after we've  created it and we can add it to thickness i'm going to delete all these now and  quickly demonstrate what a pixel persona is   so pixel designer is just working strictly  in pixels if i grab the paintbrush tool over   here i'm going to select a random brush  increase its size and start painting so the options available to us to edit this  now is basically being able to move it scale it   and skew it if we zoom into this we can see that  it gradually reduces in quality as we get closer   until it's basically just a bunch  of squares and these are your pixels so quickly going over the rest of the  ui you've got these three modes up here   and you have a bunch of other options you could  explore these more freely and i don't think i   need to really go over each one of them because i  honestly don't even use half of them all that much   there's a snapping feature which is really handy  so if i draw this object i can draw another one   and you'll notice that this little green line  appears where it's snapping to either the center   of the page or right on top of the object that  i've created you can toggle this on and off if   you want to get really fine control over what  you're doing something i do use a lot though   is this add button up here if i select  all of these shapes that i've just created   and press the add button it adds them  all together and now they're one shade   we're going to be using this a lot later on  there are other ones like these uh where you can   subtract certain parts of an object let's say we  want to subtract this from the front of that and   there we go it's gone i would suggest creating a  bunch of shapes and just playing around with each   one of these and see how they all work then you  have your toolbar on the left here so basically   every tool that's available to you is going to be  shown in this list i'll just create an object so   that we have something to work with here basically  you use the move tool to move a shape around   and use the node tool to manipulate that shape i  should point out though that you can't manipulate   this shape until you convert it to curves and now  we're able to now there's a lot of other tools   down here that i'm going to be demonstrating  later so i went by the covering them just now over to my right hand side you'll see  that there's a lot of different panels   i like to have color brushes stroke and swatches  all along the top as i use them fairly frequently   and then underneath that i have layers effects  styles and textiles i don't really use styles and   textiles all that much but layers and effects i do  just in case i ever need them i like to have some   transform tools available down the bottom here my  history which shows everything that i've done and   you can cycle back and forth i have a navigator  um i don't use this too often but it can help to   sort of have a zoomed out preview of your artwork  sometimes and there's a stock tab which i will be   using later on it's really cool you can search  whatever you want for example brick wall and it   will search for images based on what you've typed  into the box there you can then drag and drop this   it gives credit to the author of the photo  and now you're able to use it in your artwork currently the stock tab searches the website  unsplash pixels and pixabay which are websites   that i use frequently but it's really  handy to have it in this one little window if for whatever reason you can't  see some of these panels don't worry   let's just drag one out and i'll accidentally  remove it on purpose oh no it's gone so how do   you get it back well it's really easy you just  go up to view studio and scroll down the list   looking for the thing that you're after in  this case i know that it's the layers panel   so i'll click on that and now dragging on the word  layers i'll just slot it back in next to the word   effects and it's back where it was you can also  undock these and have them floating if you like   and you can even create entire new columns for  them to live in i would recommend if you're just   getting used to affinity designer to try and leave  everything is default if you can because that way   when you're doing other people's tutorials they're  usually a lot easier to follow along to but as you   get more comfortable with it decide what tools  you do and don't use and then create a workspace   for yourself once you're happy with one you can  go up to view studio presets and you can create   an entire new preset which will be an entirely  customized layout that suits your workflow needs all right so let's jump into the brainstorming  stage i already had a bit of an idea that i wanted   to create a character with an old-school tv for  his head so i just started doing a loose sketch of   that on paper nothing too flashy just to help get  the initial idea out there so that i had something   to build off of it with future drawings then i  tried drawing him a few more times in a couple   of different poses and in a couple of different  styles sometimes i find it helpful to draw things   like this in different styles not because i'm  thinking about going with that style but because   it forces me to think about adding in different  details and different elements that i might not   have considered with the original style i was  going for in this instance though i didn't wind   up using anything from the other two styles and  i stuck with the design that you see here in red   once i did that i decided to create a full  draft of what i heard my design would look   like in the end and this time i went  ahead and threw in a bunch of other   objects and details to the scene just to help  flesh it out a little bit more it might not   always be evident but i like to tell a little bit  of the story with a lot of the drawings that