Transcripts
1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Hi, my name
is Weronika Salach. I'm an Illustrator and Surface Pattern Designer
based in Berlin, Germany. I've been using Affinity
Designer for iPad mainly to create seamless
repeat patterns. I use those patterns to
print them out on fabrics, on stationary, and
on home goods. All of my patterns are
built out of vector assets. Assets are design elements
that you can create onetime, save them to your
library and keep reusing them across
all of your projects. They save you a lot of time
and they can really help you create vector
designs full of details. Together, me and you are going to go through
this course and create beautiful
hand-drawn vector assets in Affinity Designer
on the iPad. During this course,
I'm going to show you how to use the most
important vector tools in Designer and how to create multi-layer defector
assets in bulk. You will need your iPad and any versions of
Affinity Designer. We will start with
getting to know Affinity Designer interface
Version 1 and Version 2, setting up our project
and our document, as well as creating presets, and working on
multiple art boards. We will get very familiar
with the pencil tool, which will allow us to create beautiful vector assets that have this hand-drawn feeling. We will explore stroke and
fill, brush stabilization, the sculpt mode, clipping
masks, and blend modes. I will also show
you the knife tool, which is only available
in Affinity Version 2. Most importantly,
I will teach you everything I know about
the Assets Studio, how to layer and group
here vector assets, and how to organize them in your Assets Library
in an efficient way. Ready to take your vector
skills to the next level? Let's get started.
2. Your Project & Inspiration: Welcome everybody. Let's briefly discuss the
project for this course. Your project is to create at
least five vector assets, between five and 10
would be a good number, but of course, you are very
welcome to create more. Vector assets that will be
saved in your assets library, organized in at least two
different subcategories. For example, I choose to create botanical
elements that I will most probably organize in three subcategories
such as flowers, maybe small blooms,
leaves, and berries. Of course, you can
choose any other theme for your assets. You can follow along
with me and you can create some botanical
assets for your library. Here, really the
sky is the limit, you can create flowers,
berries, twigs, leaves. You can go even deeper and
create some exotic plants, or plants that are
typical for your area. Another cool project is
to create a little stars, especially if you
like to sprinkle your illustration
with those of magic. I do for example,
have a whole category of stars that I saved into my assets library that proved to be very helpful
over and over again. For this category, pretty much any other celestial elements, like some planets, maybe the moon will be a great idea to include
in this category. If you're a little
bit more ambitious, you can also create a library
with some animal objects, maybe doggies or cats, some pets or some birds. Those are very popular motives that you can then
reuse to create, for example, patterns. Another fun category is
food or cooking or baking, or you can consider to create
some fruit and veggies. For this project, you
can upload, for example, a screenshot from your
Asset Studio showing your new group of vector assets. You can also put them on a dedicated Artboard and
showcase them in this way. Then you can also take
a screenshot or save this Artboard as JPEG and then
upload it as your project. For those of you who are a
little bit more advanced, [LAUGHTER] and feel
more comfortable using Affinity Designer, perhaps you can take
those new assets and you can create a pattern or just a spot
illustration which uses those assets that you created
after taking this course. If you're sharing the
work that you created in this course on Instagram, I would love to see it
as usual and feature it. For that purpose you can use the #magicalvectors [LAUGHTER], so that I can see your
beautiful creations. Happy creating.
3. About Affinity Designer: In this lesson, I wanted
to tell you what you can expect to learn and to
see in this course. I will be showing you
my process mainly in Affinity Designer Version
2 but I'll be also making comparisons to Version 1. Why is that? Some
users are used to Version 1 of Affinity
Designer for the iPad. There was an upgrade to the entire Serif suite
with Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and
Affinity Publisher. It was, I think
November 9, 2022. But here's the thing, you
don't have to update to Version 2 if you're
comfortable using Version 1, you bought it some
months or years ago, you can stick with Version 1 and you don't have to delete it, you don't have to upgrade. It is totally fine. If you're watching this
course and you've never had Affinity installed on your
iPad then moving forward, you will be offered only Version
2 from November 2022 on. You can buy the app in the App Store for a
one-time payment. I cannot really tell you how
much it costs right now. I think for me when
I bought Version 1, it cost 24.99 and then
it was reduced to 19.99. The price can change
over the years. But I can tell you only
that for me personally, it was totally worth it. I think it's a very
powerful tool. You pay only one
time and you have any future updates
included in the price tag. In this class, I will be
showing you how to create assets directly in Affinity
Version 1 and Version 2. But I wanted to let you know that there are many
other ways to create your vector assets
and you don't have to stick to Affinity Designer, for example, I like
also creating my assets using Adobe Fresco
and Procreate. But in this course, we will be only covering creating assets directly
in the program, in Affinity Designer and then creating assets in
Fresco or Procreate, those will be covered
in separate classes so that the content is
more digestible for you. I also get many
requests to create a dedicated class on surface pattern design
using Affinity. This will also be covered
in a separate course. However, in the meantime, the more assets you create
for your Affinity library, the easier it will be to create a beautiful pattern using
Affinity Designer later on. I wanted to ask
you to stay tuned. In the meanwhile, create
as many assets as you can because it will
certainly pay off in the future. I would also like to
briefly mention why people choose Affinity over
Adobe in the first place. For starters, it's
a great option because some people just don't like the
subscription model. You pay a one-time fee and you have the program
pretty much forever. Another advantage of
using Affinity Designer over Adobe is that
it's essentially two programs in one
because Affinity supports in one same program vector
work with pixel work whereas, when you're using Adobe, you have usually two programs. You do your vector art
in Adobe Illustrator and then if you want
to add some extra raster or pixel texture, you move to Photoshop. This is solved in Affinity suite by introducing the
so-called personas, in Version 2, you see the
personas, for example, here, there are
two main personas. We will also discuss
it in further lessons. Along in this course, there's a designer persona
for vectors and there's a pixel persona for
raster or pixel art. You could for example draw
all your shapes for starters, as vectors and then you can
switch to the pixel persona, where you will get
a different menu. You will get here pixel
brushes, paint brushes. Both of those modalities, vector and pixel, are
combined in only one program. Now, in the next lesson, we are ready to
talk a little bit more about what are assets.
4. What Are Assets: Welcome back. This is
where the fun starts. Let's first address the
question booth, or assets, because many of you have not
heard about assets before. Assets are pre-made
design elements that you can store it in
your library on your device. Then you can access or create any new document
and they will be accessible across
the entire device, so you create them once, you save them in
your library and you can re-use them as many
times as you want. This in turn can save
you a lot of time. I re-use my assets a
lot, in particular, smaller elements which are
not hero elements such as, smaller blooms or twigs, but also other decorative
elements such as, little stars or dots, or any other abstract shapes. I wanted to show
you one example, this is one of my most
favorite food patterns. I have here, some pies, some apple pie, some pears. You will see that I have re-used those apples and those pears
in a few other designs. It was super easy
because they were available in my assets library. So there is one
pattern here that has those apples and pears. Here is another one, see, the same apples, the same pears, just a different pattern. Here the same pears,
the same apples. [LAUGHTER] Those are
three different patterns, but I was able to re-use
some elements and save time. Since those are not licensed to any client,
it's quite safe. But if you are choosing or if you're drawing
something more specific, for example, I have here a pattern with
Christmas jackalopes, this might be a little bit too unique and if I
took, for example, this jackalope and
re-used it and then licensed that pattern
to one client, then I would probably
block this asset so I wouldn't be able
to re-use it in another one till the license, for example, expires. I would say so in order to
avoid any copyright issues. But all the other smaller items, for example, this
little sun or stars, I have another pattern here that I got printed
out on a fabric. As you can see,
for example here, I re-used the same
stellar elements. I tend to reuse them
over and over again, they're the same assets
that I have saved up in my assets library. If you would like to see my assets [LAUGHTER]
more in action, you can also check
out my videos on my YouTube channel where I'm showing a very
quick demo in one of the videos on how I create a botanical pattern
in pretty much only a few minutes
using exclusively the pre-made assets from
my affinity library. It looks pretty cool.
[LAUGHTER] Let's get started then and join
me in the next lesson.
5. FREE Assets Download: Now that you know
what assets are, I wanted to help you build
your assets library. I prepared for you
one asset category that you can download
in this course. In this way, in case your assets library is
a little bit empty, you won't feel intimidated
by its emptiness, and you will have
something to start with. I prepared for you a folder with some basic filler assets, a few botanical elements, such as small blooms, twigs and leaves, and also
some abstract shapes. You are free to use those
assets in your projects. You just can't sell them or present them as
your own creation. For the sake of
this demonstration, I will remove this
category, Hamburger menu. I'm going to delete it so
that I can iporate it again, delete from this app. Now it's gone. I hit the
Hamburger menu again, and I select the option
Import category, and you can choose an asset name that starts with fillers. We click on it. And now our import is complete.
Yeah, all done. Congratulations. We imported our first assets category
into our library. I hope that you enjoy them. I will tell you more about
the assets studio in one of the last lessons
titled Assets panel. We will learn there about the anatomy of the
assets studio, how to save our assets, and how to export them. But for now, let's continue
learning about the basics.
6. The Interface: V1 & V2: In this lesson, we
will have a quick look at the interface in
Affinity Designer. Let's briefly outline
the differences between Affinity Designer
Version 1 and Version 2. I have a whole class
on how to find yourself in affinity
interface Version 1, and it includes some bonus
material covering Version 2. Maybe you'd like to start your learning with this
introduction course. The first difference is that
the main page, the homepage, looks different because, this Version 2, in
Affinity Version 2, the main menu is here
on the left side. In Version 1, the menu on the
homepage is here above, and it looks a little
bit more limited. In Version 1, we have the hamburger menu here, the three vertical lines, and they help you to access
some additional features. When you click on
it in Version 2, you can, for example,
rename the project. Let's go maybe inside. If you click on
the hamburger menu directly from a given document, you have the option to close it, which means to
completely remove it, delete it, then you have
the option to rename it. Then you can make a
copy of duplicate. You can save it
into your storage, and you can also move
it out of the project. Also, through the
plus symbol here, you can create a new project, a new folder, or a new document, or import any other documents
that you created in the past from the Cloud or from your photos,
for instance. Also, the size of the thumbnails is a
little bit different. How many can we fit here? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. To be perfectly honest, I think I prefer
the Version 1 view, but yeah, I guess you
can get used to that. [LAUGHTER] We had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and you can already see
in Designer Version 2, the thumbnails are a
little bit bigger. This is Version 2, the thumbnails are a
little bit bigger. You also have the
hamburger menu here, but this only gives you the
option to save and to save as where you can save it
into your external storage, and one important thing
that I need to underline here is right now as
of December 2022, the only way to rename
your file is to, when you're creating it to
already name it properly, and to save it
into your storage. For example, I save everything
to my iPad directly. I have a lot of
storage on my device. You click on ''Save As'', and this is where you can
change your file name. Then every time you want
to rename that file, you have to go through
the Save As option, and then you have to save it as, you have to choose
your new name. Then probably you have to
go to your file directory and you have to delete the other file that
has this old name. It helps you to save
your data because it's saved in some storage bead
on your iPad directly, or maybe in a Cloud
services such as Dropbox. Whereas over here, let's
open again this project. You can rename the
file very easily here, but it doesn't mean
that it's backed up or it doesn't mean
that it's saved. Well, I like the renaming
function in Version 1, but to be fair, I never had any issues
in losing any data. This can happen when you
get your device lost, maybe it crashes, you have some accident with your device. Maybe you uninstall affinity for some reason and you want to re-install it, bring it back, then if you do not
use the save option, all your files will
not be backed up. They will not be
stored anywhere. Affinity developers, we talked about it quite extensively
in the affinity form. They wanted to prevent
complaints from the users, so they forced this
save and save as usage so that you get into the habit of
saving your documents. This is something that
you have to bear in mind. Let's see what's also difference
in the document view. Let's open this document in Version 1 and let's do
the same in Version 2. By the way, I forgot
to say in Version 2, there's also an option
to swipe to the left and then you can save it, and it will get saved to your storage or you
can make a copy here. Copying. Now we can open it. If you want to find your
way around the interface, you can always use
the question mark. This is the same
in both versions, you can just press and it will give you some a cheat sheet. The same in Version 1, the question mark is
in the very same spot in the lower right corner. Each of those options
that you have here on the left side gives you some extra actions
that you can perform, and they are placed in the
so-called contextual menu. In Version 1 this menu
will be below here, whereas in Version 2 everything was taken
out of the art board, the developers wanted to
create more clarity and declutter this creative area here [LAUGHTER] in the middle, and they move this
contextual menu that we used to be here below, up here. Apart from that, Version
2 has a few new features. That's why it's Version 2,
it should have some extras. If you're still on Version 1, you can keep using it, but
you can consider upgrading. Some of the new things that were introduced
that I quite like, are the knife tool where you
can cut your vectors and. [NOISE] This is pretty
called the shape builder where you can merge and subtract some elements from your shapes to build
completely unique shapes. I think this is
particularly handy when you're doing a logo design. Both versions combine both tools for vector work and for
a pixel or raster work. Those personas, they're
called personas, they're always available in
the same upper-left corner. In Version 2, you have it here, you can switch
between designer and pixel and in Version 1, it's also in the
upper left corner, but it's not nested in one menu. It's next to each other. Here is the designer
persona for vectors, and here's the pixel persona
for your raster work. In this course we
will be creating new assets using
the pencil tool, and there's also
a tiny difference regarding where the
pencil tool is located. [LAUGHTER] In Version 2, let's go back to our
question mark to find it. You can find the
pencil tool here more or less in the middle of
the menu on the left side, pencil, right underneath
the pen tool. But one difference is that
when you click on it, you will see also that
the vector brush has been nested together
with the pencil tool. In Affinity Designer Version 1, let's click again on
the question mark, the pencil tool and the vector brush tool
have been separated. Cool. We discussed
the interface, the differences between
Version 1 and Version 2, and now we're ready to
create our first document.
