The Affinity Designer Crash Course

Now we’re getting to the good stuff. In this section we’re going to start drawing and learning about the shape tool and how it’s used in illustration.

Now that we understand the shape tool a little more we’re going to start modifying the shapes we make.

The text tools in Affinity Designer are pretty good. In this session we will be using the text tool to add some text to the letter we drew in the last section.

The snapping options in Affinity Designer are really granular. In this section we’re going to be adjusting the snapping settings and using them in conjunction with the grid to help us draw.

The geometry tools are used to combine shapes or cutting elements out of shapes. We review those ideas in this lesson.

The gradient tool in Affinity Designer is really easy to use and just plain fun to fiddle with. We will be using it in our illustration here.

The color picker works a little different than it does in Adobe Illustrator. We also review styles and how it can be used in conjunction with the color picker.

Global colors are incredibly useful when used in your illustration. In this section we go over how to set up global colors in your swatches.

It’s project time. The first step of any project is the research. In this section I walk you through my research and sketching phase of the project.

In this part of the project we block out the basic shape of the house we will be creating getting the largest sections in place first.

Now that we have laid the base it’s time to start adding details and making this look more like a house.

There is still more detail we can add. In this section we will be adding shadows and transparency to add some depth to our house.

Now that we have a nice house it’s time to age it and make it a haunted house. That means making some broken windows and making those shutters look older.

This is an introduction to the pixel person. In the pixel persona you can draw with traditional raster tools.

Before we get to our next project we need to go over how layers work and understand the concepts of masking.

The pen tool is one of the most powerful tools in any vector program. It also takes some getting used to. In this section we will be using it and getting in some curve drawing practice.

Now that we understand shapes and the pen tool it time to combine some of the concepts and take our designs to the next level.

Now we’re starting a new project. In this section we review tracing and drawing with the pen tool to draw zombie’s head.

We go on to finish the foreground elements in this section. And by foreground elements I mean the zombie’s body.

This poster needs a logo. In this section we take what we’ve learned about the type tool and about layers and we use it to create a logo.

This is a pretty big background. Let's take it in chunks. We start in one one side and start detailing things out.

We bring in our haunted house and add more and more detail to the background.

In this section we play with some of the special effects in Affinity Designer and talk about how they can add a little extra flair to your illustrations.

But wait! There’s more! On things that didn’t fit into the main course was some of the cool things you can do in the pixel persona. In this section I cover some of those techniques.