i do   so for example this picture is meant to represent  myself i'm turning 30 this year and the tv is   quite old there's a little bit of a crack in his  screen and you can see that he's a little bit   banged up i quite like skateboarding so i threw a  skateboard in there the fire hydrant and sidewalk   is kind of meant to represent that he's just you  know sitting in the gutter somewhere now i quite   like technology and in his hand he's holding a  po33 which is a tiny little sampler that i own it's put out by teenage engineering and they  also make the op1 synth which you can see   sticking out of his backpack which sadly i  don't own so i'm trying to sort of represent   that he's an old-school sort of device trying to  keep up by playing around with and getting lost in   new and evolving technologies uh we can see  there's a cat and a bird there just to sort   of show that he's kind of oblivious to the natural  world that's going on around him but they're not   oblivious to him and down the bottom there's  an october can and the contents of the can is   leaking out and slowly running towards the remote  control and that's just to help show that he's so   distracted by these um screens and devices but  he's completely oblivious that a part of him is   about to become destroyed so it seems a little  heavy-handed but i definitely have my head stuck   in the screen too much i'm very technology-based  and sometimes i forget to step outside and just   sort of smell the roses and get some fresh air and  i wanted to try and convey that in this picture   sweet and that's pretty much all there is to it  now drag it in drop the opacity start drawing   away on top and you'll be finished in no time  wait a minute maybe we are getting a little bit   too ahead of ourselves here let's slow things down  for a little while and switch over to the carrot so i've gone ahead and i've prepared an image of  a carrot i drew this some time ago for something   else and i figured it's probably going to make  things really easy for us today if we can try   and bring this to life in the same style that i've  done the other illustration that you're watching   so first things first i'm going to select the  image and drop the opacity to something like   30 and now with that layer selected we'll lock  it create a new layer i'm going to select the   vector brush tool and let's change the color of  it so that it's an extremely dark shade of purple   now as i said before you can use any brush that  you want i quite like using frankentune's inkspro   default brush as that's what  i'm already using in the other   illustration and make sure that my  controller is set to pressure that way   if i draw something the harder i press the  thicker it will get and the lighter i press   it will taper off at the end so i'm going  to start coming in and tracing this line so what we can do now is come in with some  of these shapes and just connect them up and i'm just going to select all these and  probably just thicken it up a little bit   more so now we're going to come in and do these  sort of leafy parts and now this whole section   is definitely a little bit of a mess  but i'm going to do my best to just   loosely draw in some carrot-like leaf shapes so i'm just going to select all of  those and let's just bump up the stroke   width a little bit just a little  bit more to make it slightly thicker   i might make some of this carrot slightly  thinner and just see what that looks like so while i'm here i'm just going to  quickly throw in some of this detail   on the ground nothing too crazy just a few lines  and squiggles following what i already put there   and this will just give us something else  to add highlights onto later on when we put   some sort of flooring underneath it uh  we might even want to put a couple of   leaves on the ground so jumping back to our main  illustration i'm basically just following the same   rules that we just did with the carrot i'm picking  out the bulkiest shapes and only drawing in   thick lines for them not really worrying about any  details at all and when picking these bulky shapes   just think to yourself what's going to be the  shape that grabs the viewers attention the most   um obviously we're going to be adding like a  lot of details and a lot of textures later on   so having these thick outlines sort of help  create borders for larger shapes that are   going to help a viewer quickly be able to see that  something is a hand or something is a fire hydrant sweet so i'm going to make a new  layer now and call it details   we'll lock our main outline layer and let's  start putting in some of these details   so starting off with a carrot there's a lot  that we could do here just going to put in   like a couple of dots lines just sort of around  one area of it just to show like a little bit   more wear and tear um this is just sort of like  a mangy old carrot we've got this sort of contour   line running this way like it's a very circular  shape so if we put in lines that kind of follow   that it really drives home what we're looking  at now i've forgotten to already but usually   i'll just select all of those lines that i've  just made and i'm going to drop the stroke size just a little bit so that it's quite small i  think that's sort of what i'll be aiming for   and now in my brush settings  i'll keep this brush at about 26   it doesn't really matter like what brush size  you use just as long as at the end of the   day this sort of detail stuff in the middle  here looks thinner than these main outlines   so as you can see uh there's no real rhyme or  reason to what i'm doing here i'm just sort of   exaggerating shapes i think you know this area  that we're looking at right here we've got a   curve and i want to show that it sort of slopes up  to this next section along this