7. Projects & Documents: Welcome back. Let's start our project with
creating a new document. I will show you how I
proceed in Version 2, and then I will very quickly show you how to do
it in Version 1. Whenever I'm working
on my assets, let's have a look at
this project here, I usually have a
dedicated document just for creating those assets. The dimensions of my canvas, I usually work in
the square format, they don't really
matter in the end because those are vectors. Later on, you can
scale them up and down without any quality loss. Now, a word about
creating projects, it was a little bit
different than Version 2. If you want to create
a project which is essentially a folder under which you can nest
multiple projects, for example, here
I have a folder for all my autumn designs. In Version 1, you create
such a new folder by hitting the plus symbol and then
choosing new project, and then you can create
it and rename it. But let's cancel. This option is a little
bit hidden in Version 2. You can either create a folder by holding on the screen
all the documents that are already created and
dragging it and dropping it onto another document
that you want to join in one folder. This will help you
to stack them and therefore to create
a new project. This new project you
can also rename by swiping to the left then
this icon will show up. You can click on it
and you can rename it. Another way to create such a folder is a
little bit hidden. Over here, you have
the option to create documents under new and plus, but if you just tap on
it and long press it, it will open you a new menu, and this is where you can
create a new project, and then you just rename it
and you'll have a new folder. We will not do that because we already have a new folder here. Moving forward, if you create any other documents that
should belong to this project, you can just press drag, it will start moving a little bit just
like Apple products, and then you can just
drop it into that folder and now everything
is in one folder. This mechanism works in the same way this
dragging and dropping. It works in the same way
in affinity Version 1. To create a new
document in Version 2, we click on "New", and this is where you
can create your canvas from scratch or you
can say the preset. If you want to
create a new preset, you click on the first
symbol with the plus, and then you can rename
your preset here. The next symbol allows you
to create a new category. Let's do a quick exercise on
how to save your presets. I have 2,000 pixels
here and 4,000 pixels, but maybe I would like
to save 3,000 pixels. In order to do that, you have to go to
the existing preset and then you have to modify it, so I'm changing the
2,000s to 3,000s. I keep the 300 DPI document
unit stay as pixels. This is something you can untick but I always have it ticked. If I create this document, it will automatically
create an artboard, and I love working
with artboards, so I keep it on. Color format is RGB. Here too also have an option to create a transparent background, and that's pretty much all
that I pay my attention to. [LAUGHTER] There are
some extra options here, for example, here you can set up some margins and bleed values depending
on your project. Now we changed the 2,000s. They are the original preset
of 2,000 pixels into 3,000. Once you do any modifications on presets that already existed, it will get this little star symbol at the end of the name. It will mean that it
has been modified. Now, in order to save
this new preset, I go to this first icon
with the plus symbol. I keep it in the
pixels category that was previously
created in advance, I changed the name
to 3,000 pixels, then I hit "Okay",
and now it's created. If you change your mind, if there's some format that
you're not using anymore, you can hit this last icon here with multiple,
I think, artboards. [LAUGHTER] You can use this hamburger vertical lines
menu to move your presets. For example, I would
like to have 4,000, 3,000, and then 2,000. By hitting this minus symbol, you are able to delete it. Cool, let's have a little look. Now we have our presets here. Let's select 2,000
pixels and hit "Okay". This is Version 2. Let's see how to do that
in Version 1 very quickly. In Version 1, you hit the plus symbol
here, new document. Here you can change your units, for example, pixels. You adjust this to 2,000 by
default you get 144 DPI, you change it to 300. You make sure that you
create an artboard. The orientation doesn't
matter because it's a square document, and then you hit "Okay", and you create
your new document. If you want to save
this document, let me just repeat. You have to hit the back arrow and go back to your homepage. The same with Version 2. This one, we don't need
anymore. It's a copy. If you want to remove a document that you
don't need anymore, you hit the X symbol
in Version 2. It will ask you whether you really want to close
the document because it's a little bit
misleading to close the document and affinity
means to really delete it. [LAUGHTER] So you choose
close without saving. Again, a reminder in
order to rename it, you have to save it as, let's name it as floral assets, save, and it will ask you
where you want to save. Like I said, I actually save mine on my iPad in this folder, so I just hit "Save"
and it's been renamed. Now we're ready to draw.
8. Your Artboards: One of the useful things
that you can find in Affinity Designer
is that you can work on multiple artboards. I've been using for
years Procreate, and this is something
that I've been really missing in Procreate
as a program. It's really cool thing and very useful thing
in Affinity Designer, and I wanted to show you how
to utilize those artboards. Let's have a look
at a few examples. Let's take, for example,
this pattern file. You will see that I'm working
here on three artboards. The first artboard
is with my pattern, the main pattern tile. This is the preview
that I created for this pattern,
artboards number 2. This is a smaller artboard where I'm keeping my color palette. Those color palettes,
by the way, are available on
my Pinterest page. You can also pin them for future reference and you're
very welcome to use them. Here on the right side, you have your layers symbol. You will be using
it all the time. Let's have a look at the layers. The very first view
that you will see are your artboards. Let's zoom out. You can make your
layer invisible by toggling on and off this little circle
on the right side. This is our pattern tile, this is our preview, and this is our
color inspiration. If say you wanted to export it, we can hit this vertical lines
menu here, choose Export. As you're exporting, you
are able to either export the whole document or you can choose which of the artboards you
would like to export. I usually export mainly, not the preview because they
can have some mistakes. I usually tend to export
only the pattern tile. I think in general, working with artboards
makes your life easier. Here's another example. There was a time when
I uploaded a lot of my patterns into my
print-on-demand shops. In order to make my work easier, I worked with three artboards. The first one was
the pattern that was 4,000 by 4,000 pixels. The second artboard was the
preview of my pattern to see if it is a good
repeat design. The third artboard
was my POD tile. If you want to check the
dimensions of this artboard, let's actually go to Layers. Let's have just the
POD artboard selected. Over here you have
the transform studio. If you click on it, you get some additional information
about your artboard. We see that the whole
selection here in blue encompasses exactly
this POD artboard. Through this transform studio, you can see right away the dimensions of this
artboard which is, for my POD shop,
11,000 pixels square. Let's do the same
with the preview. The preview has
8,000 pixels square, and my pattern has
4,000 pixels square. When we created our document, we created our first artboard. You also have the
option to rename it. In Affinity Version 2, you have to go to
the three dots. Then you see the
name Artboard 1. You can click on it, select it, and just rename
it may be assets. You can rename it to
anything you want. Then when you go back
to the layers panel, you see that this artboard has been renamed and it's empty. Let's also create
an artboard for our inspiration and
reference photos. In order to create a new
artboard in Version 2, you go to the three
vertical lines, so the hamburger menu. Somewhere in the
middle, you have the option to select Artboards. Then you start drawing your
artboard and it's done. If you would like to
change the dimensions, you can either just drag it by selecting one of the corners with a
little circle symbol, or having it selected, you can go to the
transform studio here and you can change
your dimensions here. For example, let's say, I want the width to be 1,500 and the height
to be exactly 2,000. If you would like to move it, just make sure to go
back to the move tool, which is here in the
upper-left corner because otherwise
if you're still in the mode for creating artboards, when you start drawing
or touching your screen, you might accidentally
create another artboard. Now we can move it. You can move it up
or down and remember you can still resize it. But I'll go back. You go back by tapping on your screen
with two fingers. Let's say I actually
wanted here and I want to drag this artboard below
and I want to rename it, so again, three
dots to reference. Let's do the same in
Affinity Version 1. Let's first rename it, hamburger menu, rename, floral assets, click on it. The first artboard is there, we can rename it. We go to the layers panel. We make sure that our
artboard is selected and we choose the three dots
which are here on the left. Then we also click on the
name and we rename it, for example, to assets. To create another artboard, we go to the menu in
the upper-left corner, this little sheet of paper. Then again in the middle, we
go to the artboards option. Then we just drag and
we create our artboard, and in the same way, we can go here to the transform studio. We can make sure
that our dimensions are exactly what
we want it to be. For example, 1,500 for the width and exactly 2,000
pixels for the height. In the next lesson, we will populate this reference artboard with our reference
photos and some sketches.
9. References & Stock Panel: In this lesson, we
will talk about using reference images to
create a mood board, and preparing your sketch. For your project, you will need a few sketches for your assets. In my case, it will be
sketches of flowers, leaves, and berries because I decided to create more botanical assets. But there are many ways
you can go about it. For example, you can do
it in a traditional way. Namely, you can sketch the elements that
you would like to vectorize later on in your physical sketchbook,
such as this one. [NOISE] If you're
more of a sketchbook person who likes to draw while watching TV or
just sitting on your sofa, then feel free to
prepare your sketch of the elements that you
would like to turn into vectors in your
physical sketchbook. Once you're done, you can just snap a picture
from your sketchbook, save it to your camera roll, and then import it
directly into Affinity. Then, as always, another great source of
inspiration is always Pinterest. I've put one inspiration
board for you. You're more than welcome to
check it out and pin over some botanical pictures
that inspire you. Let me show you this board. Let's go to Pinterest. I will also link this board in the description of this
class on Skillshare website. Here a word of advice. I recommend that you focus
on shapes and forms. In this class, we will not
be tracing any photos. I really encourage you to draw from your
imagination [LAUGHTER] rather than try to copy
a shape perfectly. As you're working
on your sketch, you simply let your pencil flow. Please also make
sure that you're not copying anything one-to-one, as you might infringe
someone's copyright. If you like a photo from
Pinterest and you would like to use it on your mood
board in Affinity Designer, you can take a screenshot of it. For instance, I felt
really inspired by the shape of
this ginkgo leaf. I will open this
one and I will take a screenshot of this one leaf, and I will use it later
on my mood board. A fantastic way to get reference photos is actually
just to simply snap a few pictures on your phone as you maybe take
your daily walk. [LAUGHTER] You can also
go to a flower store and ask for permission if you
could take a few photos. Now, there's also a
really fantastic feature directly in Affinity
Designer because Affinity has the
so-called stock panel and it's available both in
Version 2 and in Version 1. I will show you
that in a second. Currently, they have a
connection to Pixabay. You can again choose
the question mark, and here you will see there's
a stock panel over here. When you click on
it, you see Pixabay. They say that they have over one million high-quality
stock images. Serif don't own the rights
to those images and videos. It's actually owned by Pixabay. So if you'd like to use
them in your design work, you have to agree to their
terms and conditions. You can do that by selecting
the "I understand" option, and then you have
access to the images. Remember from the
previous lesson, we have the board where we will be designing
and drawing our assets. This is our reference pictures
board or our mood board. Let me for example, here you can type something into the search bar
and it will give you all the images that you might want to use
in your mood board. For instance, I want
to type in flowers, berries, and let's
see what they have. There's a whole bunch
of pictures really. I think the variety
is quite great. You will definitely find something that you can
use in your mood board. The one may be
small disadvantage is that those images
are pretty tiny, especially on the iPad. You can test out those
images and you can drag them on top of your
reference artboard. You just long press, and you drag it
onto your artboard. It's usually a
little bit bigger. [LAUGHTER] You
have to resize it. Then you can put it
onto your mood board. Let's actually see if
they have ginkgo leaf. They do. [LAUGHTER] I have snapping on this symbol here in the upper right corner. Thanks to the snapping tool, it will help me to snap those images into the
edges of this artboard. If you want to deselect it, you either tap outside
of the artboard like so, or you use the de-select
button X here. Now, this works in
exactly the same way in Affinity Designer Version 1. [LAUGHTER] Over here,
the stock studio. It's the same process. I would also like to put
it into my mood board, those screenshots that I've taken directly from Pinterest. In order to place any image from your camera roll or from
your storage on the device, you have to go to the upper
left corner hamburger menu. Then you have to select "Place". The tiny difference between
Version 1 and Version 2 is that it's the same
position pretty much. It just says Place Image. Then you can input your
image from photos. It works exactly
in the same way. Place from photos. Now I can place the ginkgo. I actually did crop that image, but it's not cropped in here. You can still crop it. I know it's an extra step, but you can still crop it
with the vector crop tool, which you can find here. It's exactly the same in
Affinity Designer Version 1. You can select the crop tool and you can crop it
[LAUGHTER] again. Then you have to
remember to go back to the move tool and
you can scale it up and down and position
it onto your mood board. Let's place a few more images. If it's a screenshot and unfortunately I have
to crop it again. [LAUGHTER] Now we will see that my reference artboard includes all the reference photos
that I would like to always have at hand to see if I want to add anything
into my sketches. Meanwhile, I still love
sketching in my Procreate app. I created this sketch sheet along with my color
palette inspiration. I also have a tiny mood
board here. Let me show you. You're more than
welcome to sketch digitally in any
program of your choice. Your sketch can also include any color samples from your
starting color palette. In the next video, I
would like to briefly explain how I prepared
my Procreate sketch. If you're a Procreate user, you can follow along, but if not, feel free
to skip this lesson. You can skip it to the lesson that follows
right after because it's about sketching directly in Affinity Designer using
the pixel persona. But as I explain how I went about this
sketching in Procreate, I will also be giving tips and tricks on what types
of shapes and forms is good to include
in your sketch so that you have a good variety and more balanced in your composition later
on. I'll see you there.