way um so that's   why i've just put in those little lines there and  now that i have those lines there i could just   cross over them to make them sort of look like  they blend into everything else that i'm doing awesome there's our detail stage done so  what i'm going to do is lock the detail layer   and i'm going to hide our reference image layer  so now we can just see what we're working on   so now you can see me adding in all of the  detail that's on our main illustration and just   to reiterate it might look like i'm putting  in a lot of effort into this step but um   i'm really not thinking about it all that  much it's kind of a therapeutic process   i mean we already have the basic shapes and the  main outline of everything there so now our job   is to just come in and make everything  look like it's got a little bit of depth   so if something has a lip draw an extra  line there to make it look like that lip   has an edge if it's difficult to see the  edge of something against another object   that's beside it then draw in some lines  to make it look different basically just   throwing in dots and lines to make everything  stand out in a more unique and interesting way   for fabric i like to put lots of folds and  creases that sort of show the direction that   fabric is creasing if i can i'll always  add in stitching the chord on these hoodie   strings even just have little lines in there  to make it look like they're tied up ropes   you might see here that i've actually  used just a red stroke to try and get the   curve of the footpath looking more uniform  just to act as a little bit of a guideline   but yeah i find this part of the process  definitely probably takes the longest but it's   also kind of the most soothing i can just switch  off my brain when i'm doing it and draw away   so while i was working on all of this  my family and i took a trip to stamford   which is a town about four hours away from here  it's a really beautiful part of the country   and it's quite popular because of all of  its vineyards now fortunately affinity   designer is available on the ipad so i was  able to keep working on it while i was away   this is one of the things i love  most about affinity designer   if i go somewhere i don't have to carve my  laptop and graphics tablet away i can just   bring my ipad and keep working on it being able  to use such a powerful app like this on such a   portable device is a huge plus for me it really  helps me get a lot done when i have to travel so no skateboard would be complete without  a few stickers thrown on the bottom of it   and i've made stickers in the past so i thought  it would be kind of cool to throw in little   simplified versions of stickers that i'd  created on the bottom of this skateboard now i'm working on the background here and  i completely scrapped this idea later on   i really wasn't sure what i wanted there  so for the time being i just threw in   a ton of different leaves to make it look like he  was sitting in front of a bush that just happened   to be on the other side of the sidewalk that he  was sitting on i was originally planning to fade   the sidewalk into this background element but i  just wound up scrapping the whole idea later on i   really didn't like it i tried a few different uh  styles of doing the leaves and i tried coloring   in a few different ways um and it just looked  rubbish every time i did it and that's okay   you know it doesn't matter if you spend a huge  amount of time on something and it doesn't work   at the end of the day if it doesn't look good to  you then it's probably not going to look good to   anybody else so yeah i just wound up deleting it  and throwing in some cool textures which i think   turned out looking a hell of a lot better so up  until this point i still wasn't exactly sure what   i wanted on the base of the skateboard but i'd  already thrown those stickers on there which   were a reference to artwork i'd already done so i  thought it would be really fun to try and throw in   an actual piece of artwork that i'd done  and see if i could just make it look like   it was the original deck of the skateboard  but it had been scratched up from all the   grinding and skating that he'd been doing  so i've just placed that artwork in now   and now i'm rotating it and just finding a  suitable spot that i wanted to crop out so you can   see me starting to outline some of that section  but later on i wound up scrapping that outline   and just throwing in the original image because  it it was already done and it just looked better   than this sort of lazy line work that i was  doing over the top of it anyway so now that   that image was based in i just started erasing  parts that i wanted the scratches to appear in so now that our line work is done  let's go ahead and make another layer   and i'm going to make sure that i move it down  below my two outlines now using the pencil tool   i'm going to make sure that use fill is selected  and let's select a basic orange color um i've   turned the stabilizer off and i'm just going to  trace behind my outline now you don't have to do   this shape all in one go you can do it in several  different stages and then join it at the end sweet so now that that is all one shape i'm going  to in the layers panel select these three by   holding shift and then use the add function at the  top here and now that is all just one big shape   we're gonna use this as a clipping mask later on  to put all of our texture work into now i usually   try and name these so we'll name this carrot and  we'll go ahead and do this for the leaves as well cool so we'll worry about the floor later and  for now we'll move on when i'm placing in these   clipping masks i'm not really too concerned  about the exact color of each object i try   and get it relatively close