10. Planning Assets (Procreate Demo): In this lesson, I
would like to show you my time-lapse video
from Procreate, and briefly explain how I prepared my sketch
and my color samples. Let's have a look together. I recommend sketching
in Procreate or any other digital drawing tool with a form of a soft pencil. I drew mainly from
my imagination and my goal was to get very
flowy botanical shapes. You will see for
example here that I tried to include the shapes that I liked so much about this gingko leaf
from my mood board. Another advice that I
could give you here is to include a variety
of forms and shapes. I have a few shapes
that are more round, a few shapes that are more
edgy and a little bit longer. I have bigger blooms, smaller blooms,
really tiny berries, super small flowers that
will be good as fillers, some shapes that are a little
bit more pointy and edgy. I try to spread
everything evenly on my canvas so that
it will be easier later on to vectorize
it in affinity. Here I marked with color the different categories
of flowers that I created. The yellow color are
the main blooms, they're little bit bigger, they're a little
bit more around. The burnt orange color
are the secondary flowers that are a little
bit more edgy and a little bit longer in their form. Next, I have the really flowy, round as if soft, Ginko inspired leaf shapes that will be pretty
good as fillers. On that purple background, you see the more spiky
and edgy filler flowers. We also have a few berries, and a few more tiny berries
on this soft pink color. The reason why I marked
everything in color is that I wanted to show you that there
is no color in isolation. What it means is that
for every category of those blooms or leaves, I have at least two
elements [LAUGHTER]. You will see here that
out of this sketch sheet, we will have 28 assets, for example from the category of those main or hero flowers, we will have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the ginkgo leaves. We have 1, 2, 3, 4 assets. From those berries, we have 1, 2, 3, they have slightly
different shape. I recommend that you play
around with the angle. One leaf can tip to the left, one can be more straight, and one can tip to the left. Those main flowers, they
seem to be very similar, but they still have
different shapes. Apart from the hero blooms and secondary blooms and some
extra leaves and berries, I also recommend
that you include some tiny blooms
which you will be able to use as handy fillers, I have one example here for you. I think I reuse those tiny blooms everywhere [LAUGHTER] in my patterns,
so I really like them. Let me check if you
can see that clearly. Yeah, those are two
different patterns, that I was able to reuse those fuller blooms
in both of them. Next, directly in Procreate, I played around with a
potential color palette. You will also see that I always start
with the background, I have also later on reduced
the opacity of the sketch, and then I continued laying down the colors on separate
layers in Procreate, modifying them up and down, making them brighter
and making them darker, until I was happy
with how they worked. Every time I work on
the color palette, I try out two different
color variations, so here comes the second one. For the color
palette number two, I just knew I wanted this
really intense electric blue, and then I knew that
it will be standing in fantastic contrast with
this cadmium orange. Finally, when my
sketch was done, I kept the domain
sketch and I got rid of the background layer so that the background
is transparent. I exported this sketch through share as a PNG with a
transparent background. Then this is what
you saw previously, I have made some copies, I put the two color thumbnails
next to each other, I put my sketch in the middle, and then I took a very
thick brush, I think, yeah, this one, the heart airbrush, some big chunky brush. With the eyedropper tool, I selected the main colors. I painted the background
here first because I always like to see how the colors interact on a given background, not just on white. Then I put some blobs
of paints [LAUGHTER]. In this way also in
Affinity Designer later on, it will be easier
for me to select my colors and to
pick them because I think affinity is still quite limited with the management
of the color palettes. Procreate is much better
with that regard. Now I can go back to
designer and I can paste them in here
into my mood board. This is my ready-made
mood board, you can repeat this process in exactly the same
way in version one. Did you know that
you can also sketch directly in Affinity Designer. We can do that by using
the Pixel persona, and in the next lesson, I would like to show
you exactly that.
11. Pixel Persona Sketching: As I've mentioned in
the previous lesson, you can also sketch directly
in Affinity Designer. The advantage of sketching
directly in here is that you have
everything in one place. You don't need any
physical sketchbook or you don't need to go to any other digital
drawing software and then export it
and then import it. The reason why I use
Procreate and showed it in the previous lesson
was that I really loved the brushes there
and I've been drawing in Procreate for years and
it's hard for me to let go. [LAUGHTER] In order
to sketch directly, we have to switch between the Designer persona
and the Pixel persona. You can do that in version
2 by clicking here in the upper left corner
and switching to Pixel. Then you will see
on the left side we have the Paint Brush and this
is what we will be using. It's exactly the same
in Affinity version 1, the Pixel persona you will
find it here and by default, the cursor is usually already
on the Paint Brush Tool. The process that I will be
showing in Affinity version 2 can be replicated exactly
in the same way in version 1. For now, I will stick to my demonstration in
Affinity version 2. The first thing that
we got to do in the Pixel persona is to hit this plus symbol and
to create a Pixel Layer. Version 1, you go to
the Layers panel, you make sure that you're
on the right artboard, you click here plus and
then "Pixel Layer". Next, you can go here
on the right side to the Brushes studio to
choose your brush. We click on it. If you click right
in the middle of it, you also get a scroll-up and down menu where you can see all the
brushes that you have. I have to admit I'm not a
big fan of their pencils. This is one reason why I
actually stick to Procreate. But I would really recommend
the Acrylics category. I think it doesn't
matter which one. You can choose the very first
Matte Acrylic 01 brush. This is where you change
the size of your brush. It's the same in version 1. You just scroll here up and down and you manipulate the
size of your brush. Let's test it out. Make it maybe a
little bit smaller. If you were to create such a sketch
directly in Affinity, that's basically how
you would do it. Let's try out some other brushes
too. This one is pretty. This will be just a
sketch and later on, we will lower the opacity of this layer and we will
vectorize those shapes. If you want to change the scale, you have to switch to the
Move tool and scale it down. You can work on the same
layer or for the next shape, you can hit the plus again
and create a new pixel layer. In this way, you can
move your elements easily because they stay
on separate layers. The same process,
very flowy lines. It's actually all down
to your personal style. Now to the Move tool and
we can scale it down. A new Pixel Layer and
some filler blooms. Let's try out a new brush. Now I like this one more. This is a Matte Acrylic 02. I like it a lot, maybe I will ditch Procreate, who knows? [LAUGHTER]. It's very
flowy and very fluid. I like it a lot. Like I said, in case you want to do everything in one program, you can just stay here. Moving forward, you are free to choose which option
is best for you. You can use a photo of the sketch from your
physical sketchbook, you can use a sketch from another digital drawing
program such as Procreate or you can sketch
directly in Affinity. For me personally, I will
hit the delete button here. I will remove this sketch. I will go back to
the Designer persona and then making sure that I'm
on this asset's artboard, I will place an image of the sketch that I
created in Procreate, which I exported as a
transparent PNG file. Then before I start painting, I will reduce the opacity
of this sketch layer. In the Layers panel, I'm on the photo PNG file, three dots menu, and here we have
the opacity slider. I will reduce the opacity. One tiny thing that I think would improve my whole process is to have an extra
small artboard just with my color palette. Let's create a new artboard. Artboards. I'm going to rename it color palette
or just colors. Then I will place again my
mood board from Procreate and make sure that I showcase
mainly the color palette. I can also vector-crop it. Back to the Move tool and
now I can move it again, stretch it out a little bit. Now we're really
ready to vectorize. We have our references
for inspiration. I also included some past
personal work of mine. We have the sketch ready that
we're going to vectorize. We lowered the opacity of
the sketch and we have the color palette so that picking the colors
is much easier. Let's start vectorizing.
12. Organizing Assets in Layers: A few important words
about planning. The way we will draw and lay our colors will
have a big impact on the usability and
efficiency of our assets. In order to understand that, I wanted to show you a few assets that I
created in the past, and I would like to
show you them in the layers panel so that you see how I organize my layers. The asset studio is right here in between
appearance and stock. Here are a few assets that
I created in the past, some winter assets, assets
for my wonder collection. Actually you can not see that
but [LAUGHTER] I'm wearing a t-shirt that was created
with those assets. [LAUGHTER] My Autumn
Harvest collection, a few birds, some
branding assets. I started cooking category, I have some exotic animals and exotic plants and some ******. The sky is the limit. This will be my yoga collection, a whole bunch of florals. Let's take this asset here. When I click on it,
I have the option to either delete it
or to insert it. Let's insert it. Switching to the move tool to the layers
panel, let's find it. I had to go to paste
it into my references. Let's bring it to our
assets art board. You will see here that
I separated not only the colors on different layers, but also the elements. At minimum, I recommend that you separate the blooms from
the stems and the leaves. This is still a
pretty, let's say, soft separation into layers, because I could have
gone even further. For instance, I could have
separated all the stems, that would be Number one. I could have separate
all the leaves in case I wanted to
move them around, that would be layer Number 2. I could have separated
those bells, Number 3. Maybe I could have
also separated those tiny details
on the bells in case I wanted to change
their color separately. Separating asset elements onto layers has a huge advantage
of being more flexible. You can get rid of some elements in an
easier and faster way. You can manipulate the color
in a more efficient way. For example if those leaves
were on the separate layer, it would have been even easier
to maybe remove or to add or to make a copy and
add a few extra leaves, it gives you a huge flexibility. It's always better that
an asset has more layers. Later on when you're working on a design or on the pattern, you can merge things together, but it's easier to merge rather than doing it the other way
round is to separate it. Let's have a look at
this friendly tiger. This is a category
that I created for kids illustrations,
so insert. [LAUGHTER] That's
a friendly tiger. What do we have here? Let's have a look into the layers panel. Here, I think, yes,
I was really tidy. See we have the whole tiger,
which is called tiger. If you want to
rename this group, you always go to the three dots, and then you just
click on the name here and you can rename it and that goes for
all the other layers. We have cheek separately
and not only one cheek, but every cheek is separate. Maybe I want different colors, maybe I want to change the size. Here I can change
it, I can merge it, but my original asset will stay in the same way I saved it. Here is the color panel maybe I want the
cheeks to be red. Dark features like all
the line work is darker. All the stripes are separate. Of course you can merge them, but you can get rid
of some of them. You can change with
the move tool. The location, maybe you want to spread them around
a little bit more. Separating those elements into layers gives you much
more flexibility. Here's another group for
all the white elements. Also those are all
separate, do you see that? Maybe I want to remove them, maybe I just want to keep a few. Maybe I want to make a copy. If you want to make a
quick copy, by the way, you just hold two fingers on the screen and then you drag the element that
you want to copy, and then you can move it, you can go here to
this transform studio, flip it horizontally,
change the direction. It's just an example. You stay very flexible
when you keep your elements unmerged
and on multiple layers, and the whole face is one shape. Let's actually put that
tiger here so that we remember this lesson about
organizing our layers. Now it's in our
reference art board. Let's remove this asset
and bring back our sketch. Great. In the next lesson, we will start laying our flat colors using
the pencil tool.
13. BONUS: Stroke & Fill: [MUSIC] In this lesson,
I wanted to give you a very brief introduction to
what a stroke and fill is. Because if you're doing graphic design and if you're
working with vectors, you will certainly come
across those two terms. If we take here
our vector flower, you will see that it can be
composed of two elements. The first element
is the outline of this vector flower and
this is called stroke, and the second element is the inside filling
of that flower, which is called fill,
very logically. Essentially, when you're
working with vectors, when you're creating patterns for example or illustrations, you can choose to create
only with the strokes. Only with the line work. Or you can choose to
work only with the fill without bothering yourself
about the stroke. Then there are also
some illustrators or designers who prefer
to work with both. You can find all the
options to change your stroke or your fill
in the color studio, which is here, just click on it. The first leftmost full
circle is your fill, and the empty inside outline circle which you see
to the right is your stroke. Let's have a look at this flower which consists only
of the stroke. In this example,
this is only stroke, fill is completely empty. You will see it by
identifying this icon, which is an empty white circle
crossed with a blue line. This means there is no fill, but we do have a stroke. We can also change the
color of the stroke. There's also an option to use the so-called stroke studio, which is directly below
the color studio here. Namely, and this is
also very useful, I use it a lot of times. You can change the
width of your stroke, so you can make your
lines bigger or smaller. Essentially, you are working on the outline of your object. For example, we can make it
super delicate and dainty. Now, let's see the flower
with just the fill. In this case, our stroke is off. It's the same symbol, there's a white circle with
a blue line going across it. It means there is no stroke. Of course, I can switch it on. Then you will see we
have a red stroke here. If you want to
switch it off fast, and this is also a
very handy gesture, you just tap on the stroke
and you make it to move up, so you touch it and
you flip it up. Again, let's
activate the stroke. If you want to deactivate
it fast, you can, of course, choose the symbol
here to deactivate it. But it's a super handy gesture, just to flip it up and it's off. Now our last example
is when we have both the fill and the stroke. This flower has a blue fill
and it has a red stroke. I can also change the
stroke for example, or I can make it the same. Let me show you one example
when it is very handy to have both the
stroke and the fill. We're on the move tool here. You know very well
that you can resize your flower by just
dragging on the nodes. But, what if I wanted to change just the stalks
of those flowers? For example, I wanted to make them a little bit thicker
or a little bit thinner. If I go to my layers, you will see that I
have my leaves and the stalks of those
flowers separately. So I have my leaf selected, I go to the color studio, I make sure that both the
fill and the stroke are on, and then I go to
the stroke studio and I make it here
bigger or smaller. Say, I wanted to make it
a little bit thicker. The same with the petals. I can go directly to the petals, then to the stroke studio, making sure that the
stroke is also on. Back to the stroke studio. If I wanted it to be
a little bit bigger, then I can just
expand the stroke. Or maybe I wanted to keep the
leaves in the same color, but then the petals, stylistically, maybe I
want the fill to be blue, but the stroke to be red. Maybe. [LAUGHTER] I just wanted to show you that those are the options
that you have here. You can play both with
just using the outlines, which is the stroke. Just using the fill without being bothered about
the stroke and without making any small mistakes that there's maybe a
stroke somewhere here that you haven't noticed had
a different color and then you send this work to a client and they're
like, what is this? This is not entirely
green or blue. So you just have
to make sure that the stroke is off in this case. Or maybe you want to play around with some different
color combinations, maybe you want the outlines
to be a different color, maybe it's just your
style of working, then you have the option to
change the stroke over here. Remember about the
quick gestures. If you wanted, in this flower, to get rid of the
stroke very fast, you just make sure that
you have it selected. Sometimes you have
to change from the full circle to
the stroke symbol. Then you flip it
up and it's gone. You can do the same with
the fill of course. You can either bring it back
and now we have a color. Or you can remove
it by flipping up, or directly choosing
the icon here that will mean that
the field is empty. Those are the
essentials that you got to know about
stroke and fill.
14. Pencil Tool Base Colors: Let us start by discussing the basics of the
pencil tool and the main differences
between Version 1 and Version 2 of
Affinity Designer. In Version 2, we have it here. The pencil tool, when we click on it, it also lists the
vector brush tool. Whereas in Version 1, the pencil tool and the vector
brush tool are separated. Thanks to the pencil tool, we can draw vectors and the nature of them will be
as if they were hand-drawn. So I personally, I love
using this tool because I don't like shapes that are
too smooth and too perfect. I like lines that
are a little bit more wobbly and
imperfect and you can imitate that or you can
replicate that very easily using the pencil tool and the
shape will still be vector. Once you access this
tool, in Version 2, you will get the
contextual menu, which gives you some
extra options here above. This little icon here
is the sculpt mode, which we will discuss
in the next lessons. This is where you can set
the color of the stroke. The little bucket with the paint gives you the option to switch on the fill and we will be
using it a lot [LAUGHTER]. The little icon
with the arrow and some small nodes is the
auto-close function. I personally don't use
the controller mode, but I use sometimes
the stabilizer. There will be a separate
lesson covering that. In Version 1, we have this
menu over here at the bottom. That's the main difference. We also have sculpt. We can change the
width of the stroke. We can change the
color of the stroke, choose the controller,
choose the fill. When we click on the arrow, that leads us to the right. We can choose the stabilizer and the length of
the stabilizer. The stabilizer and
stabilization, in general, will be discussed
in the next lessons. Over here we have the
stroke color option. It's the circle with this
line that goes across. If we wanted to select
the color of the stroke, we could use this eyedropper
tool and select the color. If you want to get
rid of your stroke, you can de-select it
with this icon here. Now there is no stroke. For those bigger flowers, I would like to draw without any stroke and using some fill. So I will activate the fill. Here, I can choose the
color of the fill. So I want this color here
for my main flowers. I can just use the eyedropper here and now this
color is selected. Another way to select your color is once you have
de-selected either by clicking outside
of the canvas or using the de-select
icon, the cross. We can go to the color picker, picker tool over here. So you just click on
the Color Picker, you make sure that you don't
have anything else selected. Now you can observe here
in the color studio, every time I touch, I select this color. But you have to be very
careful with that. Let's go back to the move tool. Say I had the tiger selected and then I
wouldn't de-select it, I would go to the
color picker tool. If I selected some color, it would affect the
previously selected element. So let's go back. You have to de-select
first color picker. See? Now it changes. Now you can pick colors. You can also pick different
colors from your images, from your photos, or
your previous work. So I wanted this color
here for my blooms. The fill is selected,
there is no stroke. Now we go to the layers panel. We close the friendly tiger. We make sure we're on
the right art board. We hit the plus symbol and
we create a vector layer. I wanted to quickly show you the auto-close
difference between version one and version two. So let's select our pencil tool. See? Now I see the
fill as I draw. Let's go to the Node Tool. I didn't use the
auto close selection here or the auto close options, so this is not closed. Now I would have to
take those nodes and connect them so that my vector shape
is really closed. Let's go back.
Let's remove that. Back to the pencil tool. Now we will make sure that the
auto close function is on, making sure you're
on the pencil tool. Now the shape is closed automatically,
which is fantastic. Unfortunately, you
don't have that in Affinity Designer one. Plus, create a new vector layer. Go to the pencil tool. No stroke, switch on the fill. We can either choose the color here or through
the color studio. I will just choose
some random color, or we could have picked
it up from this photo, doesn't have to be the same. Now we can draw using
the pencil tool. You will see, unfortunately, there is no auto-close options, so then you have to go to the Node Tool and you have to
close this shape manually. That's one pretty
big disadvantage when you compare
Version 1 to Version 2. I would like to have
my sketch photo above, so I will drag it on
top of everything else. Creating this vector
layer will nest all those elements in one group. So as you create a vector layer, you create a group
automatically. Let's continue
drawing our flowers. I like lines that are a
little bit more wobbly. It closed, it's
working [LAUGHTER]. Let's take this one. This one. The sketch is only
a rough reference. Of course, I can change my mind and create slightly
different shapes. You don't have to stay
perfectly in the line. For example, I'm making
my line a little bit more wobbly because that's just
part of my personal style. Now we have all the main
flowers flat colored in purple. What I want to do now is I still want to double-check
that my nodes are okay. So this is the thing
with the assets. They take some time to create. You need to do some
quality checkup. It's a little bit of work, but once everything is done and checked and perfect and
perfectly organized, you have those assets forever, and you know they are clean. I would like to select all those flower shapes
using two fingers, starting from the first
layer, tapping the last. Now you will see that
everything is selected. Making sure I'm
on the Node tool, I would like to just quickly
zoom in and zoom out, see and check if
everything is okay. If I want to remove
this node here, I can click on the little circle and then select "Delete." I can also change my shapes, play around with the handles. So this is the time
for some fine tuning. If you feel you have
too many nodes, for example, maybe I
don't want this one., you can just drag and select and then it will turn
into darker blue. This one is still white. It means it's not selected. Then delete or go back. So I will take a little bit of time to make sure
that everything is okay and everything is tidy and I'm happy
with my shapes. This one, for example,
got a little bit twisted. So I will untwist it and
remove of this extra node. Or maybe not. That was actually
good [LAUGHTER]. Great. So now I think
everything is okay. I can continue drawing
different colors. Before I organize those
shapes into separate assets, I like to draw all the
colors in separate groups. You always create
a group when you create a new vector layer. So again, plus, vector layer. I will drag it below. I will go to the color picker. I will pick this color here. Now the color has changed, back to the pencil tool. I'm keeping the same settings, no stroke and a fill. In case there are
some imperfections when the nodes close, I like to start in an
area that is invisible because it will be underneath another shape that
will be on top of it. So I'm going to start
here and then draw. It should close
itself automatically. In case you create a
shape by accident, you can always do the double-tap and remove the previous version. Selecting everything together. I think that I would also
like to change the color. In order to do that, you
go to the color studio. I like to stick to HSL slider. What I'm going to do is make
it a little bit darker, this color, and a little bit more saturated so that
the contrast is better. Then I will go to the
Node tool and again, double-check if
everything is okay. So in this lesson, we covered the basics
of the pencil tool. The main differences
between Version 1 and 2 about closing the path. We refreshed our knowledge
about stroke and fill. We got again more familiar
with the node tool. We laid a few flat colors and
organized them into layers. In the next lesson, we continue drawing our assets using stabilization options.
15. Brush Stabilization: In this lesson, we continue
laying down our flat colors. But this time, we
aid ourselves by using the stabilization tool. To demonstrate how
this tool works, I will color-in those
ginkgo-like leaves. In the meantime, I have laid also flat colors to
those light orange, peachy leaves of
our main flowers. Before we continue,
I wanted to give you a quick look at our layers. On top we have our sketch. Next, I also painted in
the middle of the flowers, the first layer of
the main flowers, the layer underneath,
and the leaves. Now, I would like to group
all those four elements. You can also select it
by swiping to the right. To keep everything more
tidy and transparent, I will group it. I'll go to the three dots menu, and I will rename this
group, main flowers. Now I'm going to create a new vector layer and
drag it underneath. Making sure that
everything is de-selected, I go to the color picker, and I pick the color for
those leaves from here. Back to the pencil tool. I just want to make sure
that the stroke is off. Now, a small reminder of all the options
that we have here. Apart from the auto close, which we can again turn on, here we have the
controller settings, for now its set to none. The controller allows us to set the pressure
sensitivity of the tool. You have two options
with the stabilizer, you can either choose the rope stabilizer or
the Window stabilizer. Both of them allow you to smooth the curves of the stroke. Let's check out first
the rope stabilizer. You will see a rope
or a line that will be dragging behind
your Apple pencil. Right now it's very small
because I set it up at small, it gives me more flexibility. But if I make it, on purpose, a little
bit stronger, then you will see
that as if the tail of this rope also
get stronger and it enables me less flexibility because the shape is getting
smooth out to an extreme. Then a Window stabilizer, it will smooth the
stroke by averaging sampled input positions
within a Window. You can set up the size
of this Window here. Just like with the rope
stabilizer, the more you go up, you see that those values are
getting higher and higher, the more smooth your
shape is going to be. The more you go down, you reduce the Window, you will enable or allow more
flexibility to your shape. If I had it, again,
all the way up, it would be a little
bit difficult to get those fine edges because it really creates a lot of effort
to smooth everything out. What I would recommend is to
set it up at a lower value. You will see, it's
much more flowy, but it still makes everything smoother and
really nice and flowy. It's just an example. If you're using a
Window stabilizer, if you're making a turn like
here and making a turn, I went down, now I'm going up and
now I'm closing, this turn will rather
be more rounded. Whereas if we use
the rope stabilizer, let's check the value here, the Window stabilizer
was set at 16. Let's do the same comparison, set it up also more
or less to 16 or 17. Let's try to create
a similar shape. With the rope stabilizer, I can make much more
dramatic turns, therefore, the rope
stabilizer will allow you to create sharper corners. If you wanted more
round and flowy, I would opt in for the Window stabilizer
but not set too high. If you wanted a
little bit more edgy, a little bit sharper corners, then I would go with the rope stabilizer and
also not set too high. Those leaves, I want them
to be rounded and flowy, but I still want to
retain some sharp edges, especially when I'm
drawing the stock, this lower part of the leaf. That's why I will go with the rope stabilizer set
up exactly to what I had, about 17 pixels, 20 pixels, a rather low value. Just like in the
previous lessons you will see here the stroke, so the outline is off and
we only have to fill. Now, let's draw those leaves. Let's make sure that we have a new vector layer and we're drawing on the correct layer. Let's start drawing. Auto close is activated. When we're done with our shape, it will close itself
automatically. Nice. Leaf Number 1. Now starting somewhere
below here, leaf Number 2. It closed itself automatically, but maybe I will adjust it. I will go back to the node tool and move this little node here. Select the under one. Where is it? Here, the node tool and fix
this node a little bit. Now I will select those two
leaves and I will group them because they will be one asset with two elements
inside of the group. Now let's draw the rest of the leaves using the
rope stabilizer. After you're done drawing, it's good to switch back to the node tool and fix
some small mistakes. If necessary, you
can again click somewhere on the path and
you will add a new node. I'm happy with those leaves. I will rename them
to ginkgo leaves. I also wanted to briefly
mention where you can find this stabilization option in Affinity Designer, Version 1. Let's head to Version 1. We click on our pencil tool
and as opposed to Version 2, we have our menu at the
bottom of the screen. We have to click this
arrow in the right corner. This is where we can choose
our stabilization option. We can either choose
no stabilizer. Here is the rope
stabilizer and this is where by dragging and
lifting it up and down, we can change the value
of this stabilizer. Next is the Window
stabilizer, the same. You just drag and drop
your Apple pencil or your finger on the screen
and you move up and down and the value of
the Window will change. You can also input it
manually by just tapping on that numerical value and then you can adjust
it through the menu. It's also very easy. In the next lesson, we will
draw our secondary flowers, and this time we will aid our work using the
sculpt option.