because it gives  me like a clear idea or a good preview of what   my final colors might turn out looking like now  there's a lot that can be said about color theory   and half the time i just throw it out the  window um i do know my color theory and i   use it and a lot of professional work that i do  for different companies and whatnot but for these   sorts of artworks i just like to try and cream in  as much color as i can i really like things to pop   and look rainbow like an explosive in a really  fun and bombastic way so you know a really vibrant   green backpack on a purple shirt just looks cool  to me usually when i'm going in and adding in the   textures i kind of apply a little bit of color  theory i like to add in complementing highlights   on top of colors um so you'll see that  come in later on but for now i'm just   placing in these clipping masks they're going to  completely change color later anyway but it just   gives me a good overview of what things are going  to look like before i actually commit to them   you'll see me using a few  gradients in certain areas too   just to sort of indicate where i wanted shadows  to definitely appear like on the tv men's face and   on the stickers i kind of like how they went from  light to dark i just thought it looked really cool so now we need to start adding in some texture  so what i'm going to do is switch over to the   pixel persona select my paint brush tool and just  to give a quick example i'm going to select just   a random brush these are affinity stock brushes  here and we'll pick a color now usually i like   to use the color picker i pick the color of  the object that i'm going to be painting on   and then i'll just shift it slightly and change it  so let's let's try and add in some sort of shadowy   areas now with my clipping mask selected if i  start drawing and move outside of the shape you   can see that it's fully encased in our orange  carrot shape that we created earlier however   if i just have my layer selected and i start  doing the same thing we can move outside the   shape and that's because we didn't select our  clipping mask layer so if that happens to you   and you sort of realize it a little bit too late  that's okay you can just click and drag on the   pixel layer make sure that it lives underneath  your carrot layer and it should slightly indent   a little bit and now it's stuck in there so you  can even go ahead and just create new pixel layers   and keep changing things and do this as many times  as you want there's no limit you can just keep   adding things and it's always going to stay inside  this clipping mask so what i like to do is use the   frankentune texturizer brush pack there's lots of  great brushes in here an absolute enormous variety   each with different uses now i've said it before  and i'll say it again there are no right brushes   to use you can literally use any brush you want  the brushes i use are just brushes that i slowly   become attached to because i know they work they  work for me and i sort of have like a little bit   of a process in my head i really like this kitchen  sponge one so i'll just increase the size of that   it's up to you if you want to use the pressure of  your graphics template when you do this i like to   but sometimes it's not always necessary so  let's select this orange color i'm going to   make it a little bit redder and make it  quite dark and i'm just going to scrub   over the whole thing leaving some of the orange  showing through but not really a whole lot of it   great so we've really muddied it up and this is  going to help sort of get our shadows going um   so now i'll just bring this a little bit closer  to orange again and slightly increase the color   and we'll just start painting in some of that more  towards the top so the base is definitely going to   be in shadow but the top in and middle are going  to be a little bit lighter now if at any point   you need to jump back that's totally okay i sort  of don't really jump back to specific colors when   i do these things i like to just mix and match  color as i go and see what works and what doesn't now don't be afraid to get um  quite light with this as well   and feel free to experiment with different  brushes i know that there's one in here   called a toothbrush it's got like a real speckley  sort of look that can look really cool and   sometimes just dotting these on as well will give  you like really splashy and interesting results   so we might do that after um i might use spatter  just to sort of throw in a little bit more detail   and then i'll darken everything and knock it back  a little bit um just to sort of help it blend in   with the rest and slowly start reintroducing the  orange again there's no real rhyme and reason to   what i'm doing i'm slowly trying to make it look  like a carrot but i like throwing in all these   little colors and shapes and splatters they help  give some form and dimension to what i'm drawing   and then i'll i'll just keep adding on lighter  and lighter colors until i'm happy with it now depending on what you're doing at the  moment the top of this carrot's quite light   and just to experiment uh it doesn't always  work with everything you do but you can pick   a complimenting color now this isn't always  going to look great um sometimes it can really   sort of help an image stand out i actually quite  like the way that pink is bringing it forward so   just using kitchen sponge i'm just sort of  going to paint in some of the edge of that   just to help make the orange and yellow  pop a little bit more i don't want to   go too heavy with this just another way to  sort of throw in a bit more color variation   and you're still really worried that  it's not coming out the way you like   um you can always add in a new adjustment layer by  clicking on this little icon down the bottom here   um choosing hue saturation and luminosity  now at the moment this is only affecting   the pink that we just did so i'm just  going to drag that out on top here and if we just slide this around  you'll see that we can sort of hone   colors in to be either like a lot stronger  or completely different than they already are   i use this a lot if i'm not happy with colors just  to sort of see what direction i can put them in   you can increase the saturation and brighten  things up a little bit if they're looking too dark and you can just keep on adding adjustment layers  if you want just make sure that uh your layers are   stacked properly and sometimes sort of brightening  things up a little bit throwing in a little bit   more contrast can really make things jump out  at you now we just need to move on to the leaves all right now sadly this is where the issues start   i don't have any of the footage of me  painting textures on the main illustration   it's a bit of a bummer but again i've used  the exact same process when applying textures   to the picture of the carrot so let's  just keep moving on to the next stage cool so the texturing stage is now done and  so now we need to add in some hard shadows   so i'm going to lock this texture jump back  to my design persona and create a new layer   this one we're going to call hard shadows  and we're going to grab the pencil tool   and just make sure that the color of it  is set to the same color as our stroke we'll hide the stroke on the pencil tool um  and now whenever we draw with it we get these   sort of big purple shapes so if we  start drawing with this straight away   um we're going to just black out certain parts  of our shape and we don't really want that   so what we'll do is on the hard shadows layer  we'll just drop it to something around 50 that way we can still see through it but i  also like to set this to multiply and that   way it doesn't really affect too much of the  color information underneath so what i'll do   is just come in here and sort of pick out areas  that to me look recessed i'm not exactly picking   out areas where shadow would be cast i'm more  creating shapes so that other parts are elevated so worrying about a constant light source  really isn't too big of a problem when   you're doing something like this and  you're free to just sort of experiment   and chuck in shapes that you think  will work best in us in a given area now we've got all these weird dots and lines and  blemishes on this carrot as well from our detail   stage so this actually gives us a little bit of  an opportunity to just either fill them in or   put shadows either side of them just to make  them sort of stand out a little bit more and   then we can whack a highlight on the other side  of it later on and it'll stand out even further here's a good example of what i was talking about  with areas looking elevated having a shadow here   and a shadow there doesn't really make sense um  like i don't even know what this is is it a scar   or a scratch but at the end of the day it makes  this center part look elevated so even if it is a   scar if we zoom out now it sort of looks a little  bit 3d it's got quite a little bit of depth and   it really stands out to us um you can go really  crazy with this too you can just pop in shadows   even if there isn't line work there and just  sort of zoom out and see what things look like   there's no right or wrong way  to do this step it's more about   how much restraint do you want to have  with it you can go as crazy as you want   or do as little as you want it's still  going to look good at the end of the day   so that's the hard shadow part done we're going to make another new layer and call  this highlights select our brush and make sure   that we still have the frankentune x pro selected  we'll set the controller to pressure one more time   and for the color we don't want a fill but  we do want a stroke so what i like to do is   use a off-white so we don't want true white but  if we just style this back a little bit we'll get   like a creamy sort of yellowy white and then we  can go in here and start drawing some highlights   that's looking a little bit small for  me so i might set this size to 20. now you don't need to think too much  about where you place your highlights   i tend to do exactly what i did with the drop  shadow before and place them just about everywhere it's a really good way to make things stand out  and they they look quite embossed when you do it   the end result looks quite embossed um and i  don't even worry too much if i've already got   a shadow there or not um i try not to put too much  thought into this thing otherwise i'm here all day   so even if i wind up putting a  highlight where a shadow's about to live   that's okay by me it doesn't usually look too off cool and there's the highlight stage done so at this point our carrot is basically complete   but there's a couple of other steps that i  want to take to demonstrate some more to you   you'll notice in the main illustration um  that i have like a ground gravel texture   on on the floor and i use the method that i think  will be really useful to other people to try so   down the bottom here i'm going to open up the  stock tab and i'm just going to type in gravel i find one that i like i think  this one should do the job   and i'll drag and drop it in that's  pretty big so let's scale it down and we'll sit it behind our carrot layer so this  looks to be like a top down image of some gravel   so why don't we just sort of squash it a little  make it slightly wider now what i'm going to do   is play around with the colors a little bit and  then we're going to paint on top of it just get   a lot more control and a bit of variation the main  reason that i've used this