16. Sculpt Mode: In Designer Version 2, let's start by activating
the Sculpt option. The icon for the Sculpt Mode
is just an icon of a pencil. Right now it's deactivated, it's on a gray background, and when you click on it, the background turns into black, and now Sculpt Mode is on. Let's create a new vector layer for our secondary flowers. Making sure that
everything is deselected, we go to the Color Picker, and we pick the color
for our petals. Back to the Pencil Tool. The Sculpt is on, Stroke is off. Fill is on, we have this
bright orange color and Auto-close is on. We don't have any
controller on and this time we will deactivate
stabilization. When the Sculpt Mode is enabled, any selected pencil stroke
can be reshaped or continued. Let's see the sculpt
option in action, making sure that I'm
on the right layer, Pencil Tool is selected, I start from the
bottom of this flower, and I draw it in
a very rough way, following roughly
my sketch layer. This has to be fixed, so I'm switching
to the Node Tool. I would like to delete those
and maybe this one too, drag it a little bit
down and back to the Pencil Tool and now I would like to show you
what the Sculpt Mode can do. You can build on that shape. You can start with
this preexisting node, create something
outside of this shape, and now we don't have
any extra shape. It's still the same petal shape. We can close this gap
here, for example. It takes a little
bit of getting used to but it can be a
pretty powerful tool. Cool. We have only one shape that we sculpted
together, so to say. Now, let's draw this one. Can start with this one and even though I'm lifting
my Apple Pencil off, when I continue,
it will still be counted as the same shape. Lifting my pencil off, see it joins automatically
the rest of the shape. Now I'm switching
back to the Node Tool and I'm removing some nodes, just a few cosmetic adjustments, dragging it a little bit down. This one looks good. Again, selecting everything, going to the Node Tool, and checking if
everything is okay. Sometimes it's also useful to switch off the sketch layer, deselect, and have a rough
look if the shapes are okay. I like those wobbly lines that's why I did it on
purpose that I didn't use any stabilization
because I like this wobbly, messy, organic look
to the outlines. I'm going to create
a new vector layer. Actually it will stay on top, and I'm going to disable Sculpt and color
those leaves separately. I wanted to show you here
the difference between the Sculpt Mode on and off. Before that, the
Sculpt Mode was on all the time so as we
were adding new elements, every time we lifted our Apple Pencil off
the screen it didn't matter because it still joined together the
original shape, and it didn't put
those extra strokes into separate
layers whereas when we're using the Pencil Tool
without the Sculpt Mode on, every time we lift off our
Apple Pencil off the screen, it's going to create
a new layer for us and each of those shapes
will get a dedicated layer. Now we have a lot of different shapes
of the same color that actually belong to a particular flower
and there are so many layers that
I'm starting to lose the visibility here. I would like to find, locate the leaves, and the elements that belong to this one particular
flower and to group them. Beforehand, I make
my photo layer with the sketch invisible because it can a little bit mess
up with my selection. I start with having
one element selected, then I press one finger
onto the screen, and I continue selecting the elements that belong
to this one flower. Then I hit the "Group" icon
and select the Group option. Let's group this one. One finger, press, and hold on the screen, tap, tap, tap, and "Group". In the next lesson,
we will get more familiar with the stroke
panel. See you there.
17. Stroke Panel: Now we have to
draw all the lines of our stems, for example here, the stems of this flower, here, here, and here. There are two ways
to go about it, for example here we continued
drawing the stems of those leaves by using only the fill and not
using the stroke. Another option is to use the stroke and to
deactivate the fill. Let's deselect everything. Let's create a new vector layer. Here is good. Let's go
to the pencil tool. Now, we deactivate the fill. We're not using
the fill anymore, and instead we will
be using stroke. We can also pick the color
by using the color picker. Then we can swipe up to
deactivate the fill, and we can select a new
color for the stroke. The important thing
is to switch off auto close because there will be very strange shapes happening. Auto close is off, and my fill is off. On the pencil tool, let's draw a line. Again, this is only stroke. Let's go to the color studio
to make sure fill is off. There's a cross,
the empty circle, and stroke is set to a color. There are more options
to edit this line. In order to do that, we have to go to
the stroke studio, which is right underneath
the color studio here. As it happens, I used
to draw when I was designing another pattern
with this type of stroke. This is the width of
the stroke and this is the pressure sensitivity
of this stroke. The program simply remembered
my previous settings. In order to reset it, you can tap with your
finger on any of the nodes on this pressure
sensitivity panel. Once you tap on a node, it will get selected, and it will give
you two options. You can either delete just this one node or you can
reset the entire pressure. That's what we're going to do. As you reset it, this should be the starting position
for most of you, especially if you haven't been
using the program before. This is the default pressure
sensitivity of this line. There are two points.
There's a starting point and there's the ending point, and they're on the same level. You will see that this line has exactly the same thickness along its way from
the beginning, all the way till the end. The width of this line right now happens to be 4.9 points. You can adjust the
width of the line, and you will see it in
real time as it changes. If you have any
particular width in mind, you can tap on this
numerical value here. It will open the menu, you can erase the previous value and you can input
your new value. Over here, you can also change
the way this line ends. Right now we have
the cap selected on the default rounded cap. You also have this cut
option and this more square like option with more
of edges at the ends. You can also set up the width
of your line from the menu. Even if the stroke studio or
the stroke panel is closed, you will see here your line, it has 14.2 points. You can use your finger
to bring it up or down. You just have to
tap and long press, and then you can
bring it down or up. Let's leave it a little bit
thicker because I wanted to show you how you can get really interesting
results playing around with the pressure
sensitivity panel. You can for example
create a taper. By bringing this line down, I will be editing
the starting point. Now you will see that the starting point has
become more pointy. It has got a taper. We can also create any extra
nodes along this line, for example I will tap on
the middle of the line here, this created a new node, and I will set it
all the way up. I will bring this end points down to create a taper on
the other side of the line. Now those settings will be
remembered by the program. Let's deselect, zoom
out a little bit, see, and now the settings remembered our
previous settings. If we go back to the
stroke panel again, it has exactly the same width and the same pressure
sensitivity. The way you draw
your strokes will heavily depend on
your personal style. My style is more
jittery or wobbly. I like movement and
more dynamic lines. That's why here I wanted
to show you a little trick on how to create a
more jittery line. In order to do that, we keep
our taper at the beginning and at the end and on each
sides of the middle line, we will create two extra points. 1, 2 and 1, 2. Now this point will go a bit down and this point will go up. You can see in real
time how this will affect your line. The same here. This point will go down, and the other point will go up. In essence, we are
creating a shape here on our pressure sensitivity panel that looks a bit like a crown. Let's make it a
little bit thinner. Now we have created
the jittery line. I'm going to keep those
settings so that I can draw the stems for my
flowers because I like my lines to be
a bit more uneven. Making sure that I'm
on the right layer. I will bring back my sketch and I will draw
those stems here. Let's have a quick look
at Affinity Designer, Version 1, the stroke
studios in the same place. Here you can adjust the width. Here you can also modify
the pressure sensitivity. Let's draw the rest
of those stems. I'm starting here because my starting point is
a little bit thicker. I love it [LAUGHTER]
The last one is here. Beautiful. Now here we have both the leaves of
the secondary flowers. Here we have their petals, here we have their stems. Again, for more clarity, I will swipe to the right to
select those three groups. I will group it. Click on the three dots menu and rename it secondary flowers. Now, I would like to
draw those berries. I switched to this
electric blue. I will create a
new vector layer. Go to my pencil, maybe reduce the width a little bit and I will draw
those berries here. It's a little bit too thin, so we will pump it up. I think I'll go to the
stroke panel again and I will make some adjustments. That looks good. I will
keep drawing the stems. Now we have many
separate layers. We will keep this one
in one group and create a new vector layer to deal
with the rest of the berries. I'm playing around with
the width of my line, making it a little bit smaller
for the smaller berries. This one we will also
keep in one group. The advantage of
gripping it like that. We have all those
shapes separately, so we can modify it separately. We can even recover
it separately, or we can delete it altogether. That's why I'm going
to keep it like that. But in case I wanted
to recolor it, then I can do it from
the entire group level. Then I go to the color studio and I select a
different color in the entire group is affected. But let's go back to
our original blue. Let's speed up this video and finish the rest of the berries. I've noticed that the lines of this asset are a
little bit too thin. We can find it here
in the layers panel, and then we can go to
the stroke studio, and we can adjust the width of the stroke for all those
twigs and branches. But what is also cool
about having everything on a separate layer is
that we can select, let's go to the Move
tool to do that, we can select just one line, and then we can
change the settings just for this one
element and go to the stroke panel and
adjust the width. We can also change
this one here. Let's see which one is it. This one and we can make only this one a little bit thinner. Let's summarize what
we learned so far. We started with purely laying flat color, no
stabilization whatsoever. We were using the fill and not using the stroke, no stabilizer. Next, we learned how
to use the stabilizer. We learned about two
stabilization types, the Rope stabilizer
and Window stabilizer. Finally, we took advantage
of the sculpt option that we were sculpting the petals
of those secondary flowers. All this time throughout
those lessons, we were only using the fill
am not using the stroke. In this last lesson
about laying flat color, we took advantage of the stroke. We created the stems of the flowers and the
stems of the berries. In the meantime, behind the
scenes, behind the camera, I will lay down the
remaining flat colors for the berries and those
smaller filler blooms. I will see you in the
next lesson where we will be adding some extra details and dimension to
those vector assets by using clipping masks.
18. Re-grouping Assets Part1: We're halfway through our work. I wanted to take this
opportunity and show you one more time how
I organize my layers, and how we need to
regroup them so that we have one complete
group per asset. Let's go to the layers panel and let's see what we have here. We have three art
boards for the assets, for our color palette
and for our references. Let's open our
assets art boards. On the very top we
have our sketch, but for now we can also make
it invisible, switch it off. I have also renamed
it to sketch. Then we have our main flowers. When we opened this group, we will see that
right now we have everything sorted out by color. In the meantime, I have also
added those line details. I only use the stroke for those lines as shown in
the previous lesson. I made sure that this line has a more of a tapered
a pointy edge to it. Then we have the blooms
and the leaves separately, as you will see for
each of those groups, the elements are
sorted by color, but we will change that. Then we have our secondary
flowers separately. Our ginkgo leaves, big berries are here. I also added some details onto those berries with strokes. Small berries are over
here, spiky filler flowers, those two and round
filler flowers. I'm happy with my colors, so I will proceed to
reorganizing my groups. You will have to do the same. it's a little bit of work, but it pays off in the
end because you will have a very tidy assets ready to be saved with
just a few clicks. Let's start with
the main flowers. Because it's already
divided into groups, I am able to switch
off the visibility of the other assets
so that I can see better the power of grouping. It's just so much more neat
when you're using groups. Now I'm going to leave
only the main flowers, open them and I will group them. What we want right now, all the main flowers
are in one folder. Everything is divided by color. What I want is I want this flower completely separately
with all the elements, the middle elements, Number 1, this other middle part, Number 2, the lines
will be Number 3. Then the body of the
flower four and five. Right now, they're spread
across those color groups. We will have to put them into one folder so that this one
flower is in one group. Then we have group Number 2. For this flower with
all the five elements. Then this will be our third one. Our first one with
those leaves here, and our fifth one. Out of all this group, we will have five unique assets, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. To do that, we have to select the elements that are right now stored in those color groups, and we have to take
them out of the groups. You can either select them
by swiping to the right. But sometimes there's so
many elements you'll see like 50, 100 elements. It's easier to start by
selecting the first one and then tapping with two
fingers on the last one. That we selected everything, we long press, and we drag it out
of this group. It becomes empty. I'm hitting this delete
icon to remove it. Next, this purple middle. I take it out of the group and I remove
this group this can stay. This is just one element. It's grouped because we have
all those lines separately, but it has to stay grouped. The body of the flowers, let's take them out too, and delete the empty group. By the way, about
the visibility. Again, it's a matter of
personal preference. Right now, all my elements are on this checkered
background. Some people like it, some people prefer other
settings and you can change the settings
in the layers panel. You go to the
hamburger menu here. You can check the
checkerboard background or you can check it off. Then you will have this. We can keep this for a moment so that you can see maybe
you prefer this one because what I want
to show you is when we take off those
curves out of this group, then you will see
that this is empty and sometimes if you have
the checkered background, you cannot see it very well. Now I see this is empty. I have to take out all the
leaves and remove this group. We will also have to group
those leaves later on. Now we have all those
elements that belong to those main flowers
out of their groups. We click on any
layer in that group. We make sure that we
are on the move tool. Now we can start by
selecting those flowers that are somewhere
on the outside. Then press halt, drag across. It should select the elements
of just this flower. Let's zoom out. The selection only includes this
little flower. With one exception, we also have a group of
those lines in here. We have to find this manually. Then we have to select it, include it into our selection
by swiping to the right. We can also double-check by
switching off the visibility. When all those
layers are selected, it's enough to switch off
the visibility of just one. If everything disappears, then you will know, this is the one. [LAUGHTER] Now the single
flower is selected and which is the middle
icon to group it. We select "Group" and now we have our first
flower grouped. In order not to include it
by accident somewhere else, I can switch it off. Hit on another layer
somewhere within that group. Click outside of the selection, selected with the move tool. Also makes sure to
find those lines. I think those are the ones we can turn off the visibility. Included the lines,
making sure that everything belongs
to this one flower. The selection indeed includes
only this one flower. Hit "Group" group it, turn it off, hits another
random layer within the group. Now we have three
more flowers which we need to group into
their dedicated layers. I wanted to show you one piece of information
about the move tool. We can deselect by hitting
outside of those elements. Now we can drag our selection
over this main flower here. The trick is, in order to include all those elements
in one selection, they really have to be
included with this selection. Let's get that
random layer again. If I hit it like this, I included most of the flower, but I didn't include the
entirety of this lower part. It didn't get selected. I really have to make sure that everything is
within this blue line. Even though I'm touching
with my selection, a bit of this other flower and the other flower
here at the bottom, they will not be included in the selection because they would be if the selection really
included everything. If something is a little
bit out of the selection, you see this leaf was
not included because part of it sticks outside
of the selection. We don't want to include
this flower here. We have everything selected, making sure that also those grouped lines
belong together. Turn off the visibility
everything okay. Hit "Group". When you switch off
the visibility, it will be easier to select
the remaining flowers. Hit some other random
layer in that group. Let's maybe do this one. Make sure you're also selecting the strokes. This one is good. Group, switch off
the visibility, and now we have this one left. It will be super easy. Let's bring them back. Now we have one group
with the main flowers, but each of them has
a dedicated group. This is already a setup
that will be very useful for saving them as assets. Let's also rename them because even though you don't have to rename all the tiny bits that
are inside of this group, I would still recommend
that you at least rename the top-level three dots group. What shall we name it? Let's name it big flower. Copy it and I will rename all those
flowers in the same way. Unfortunately, you have
to go one by one to rename them even though
they have the same name. I will add here plus leaves to make this
name more unique. Now my recommendation
to see things better, you can move them
around on the canvas. Right now, I have
snapping switched on. Let's switch it off. You can move them, you can
scale them up and down. You can select any
of those flowers by simply tapping on it. It's very easy, and then you
can scale it up and down. You don't have to be
afraid about losing any quality because
everything is a vector. You're not really losing
any quality in here. That's the beautiful
thing about vectors. Right now we have five assets, divided into their
dedicated groups. We will keep on adding details to them in the
following lessons, but you could theoretically
already save them as assets. I make them bigger so that any future editions are easier
because I can see better. Now I'm done with this group. I will turn it off, and I will deal with
my secondary flowers.
19. Re-grouping Assets Part2: Before I speed this video up, let's do this one
more group together. Selecting all the leaves, taking them out of the group, and removing the empty group. Selecting all the petals, dragging them out of the group, and deleting the empty group. Now our three stems,
you see those, taking them out of the group. Removing the group. Now we can continue
selecting this flower here. Everything has been selected. The leaves, the petals, and the stem group. Then we can group this one. Again, making sure
that everything is included in the selection. Everything correct.
Let's group it. Our last flower group. Now we can rename it. You can rename it as you like. I will rename it a meadow flower because it looks like a
meadow flower for me. I will copy the name and
I will basically give the same name to all
the three flowers, because moving
forward when I create a design for a t-shirt or
maybe a repeat pattern, it doesn't really
matter that they have a unique name,
each of them. Let's rotate it. Now they will have their dedicated space. On the move tool, I can reposition them and make them a little
bit bigger because I will be adding some extra details in the next lessons to the
petals and to the leaves, and I want to see better. One asset, another asset,
and another asset. We have to repeat the steps
for the remaining groups. Once you're done with one group, you make it invisible. Then you open the other one. You take out the
elements from groups. You group them together. You position them as you
like on the art-board, and then you make them
invisible and you move forward till you have
everything regrouped. I'm going to regroup now the remaining assets and I
will meet you in a minute. [MUSIC] We're done, in Affinity Version 2. Here are our main
flowers, five assets. Our secondary flowers,
three assets. Our ginkgo leaves, four assets. Big berries, another
round of three assets. Smaller berries, another
round of four assets. Spiky filler
flowers, two assets. Round filler flowers. How many do we have here? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Seven assets. This entire process that
I have just shown to you in Version 2 also applies to
Affinity Designer Version 1. I can show you quickly
the icons here, the same gesture supplies. For example on that big flower, if I wanted to group the petals in
accordance with the color, I tap with two fingers
starting from the first layer, tapping the last layer, and it will select
everything together. The grouping icon is
also here in the middle. But this time you don't
have any extra menu. You just click one time and it's already creates
a group for you. Let's also group this color. You can also swipe to
right to select them. Group. The three
dots menu is here. By clicking on the group name, you can rename it. If you also want
to drag something, it works in exactly the
same way as in Version 2. Now we have all
our vector assets grouped into their
dedicated folders, and in the next lesson, we can keep on adding some cool details by
using clipping masks.
20. Clipping Masks: After reorganizing our groups, things will get a
bit easier now. Before that, once we
start to do our sketch, we focused on our assets as part of a
consistent portfolio. We made sure that they
match each other. We made sure that
they have a variety of shapes and scale
for a good balance. That's why we were doing
everything on a single sheet, each flower next to each other. At first, we have everything
grouped by color, and now we will be focusing on adding the details per asset
or per asset category. This is why I switched off the visibility of all
the other assets. We will start by focusing on adding some extra details
onto our main flowers. Those are our hero
flowers and they need to look a little
bit better than that, for example we are missing some details on the
leaves and I thought it will be a perfect opportunity to introduce to you
clipping masks. Layer clipping is a process
where you place one object inside of one another and you create a parent-child
relationship between them. Then scaling or recoloring
the child layer, the layer that is underneath, will have no influence on the parent's layer
and vice versa. You will see that
clipped objects can be edited independently. By the way, this process that
I will be showing to you now works in exactly
the same way in Affinity Designer version 1. We will be adding some extra
details onto our leaves, so maybe we will switch
off the other flowers. We will open the two groups with those two assets
that have the leaves. We will also group the main
bloom into a dedicated group. Switch off the visibility the
same for this flower here. We can have groups in groups, in groups and it's all actually depending on
how we'd like to work. If you like a lot of
layers in one list, then of course you don't have to get involved in grouping. But personally, I like putting some layers that belong together into a group because they make everything look more
transparent and I can for example switch
them off faster to gain a better view of what
I wanted to add that next. Okay, we will be using
again the pencil tool. We will be adding some
extra layers of color onto those leaves using only
fill and no stroke. We are switching on the fill and we make sure that the
auto close is on. We can make one, test the blob, and sometimes
it doesn't quite click. For example, here I have to
switch off again the stroke. Next we can change the color. I would like to have a darker
hue of this peachy tone. I can deselect what I have. Go to the color picker and pick this other tone and you will see the change in the
color over here. We have only fill and
the auto close is on. For this, I'm not
using any stabilizer. Now I will start drawing my first shape and then I
will go to the Layers panel. I will check which leaves
needs to be clipped. It's this one here. Then I will place this
layer on top of the leaf. Now we have created the parents
and child relationships. This is a clipping mask, it works in a similar way in
programs such as Procreate. There's an arrow, you can open, it's as if we created a group essentially because
there's an arrow here, you can open it and see what's inside and inside
of this Parent's shape. We have a child shape which
is this clipped color object. Let's tackle this leaf now. Let's clip this color to this leaf and then
this one is left. I'm selecting it. Still, on the pencil tool, I start to draw my
shape and I clip it. We can also select
those clipping masks, go to the node tool and we can make sure that we're
happy with our nodes. If the visibility is
somehow not good, you can just start with one. As usual, you can tidy it up. You can remove some nodes. Some of them will be redundant. Now, we can also switch on the other flower and go
through the same process. The alternative
would be to create a new vector layer and then
drag it into that leaf. Now the clipping mask, it's already clipped, so the drawing
experience is different. Because maybe it will
help you to see better. Perhaps the one disadvantage
is that every time you create a new vector layer and you start drawing shapes, it will create a group that will list all the objects that
we will be drawing on it. I don't like too many
unnecessary groups. I prefer to first
locate the object, having it selected, making
sure I'm on the pencil tool. Then I start to draw. Then I like to clip
it and maybe then, I like to go to the Node Tool
and make any adjustments. You can also go to the Move
tool and move it around. Just to repeat, I find the
object I want to clip. I keep this selection. I go to the pencil tool
and then I start drawing, but this is again my
personal preference. Then I clip it. Remember also that when
you clean your asset, it will be cleaned forever. It is a little bit of work, but you do it only
one time and then you save it to your
Assets Library and they're ready
to use and they're super clean,
beautifully labeled. Everything is neat and tidy. Okay, I'm happy
with how it looks, but I have one extra color
which is a little bit darker. I would like to keep on
adding additional layers, making sure that I
deselected everything. I go to the color picker, and I pick this darker
shade of orange. Back to the pencil tool. I select the leaf that I want, and I see the selection. We already have a group, so I go inside of it. If you already have
one clipping mask, you click on it and
you start drawing something new that will
get a dedicated layer. It will already be clipped
into a clipping mask. Let me show you. Pencil tool
is on, I start drawing. You see it's already
a clipping mask and now I go one
leaf after another. I open the group. I select the other clipping
mask that is already in, and then I start drawing. Again, bring back our flowers, de-select everything, and
now we see the difference. I'm going to group those
leaves together now. We have to leave separately
and the flower separately. I think I'm pretty much done
with this assets category. Now, I will go through
the same process, stylizing those
secondary flowers here. I will speed up this video and I will see
you in a few minutes. [MUSIC] Okay, our secondary
flowers are done. The last thing I would
like to do is to sort those layers
of clipping masks. Because on the petals
I decided to use not only one extra
color but two colors. I would like to also group the clipping masks within
my parent's layer. I will group those colors. The advantage of
having them grouped is now grouped by group. I can make any
color adjustments. For example, if I want this one to be a
little bit brighter, I can go to the sliders. I can change the color, I can adjust the brightness. It's much easier to do
it on the group layer. This flower is done. This is the entire group. We have to leave separately, the stem separately and
the petals separately. I can close this group. Let's group those clipping
masks together and those, organizing them by color. Now I can say that we're done. In the next lesson,
we will tackle those ginkgo leaves
and I will be showing you how to apply not only fill but also stroke
as a clipping mask.