stock image is that it   just makes for a really good starting point so  let's group this and using an adjustment layer   i'm just going to change the brightness and  contrast so i'll definitely make it a lot darker   maybe we'll drop some of this contrast  as well i don't want it to be too obvious we could definitely play  around with the levels as well i think i'm going to go with that for now we'll  just bring out the blacks a little bit just to   make it a lot more neutral great so now that  that's there i'm going to add on a new layer   and switch to the pixel persona frankentune has  another fantastic brush pack called the concepts   master with nature a and b so basically what these  are a lot of grass bark dirt and mud textures   that i find really useful when i'm trying to  create sort of more natural scenes now this   one here has a rocky surface so i'm just  going to pick um just a random color to   start off with and we'll just sort of see  how we like it um we'll probably make it   slightly blue maybe a little bit darker as  well and just start painting it over the top   now this can take a long time it's really like  a lot of experimenting um with just sort of   what works and what doesn't work i'm painting over  the same area multiple times can sort of start   muddying up the image a lot too but we'll we'll  slowly reintroduce some more of these colors and   just see how it turns out if it doesn't look good  like we can always just lose the layer entirely   um this is just how i did the  road of the main illustration   and i thought it'd be useful to see how that was  done um you could introduce some browns as well really any color that you want to the more  colors the better just to sort of make it   look a little bit more natural and then we  can pick another brush here's rocky surface   a so it's going to look slightly different might  introduce some sort of brighter brighter yellows now at any time we can change the  blend mode and just sort of have a   bit of a look with how it interacts with  the artwork we've got going on underneath i think lighting looks pretty  cool what i might do though   is just sort of play around  with the um hue and saturation i might bring up the curves here and we'll just drop some of that blue now let's just make the whole thing quite dark um  just to sort of help help our carrots stand out   a little bit more so we can do is sort of  pick a different brush i think from memory i   actually switched back to the rocky surface  for this to begin with um just to sort of   make it look like the rocks were fading out um  and then got rid of the rest of it afterwards if you feel like you've erased too much  um you can always just remove this mask   i mean the rest of the illustration is  still there uh what i might do though is   just uh increase the size of this a little bit  more so it's covering more of a surface area   i'm just going to keep playing around  with some of these adjustment layers   sometimes color balance is a really good one  just to make things slightly warmer or cooler sweet so i'm really happy with that i might come  in and put a few highlights on some of these   little rocky areas but first um let's just throw  in a solid color background i like my backgrounds   to be quite dark so what i'm going to do is just  switch back to the designer persona and just draw   a box around the whole area cool now it's entirely  up to you what color you make this i usually just   sort of help figure things out like to make it  the same color as my stroke i think having it   be this purple color just sort of bringing it  down slightly might work a little bit better and if we really wanted to we could either  paint in the shadow of the carrot as texture   or we could try and come in and just  draw in a new shadow shape using the   the same method that we did before i definitely  don't like how there's a lot of true black coming   through and this is what i mean by true black like  sometimes clashing with my colors in a weird way i   really don't like that at all so if we hide our  gravel layer we can see that that true black's   disappearing and we're just left with the texture  work that we did what i might do is just bring   our levels adjustment up here and just try and  make sure that the black level isn't too high so for final adjustments i'm just going  to create a new adjustment layer and use   the option lens filter i'm going to drag this  out of the details layer and actually group this   and we'll call this adjustments um so basically  what the lens filter is doing is applying this   orange color over the top of everything if i crank  this up you can see that it gets really extreme   this is it sort of at its default percentage and  if i toggle this on and off you should be able   to see that it just warms everything up but not  only that it ties a lot of our colors together   in a little bit more of a realistic fashion so  right now like this blue is pretty prominent   but if we turn this on it just knocks it back a  little bit and introduces a lot more of a warmer   color if warm isn't something you're going for  then you can just come in here and change the   filter color to be something a lot cooler or  maybe a little bit pink or green it's really   dependent on what you're going for but i quite  like the sort of orange another thing we can do is just increase the contrast a little bit and  the brightness slightly i don't want to make it   too much because we'll start to lose like a lot  of the darkness of our carrot um you can push it   you know as far as you want i just  don't like my line work becoming   you know too bright at this point too a lot of  our highlights have turned true white um and   i'm not really a big fan of that either so i tend  to try and not push this too far if i can help it   lastly we can also come in um i use i use this  one a lot is the color balance now we already used   this earlier on the whole gravel texture thing  but this just gives you a little bit more of a   finer control over how cool or how warm you want  your mid tones and highlights and shadows as   well uh it can be really fun to play around with  and just sort of experiment to get new looks and   new perspectives on your image and it's always  good to just sort of toggle these on and off and   see if you're really happy with the the final  setting you can even just drop the opacity a   little bit so that it's not as as prominent  as um as it was while you're setting it up   so unfortunately what you're about to see here  is the last piece of footage that i have recorded   for the main illustration but by this stage the  whole thing was pretty much done there's a few   background elements in there which i'm about to  go into and demonstrate with the carrot but one   other adjustment that i did make was to the head  of the cat my wife pointed out that the cat's   head looked more like a rat's head than a cat's  head and after looking at it for a little while   i started to agree so i basically just painted in  a new head on top using the same method that we   saw before but all just on a separate layer  and made sure that it blended in seamlessly now just to demonstrate one more thing because  there are some strange elements floating around in   the background of the tv head guy i'm just going  to squash this and bring it down slightly i've got   some cool textured assets floating around behind  the tv head guy so adding in some of these assets   uh there's a lot of different asset packs out  there that you can download for affinity there's   a bunch on their website again i i really like  frankenton's stuff man um his the content that he   makes themselves is just really good quality stuff  i use it in everything uh and you can make your   own but i think that's the subject for another  video so what i'm going to do is go to view studio   and go to the asset browser so i don't  have frankincense assets installed   on my desktop here i've got them on my  ipad but it's the exact same principles   so let's have a look at these i've never used  these before we've got paint roller textures so these are a little bit hard to see straight  off the bat i'll just hide the background layer   um yeah no i don't think i'd use those  uh ink stem looks kind of interesting   yeah i think something like this could work um  so all i've done is opened up the asset panel   gone down to the asset pack i have installed and  gone to ink stamp i think this might have come   with affinity i'm not entirely sure um and  now we just want to decide uh what exactly   we're going to use from it so first of all  we can't see this on our background like it's   it's super dark so we want to be able to change  the color of it so the way that we do that is   by going to the effects panel over here and  there's this little option called color overlay   so if we turn this on and change the color to  white for example now we've changed the color   of that asset so let's just make it i don't  know like a really sort of light blue color   i think that will do the job and i'm just going  to sort of keep a section kind of make it look   like it's spraying up the back i think that's  kind of like what i did with the tv head guy i'm going to duplicate this layer with control j  and just hide it so that i've got another copy of   it to use let's just go back to the pixel persona  we use the erase brush um i'll probably just use   a basic brush for this i don't think it needs  to be anything too crazy uh and on the group   we're going to erase the part of the image that  we don't want um so we can still see it outside   of our canvas but that's okay we just don't  want to be seeing it so in our canvas anywhere great um so we've got that and basically it's  just a simple case of grabbing these items with   ctrl j and duplicating them you can right click  transform flip horizontally skew it and stretch it the choice is like entirely  up to you but basically that   that's how the background was achieved this doesn't look exactly special in any  way because you know i used different assets   i sort of hand picked out the ones that i really  wanted to use you can play around with things like   adding on outer glows to these as well give  some really funky results just to make things   look like they're glowing slightly and then try  changing the blend mode so something like overlay   or soft light it's entirely up to you basically  um even though the background looks really complex   and awesome or at least i was quite happy with it  it's not really that complex it's just chopping   in assets making sure that the color overlay  sets them to a color that i want them to be   and then deleting the parts that i don't  want and there you have it that is pretty   much my entire illustration process  laid out so i hope that it is helpful   and i hope that you're able to follow along easily  so there you have it two completely different   illustrations done using the exact same process  i really hope that this affinity session has been   useful and inspiring to all of you if you like  this sort of thing feel free to head on over to my   youtube channel i've got lots more there thank you  so much to affinity for giving me this opportunity   i never thought that i'd be doing something  like this and i'm super stoked to have done it   thanks to everybody who's tuned in  i'll see you around and have a good one you

Channel: Affinity

Views: 24,214

Keywords: Affinity Designer, Creative Sessions, Illustration, Vector, Art, Tutorial, Workflow, RSKT

Id: yzaiIP31AqE

Length: 61min 44sec (3704 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021