21. Clipping Lines & Stroke: I would like to show you
here how to apply and stroke lines as a clipping
mask onto shapes. Let's deal with
those ginkgo leaves. Let's open this group. Start with the big leaf here, we will go to our
Pencil tool and we will change slightly
our adjustments. As a reminder, in order to
draw only with the stroke rep, right now we have to fill
and the stroke is empty. We deselect. We remove the fill by swiping up and we adjust the
stroke to some color. We have to switch
off the fill here. We have to switch off the auto-close because it
will do some strange shapes. Let me show you what I mean. If you have the auto-close on when you're drawing
only with the stroke, it will try to auto-close. It will try again to join the first node
with the last node. If you switch it off, then it's all fixed. [LAUGHTER] Remember in the
lesson about the stroke panel, I told you that if you're playing around with
your stroke settings, it will remember
your last settings. I would like to add
some extra lines onto those ginkgo leaves just like in my sketch over here. I will start at the bottom, so at the stem of the leaf
and I will be moving up. I would like to design
my stroke first. Knowing the direction in
which I'm going to move, I will go to the Stroke panel and I will make a
few adjustments. This will be my starting node and this will be my ending node. You can see a square
button, the red. This is the beginning
and this is the end. Also on the Pressure panel here, this is the beginning
and this is the end. I would like my beginning
to be a little bit wider so I'm going to grab this node over here and drag it a little bit so
that it gets thicker. Then I will keep the rest of the settings as they
are because again, very typical for my style, I would like to
achieve a line that is not perfectly smooth and it's
a little bit more jittery. Next, I will change the
color of my stroke. I can also do it on that
test line. Where was that? I can either grab it from here or from my
color palette here. I would like to have
this darker, navy blue. You can either do it
from the color picker. Again, as a refresher, you see the color changes
here, whatever you pick. Or alternatively, making
sure that you're on the stroke so the circle
that is empty inside, you get the color
picker icon here. You drag and drop it onto your color and you select it in this way. I selected white. [LAUGHTER] The disadvantage
is that once you select it, it's been selected but you
still have to click on it so that it gets applied to your stroke
or to your field. But now it's deselected
back to the Pencil tool. I'll go to the
Layers panel and I will remove this test line. Then I will select the leaf
that I would like to edit. You see the marking that
it has been selected and I will start drawing. As I go over here, I can also adjust the
thickness of my line so I'll make it a little bit
thicker and I will clip it. So now it's clipped. Then I will draw another line. As I go, I can also adjust its size and
its width over here. I want a variety of lines, I want some of them to
be a little bit thicker and some of them to be
a little bit thinner. Every next line that I'm drawing is already creating
a child layer. It means it's been clipped to this original leaf
layer over here. I want this one to be
a little bit thinner, I want more variety. Of course, this thinness
will be remember and the next line that I'm going to draw will keep the
same settings. That looks pretty good. I will stop here and I
will move to my next leaf, which is going to be this one. I make sure it's selected. I have my pencil tool selected
painting only with stroke. I draw my first line
and then after drawing, I change its width. Then I drag it onto this parent layer and I
create a clipping mask. I continue creating new
lines, changing the width. Only this one line because
it's on a dedicated layer will be affected by my
changes in the size, and I draw a few
more lines in here. Let's make this
one even thinner. I move from the bottom
up because this is what I set up in my pressure
sensitivity panel. If I did the other way round, I would start with a thicker
beginning of the line. Now I'm going to group
this color because I'm planning to add
an extra color, which will be much brighter. Let's group those clipping masks together based on their color. Starting again with
the biggest leaf, I am moving to its clipping
masks with this darker color. Then on the Pencil tool, just making sure I'm on it, I will draw one more line, and I will change its
color either from here, from the color picker, or here. You can just pick this color. The line was changed
back to the Pencil tool. I would like to drag this
darker color on top. Let's make this line thicker
and let's continue drawing with this color that is
brighter underneath. I think it will create
an interesting effect. I'm also changing the width
of the line so that I have some interesting
variety in my shape. After I'm done, I'm
grouping it again. Now, this is my main leaf. It has two groups
of clipping masks. One group with the darker
color, which is on top, and one group with
the lighter color, and I will repeat this process with the rest of the leaves. I think I would like to
experiment with this color here. I would like to see
if it's going to look better when it's
a little bit brighter. Again, the advantage of
having everything in one group is that
I can manipulate the color on the group level. I don't have to go in and select every single layer manually or even
through gestures. I can just make sure that
I'm on the right group. In this case, I
will be selecting multiple groups because they
all have the same color. I just have to make sure that first of all,
I open everything. I select one and then I swipe to the right to select
the rest of them. I think for better
visibility because I have some darker
colors in here, I will bring back
the checkboard from the menu. Now, what's better? I think with lighter colors, the other option was better
and with darker colors, the checkboard is better. Swiping to the right to
select this one single color. Then I go to the color studio. I remember that I'm only
painting in the stroke. First I will select with the color picker tool
the original color. I will tap it once so
that the stroke gets this particular color
assigned to it. Zooming out so
that I see better. Now, I can play around
with the luminance, and I see the changes
happening across those clipping masks and
across all those assets. I can see if I wanted even
darker towards black, lighter, changing
the saturation, bringing it down
or bringing it up, or changing the hue completely. I'll go back to my
original color, I think, and make it
a tiny bit lighter. For assets already, Number 1, Number 2, Number
3, and Number 4. In the next lesson, we will be dealing with adding some extra details to those
round filler flowers. I wanted to show
you how to utilize blend modes or blending
modes in affinity.
22. Blend Modes: In this lesson, I wanted
to show you how you can utilize blend modes in
affinity or blending modes. I wanted to continue adding a few more details to those
round filler flowers. I think in themselves
this could already be a good set of assets, but I wanted to add an
extra dimension of detail. Now, I wanted to demonstrate a small trick that will look
good against a background. We will start by creating
a new vector layer that will be right underneath
everything else. On that new layer, we will
create our background. To create a background, we can use the rectangle tool. This tool is in
exactly the same spot in Affinity Designer version 1. We click on the Rectangle tool. We go to the color studio, we set up our field. We take the color picker, we set up this for our fill, and the same color
for our stroke. Now back to our
assets are at birth. We started drawing
our rectangle. Then we head to the move tool. We make sure that
snapping is activated. We position the corners of this rectangle into the corners of the art board and we
make a square out of it. Once you have snapping on and you're trying to adjust
something perfectly, you will see those guiding
lines and they will give you a hint that everything
is aligned properly. Now we have our
background layer. We can do the same in Affinity Designer
version 1 very quickly. Create a new vector layer. Select the rectangle tool. We'll just select some
color, draw our rectangle. It has both filled-in,
fill-in stroke. We can reduce the stroke to, let's actually click
on it and change it just to one point. Now the reason why I wanted
to show this step again in affinity version 1 is that snapping is in a
slightly different position. In version 2, it was in
the upper right corner. Then version 1 that's in
the lower left corner here. You will recognize
that it's on by seeing this blue
circle around it. Now we have the background
layer in version 1, and in version 2. We can also create here
a new vector layer just to nest those new shapes. You can drag them all
the way underneath. Then we head our pencil tool. We switch back on the fill
and the auto close option. We select the same color
using the color picker tool. Now we can draw a
shape just to test it. If it hasn't changed then you can click on it and you can make your adjustments over here in the color studio or
here on your menu. I'm adjusting the fill. I'm moving to the
stroke and I'm flipping it up to switch it
off completely. Let's remove this and
let's test it again. Now it's working. On this layer, we have the shape that
we have just created. We can go to the
three dots menu. You remember that we also have the opacity slider over here. Right underneath, we have our blend modes or
our blending modes. By default, every shape is set
to a normal blending mode. But there's a whole variety
of those blending modes. The most popular
one is multiply, and this is what we will
be using in a second. It makes the color darker, and it's really great for
adding some extra shadows. Color Burn is also interesting
along with linear burn. I also tend to use
quite a lot screen and add because they're really
good for adding highlights. Let's make one of those
shapes and screen. Let's put two fingers on
the screen and make a copy. Whoops, we have to
be on the move tool. Let's make a copy
of the same shape. Now this duplicate of this copy, let's change it to multiply so that I can show
you what the difference is. Now I can select both
of those shapes. I'm pressing and holding
one finger on the screen, tapping the other shape. We're still on the move tool. I can make them a
little bit smaller. Now, I'm moving them over those little flowers
and dragging them above so that you can see and understand those blending
options more clearly. Once those blending mode layers are on top of our
normal mode layers, they're able to interact with the colors that
are beneath them. This shape here is
set to multiply, which will make anything that is underneath it a
little bit darker. We can see here
that this red got darker and this
purple got darker. Also, it interacts
with our background. If we for example change
the background color, this purple set to multiply will also interact with the
color of the background. That's why you can
create really, really interesting effects
later on when you're using blending modes and you see how they interact with
the background layer. For instance, we can, let's go to our swatches we
can see some other colors. You can get pretty unexpected
color combinations. Now, this multiply
layer interacts in a very interesting way with
our background layer as well. This is really cool, and the other shape
is set to screen, which makes everything lighter. We see that the
shape of the flower, the petals got brighter
and also those red lines, the glider and this
red turned into pink. I will be doing exactly that. I will be drawing some
extra shapes onto our flowers and a bit
outside of the flowers. We get interesting
color combinations, both when the blend mode
interacts with our main shape, which is this little blue. By drawing some shapes
also outside of our bloom, it will interact in a very interesting way with
the background color as well. Let's go back to the original
color of the background. Now, I'll show you two ways in which you might want to work. I choose for the fill
the same pink color. Auto close again, it's closed. I start to draw in one shape. Then afterwards, I will set
this layer to multiply. I will go to the
three dots menu. Choose, multiply, de-select,
and see if I like it. In case I like it, I can just open the group
with this flower here, and I can drag it
where I wanted. For example, I can put
it right underneath those red lines or I can put it on top of them so that
they are also included. Let's use the Move
tool, move this flower, and now we have a completely
different assets. That's option number 1. Now let's tackle
this flower here. Another option to
see better what I'm doing would be to
go directly into the group of that filler flower to add a new vector layer, drag it in place in case it
pops right here to the top. Then I would go to
the pencil tool. Make sure that this layer is set to multiply right
away from the very start. Now I will draw on
this new flower. I would see in real time
how the shape is affected. I think this one is
maybe a little bit more efficient because you can see
better what you're doing. The advantage of using
this approach is that you can see things
better as you draw. You just have to remember that multiply is set on the
vector layer that we created. Let me show you. If
I go to the menu, I see it's multiplied. But the shape, the curve
that I created inside, it's not set to multiply, it's set to normal. I would still leave it at that. If I want to tidy up, I would probably go in and
turn this one into multiply, drag it out of this group and delete this unnecessary nesting. But for now I'm happy. Sometimes when you
create assets, it's all about being fast because it cannot
be stuck forever. Trying to make your groups perfect, rename
everything perfectly. Sometimes you just want to
be fast and efficient and create a lot of assets
at the same time. Now, let's tackle
this little bloom. We will repeat the
first approach where we first draw and then we set everything to our blending mode, pencil tool, trusting
that I know where I am, I'm drawing my shape. Then afterwards I
set it to multiply. Of course, you can
modify it further. You can move to the move tool. You can make it smaller. You can go to the Node Tool
and you can manipulate your notes further or delete
some of them, clean it up. Just make sure to open the group and to put this layer
into the group. Now we have another
unique asset. Then on this flower, we will repeat the
second approach. We will go inside of the group. We will create a
new vector layer, which sometimes gets created
within the group and sometimes it just pops up above. Let's put it in here. Let's set this layer to multiply back to the pencil tool and
now we can start drawing. Now, I can see better. That's also great. I think I will finish
those three blooms using the second approach where I first create my vector layer, set it to multiply and I
see better what I draw. When using blending modes with the same colors from your
planned color palette, you will usually come up with a harmonious and
consistent design because it will feel like
the colors belong together. They will just have a different brightness
or hue to them. In the next lesson, I will teach you more about the knife tool combined
with using Blend Modes.
23. Knife Tool: In this lesson, I will teach
you about the Knife tool. The previous lesson about
the blending modes also applies to Affinity
Designer version 1. You can access blending
modes here also very easily. Let's, for example,
select this shape. You click on the three dots, and it looks pretty similar
to designer version 2. Here is the Opacity slider, and this is where you can
find your blending modes. Now let's tackle
those berries here. First of all, we will
make a copy of the stem. We go here to the
three dots menu, in the upper left corner
and we hit Duplicate. Now we have two copies. Next, we will change
the blend mode of the layer that is
on top to Multiply. We select the Move tool. We make this shape a
little bit smaller and we create a small offset by shifting this
shape to one side, for example to left. I de-select. Now we can use the
Knife tool to remove the tops of those
leaves over here. You can find the Knife tool in Affinity Designer
version 2 only. So if you upgraded from
version one to version two, you will have it here. It's located on
the left side menu more or less in the middle, right below the pencil tool, you see the Knife tool. It is a new addition
to the iPad version, which is not available
in version one. It's a tool that lets
you freehand cut your vector curves and split them into separate objects
into smaller bits. I think it's best if I
show you it in action. We make sure we are on this top layer, the
multiply layer. Then we select the Knife tool. As always, we have
some extra options here in the upper
side of our screen. If you're not sure what
those symbols mean, you can always hit the question mark and you will see this
little cheat sheet. You can cut your vector objects, for example, by using
a straight line, this symbol over here, or you can cut them in a freehand way in the same way we were
using the pencil tool. Here you can also use
the Auto close function so that the shape that you create with the knife
also closes automatically. I would like to cut this shape using the straight line option. I will select it, then I'm drawing a
straight line from the middle of the stem toward
the outside of the stem. You will see that this has already been split
into two parts. I will delete this one. I'll go back again to the
original multiply layer, making sure I'm on
the Knife tool still. I will cut another
line and this will cut out the top layer of
the other small leaf. I will remove it. This is the effect that
I wanted to show you. On this layer, we have
the original stem of our berry and the layer on top is the copy of this element, but set to multiply with
some bits of it cut out. This one is done. Now we
can move to this one. Let's open the group. Let's click our stem
and the leaves. We can make a copy from the menu above by selecting Duplicate. Or there's another way. From the Move tool, having selected this shape, two fingers on the screen and now you have created a copy by moving it a bit to the side. Let's already reposition
it a bit off this shape, and let's change the
blending mode to Multiply. Of course, you can also
reduce the opacity of this layer so that you get
maybe a more subtle effect. For this one maybe
let's reduce it to 75 percent, for instance. Then we go to the Knife tool. This time I don't want to
cut it in a straight line. I want to select Auto close. I would like to cut
those leaves freehand but with a little bit
of stabilization. In a way, the Knife tool is pretty much like
the Pencil tool, but the Pencil tool
creates new shapes and the Knife tool cuts
shapes and removes them. Let's choose maybe
the rope stabilizer, set it down a little bit, and let's start cutting. I start outside of the shape and I finish
also outside of the shape. We can remove it and the
job is pretty much done. Back to this multiplier
apply layer. Now I want to cut this top over here and remove
those extra bits. I de-select. This is done. That looks pretty interesting. Now, our last berry. From the Move tool,
we make a copy. We change the blending
mode to Multiply. We go to the Knife tool. You can also experiment
with no stabilization. We can also switch off the Auto close and we can start cutting. I start outside of my shape, and I also finish
outside of my shape. This has been cut
and now I remove it. Now my big berry
assets are complete and pretty much all our
assets are ready to go.
24. Scale With Object: In this lesson, I
wanted to highlight how to resize your stroke, especially when it is applied
in your asset structure. This piece of
information deserves a separate lesson as it is
a very overlooked problem that many beginner
vector artists encounter if they're not
entirely familiar with the tool. Let's take those
berries, for example. They will be perfect
for me to show you where the problem lies as all of their branches were drawn only
using the stroke. Let's have a look at this
berry, for instance. Let's open the Layers panel. This one here. Let's have
a look at those branches. In the color studio, you will see that
those blue twigs were drawn entirely
using stroke. Now, let's go back to the entire group
for this berries, switching to the move tool. Let's see what's going to happen when I want to resize it. See, as I'm making it bigger, my stroke lines get
a little bit weird. [LAUGHTER] Let's switch
the other berries so that you can see better. Those stroke lines didn't follow the entire shape and scale
of the object as a whole. Let's also see what happens
when we make it smaller. See this also becomes a problem. How to solve that. This is
a very common problem that people who use Affinity for
logo creation encounter. They, for example, design a logo only using the stroke, and then they don't know how
to set the stroke properly so that it follows the
scale of the entire object. The first step that you've
got to do is you have to keep the size of this
berry as you want it. For example, for me, I want this width of my lines, and then what you
got to do is you have to go to those layers or to those groups that were drawn only
using the stroke, and you have to take one small setting so that this
problem is fixed. In order to do that, we have to go to the Stroke panel here, and for this entire group, we have to tick
"Scale with Object". Now, let's select it. When we move back to the entire group and
we want to resize it, this time, our stroke will follow the proportions
of this berry bush. Also, let's make it super tiny to see if it's
really working. Yeah, it's working. The proportions of our berry
bush have been preserved. If you'd like your stroke
lines to be resized with a variable line width that will follow the
rest of your shape, then you have to
make sure to tick this box for every layer that uses stroke or for every group that
includes stroke lines. Let's maybe make this invisible. That means we have to do the same step for all
those stroke lines here. You can also do it in bulk, you don't have to
do it one by one, you can select one layer and then continue swiping
to the right, and then you can do it
in bulk, so to say. "Stroke Studio",
"Scale with Object". Now, when we want to resize it, the proportions
will be preserved. What does it mean for
your assets portfolio? You have to go through all the categories that you created and you have to
ask yourself the question, "Okay, where exactly,
in what groups, and then what layers did I
draw only using the stroke?" For instance, I remember that when I was drawing
those ginkgo leaves, I was also using stroke lines for the
stems of those leaves, so I have to open
each of those groups. Remember, you do
it only one time, [LAUGHTER] and then you save the asset and you
have it forever. It looks like a lot of steps
that you have to carry out, but it's just something that you've got to be
mindful when you're creating your assets and you got to make sure that
they are set up correctly, and then everything is great,
you have them forever, and you can enjoy [LAUGHTER]
designing with them. For all those ginkgo leaves, I had all the stroke
lines selected. You see, the fill is empty and the stroke has
a color selection, and then, again,
going to the "Stroke panel", "Scale with Object". I think I also had it here. Let's switch off the leaves. Go back to our big blooms. I also had it here, here I used stroke. I will repeat this step for
all the asset categories. Here, I also have
stroke those lines. I just have to go group by
group and double-check if this setting has been
ticked because otherwise, you might encounter
some problems with resizing your design later on if this
option is not ticked. Now, that this last
step has been done, let's start saving
those beautiful assets into our Assets panel.
25. Assets Panel: Now we can start
saving our assets into the Assets panel and
categorize them. You can find the Assets
panel in both Version 1 and Version 2 in the
upper right corner below the layers panel. In Version 2, it's here. Here I have all
my assets stored. The icon is just a little
bit different in Version 1, but it's in the same spot. This Assets Library is
an area where you can store any design elements
that you tend to reuse. Once you have it saved
into this library, they will be accessible in every new document
that you create. It's going to be available
across the entire device. For those of you
who work both in the iPad version and
the desktop version, It's really handy because
you can, for instance, create your assets on your iPad, and then you can export
them to your computer and use them on the desktop
version of affinity. Let's go ahead and create
our first asset category. Two X is our options
in the assets panel, you have to go to this
upper right hamburger menu. Here you have an option
to add a category to import it, to export it. The third option also very important is to
add a subcategory. You can also rename your
category or make a copy of it, and you can delete it entirely, or sorority or categories
by date added. All your assets categories, depending on how
many you create, will be available in a pop-up menu at the top
of the assets panel. You just got to click
on the title of your assets and this
menu will show up. This is where you can quickly access all the remaining assets. Let's create a new category
and hit Add Category. Here you can rename it. I'm going to call mine magical florals for my new collection. But of course, you can
name your category, whatever you wish it could be flow roles, botanical
garden metal. Perhaps you have a group for animals or for
social media icons. Now for every new category,
you need subcategories. Subfolders for your
assets in order to store them inside
of this library. Again, clicking on
the hamburger menu, you select Add Subcategory. Now you have the
option to choose this outer hamburger menu that belongs to the subcategory. By default, it's going
to be called assets, but we can also
rename it. Over here. I'm going to rename
it to flowers. I already know which
assets subcategories I bulk created basically
when I was creating, drawing of my assets. I'm going to go
ahead and I will add all those subcategories
right away. Add subcategory. I want one more folder
for the leaves. Let's rename it to leaves. Then I definitely want one more. It's a folder in
which we're going to be putting our assets. I want one more for the berries. Let's create one called berries. Pretty much every time I
create a new assets category, I always have one extra group at the end that is
called fillers. For any filler elements, it could be botanical fillers, but it could also
be some spots or dots or stripes, any
geometric shapes. Let's rename this last
subcategory to fillers. Of course, you don't need
to be that super granular. You can go as detailed or
as simple as you wish. Each of those categories, they host unlimited number
of those subcategories. You only have to
bear in mind that assets cannot exist
directly in categories. That's why we needed to create those subcategories and
you need at least one. Now the most important thing, how to store an asset. It's super easy.
Let me show you. You can do it
individually or in bulk. I'm going to show you
both the scenarios. We will be navigating
again in the layers panel. I want to start with
my main flowers. Each time we choose a group and then add our
asset from the selection. The group level will be recognized as an
individual asset. We just got to be careful
that this top-level, meaning the entire group of
this big flower is selected, because sometimes it can happen
by accident that you have only maybe a few layers
selected and then you add them as an asset
and some parts are missing. The best way is to
click a few times just to make sure that the
entire group is selected. Then we go to our Assets Studio. Hamburger menu for the
flowers subcategory. Add Asset From Selection. This is how it's
there [LAUGHTER]. This is how you add your
assets individually. But I wanted to show you in this class how you can
bulk-create your assets. Now I'm going to show you
how you can bulk-add them. This technique will
save you a lot of time. This one has been added. I go to the remaining
flowers from this group. I mark all of them
with two fingers. Then I choose again, Add
Asset From Selection. Now all of them were
added at the same time. This can save you a lot of time. Now, off to our
secondary flowers. I'm selecting all of
them on the group level. Again, add asset from selection. It's there. I really
love adding assets. I love this part. This is the best because
you've been working so hard. You've been really polishing
off those assets so that everything is okay with
the nodes and the colors. This stroke is
working perfectly. It's just pure
pleasure to arrive at this stage and to put
them into your library. Now, the leaves are
going to the leave. Subcategory, Add Asset
From Selection again. It takes a few seconds. Big berries selecting
all three of them. I'm going to put them into
my berries subcategory. Now, the other group of berries, Add Asset From Selection. Each of those groups has been recognized as a separate
individual asset, as you can see. Now we move to the category
of filler flowers. This is the last subcategory. Finally, our round
filler flowers. When it comes to
those clusters of flowers or any blooms, I suggest that you
actually save them twice. I will explain why. For starters, I will save the entire main group that hosts all of those individuals
filler flowers together. I will select this
top layer group, Add Asset From Selection. You will see that those
filler flowers were added from this top group
level as one asset. But this one asset includes all those seven filler flowers. Sometimes when I
create a pattern, I want to add clusters
of flowers really fast. I don't want to add
them individually. I just want to slam them onto my canvas and keep on designing. If I have such a cluster asset, it's very easy because all I
got to do is to click on it. Then you will have
an option to either delete it or to insert it. I choose Insert, and now another group of
assets has been added. Sometimes this makes
my design process much more efficient
because we're adding many elements at the same time. But let's go back. This was the first time that
we saved those elements. The second time I
would like to go inside of this group
and I would like to select all of those
flowers individually on their subgroup level
and then go to my assets panel and again
Add Asset From Selection. Now you will see that each
of those individual flowers, which has their own dedicated
group in the layers panel, they were saved and add it into the Assets
panel individually. Now, what are the advantages? Sometimes I don't want to add so many filler flowers
at the same time. I only want to add maybe
one, two or three. Then it's very handy to
have those fillers also saved separately. I
can click for example. on this one and choose Insert, and maybe just add one
instead of the entire group. Another way to add your
assets is to long-press one and then to drag
it onto your canvas. Then I can just select a shape that I like the most
out of this group. I can add them onto
my canvas separately. We're pretty much done,
our categories already. In our last practical lesson, I will show you how to import
and export your assets for creating backups and for
sharing. I'll see you there.
26. Importing & Exporting Assets: Assets can be exported
and imported as add-ons. Add-ons stored as files must be inputted
manually into affinity., you can practice
inputting new assets by downloading and
importing my gift. I created a basic set of
simple botanical fillers for affinity designer
that you are free to use in your designs
or in your patterns. In case your assets panel
is empty right now, go ahead and populate
it a little bit by improving the assets
that I created for you. To download those resources, go to
weronikasalach.com/filler-assets. I'm showing you how to download your freebie in Lesson 5, you're free assets download. But just as a reminder, you can import any
assets over here in the hamburger menu by
selecting import category. Exploiting is as easy. All you need to do is to select the option
expert category. We can, for example, go to our magical floral
category here. We can export them by
selecting Export Category. Next, you will be asked to save it somewhere
into your storage. I save all my assets into my
iPad storage and every now and then I copy them to my external hard drive
as an additional backup. This way, you can also
import and export your asset groups
from your iPad to your desktop version
and vice-versa. I have a folder here on my
iPad called Affinity Assets. Again, it's saved on my iPad. In case you don't have this
folder as you click Export, you have an option here in the upper right corner to create a new folder and maybe to
also name it Affinity Assets. I want to save
this category into this folder and I hit "Save." Now it has been saved and
let's see if this is actually working by going to Affinity
Designer Version 1. In my case, I can
test it on version 1 because I don't have
this category here yet. It works in the same
way in Version 2. Hamburger menu, import category. It's already
recognizes my folder, but I can go again to show you the folders
that I have on my iPad. You've got to find the
folder Affinity assets, so however you called it. Here I can see my
assets category. It's called magical florals. It has a file
extension, AF assets. I click on it and it's here. In this way, we
refreshed both the exporting and
importing our assets. With that regard, our
course is complete.
27. Next Steps: You've made it, you
have mastered creating beautiful vector
assets in Affinity. I know how daunting it can be
to dive into a new program, especially the one for vectors. Now you are miles ahead in terms of understanding
the app and some of the cool
things that you can do with it. What next? I suggest that you create at least 10 new assets every
month to grow your library. The more the better. You can set up a goal
for yourself and maybe even schedule some
time to show up for it. Remember that assets are
building blocks for any design, be the pattern or a
vector illustration. Please share your work and your thoughts in the
project gallery. You can simply just take a screenshot and you can
share it with our community, and if you're a more
experienced artist, I would love to see what you
create with those assets, perhaps you design a pattern. If you're sharing your
work on Instagram, you can use the #magicalvectors and tag me so that I
can feature your work. Please make sure to follow me on Skillshare to get notified about my new Affinity Designer
and Procreate classes. In the meanwhile, you
can also check out my YouTube channel where
every now and then I'm uploading some shorter tutorials on Affinity Designer
and on Procreate. If you liked this class, please leave a review
on Skillshare. This will really help
me to rank better in the search engine and it
will help my small business. Thank you so much for taking
my Affinity Designer class. I hope that you
really learned a lot. I'll see you in my next
Affinity Designer class. Happy creating.
28. Giveaway (03/2023): Hi guys. Till March 20th, 2023, you have a chance to participate in my
Skillshare giveaway. You can win one year of
Skillshare for free. The extra free year will be added to your current
Skillshare subscription. Say your subscription
finishes on April 2023, if you win it will
get extended without any extra cost till the
next year so April 2024, so that you can continue taking all the cool courses and learn. To participate in this giveaway, you got to do two things. Number 1, please write the review for this
course on Skillshare. Tell me, for example, what you like the most in the class and some of the
things that you learned. Number 2, create a project in the project gallery on Skillshare and show
us your assets. You can really keep it simple just by taking a screenshot from your affinity interface and then uploading this
as your project. We would really love
to see what assets you created and how you
categorize them. This is one example of a
screenshot that you can take. You can show us the
artwork that you created by using
those assets and you can also open your
assets panel and show us how you have those
assets categorized. Here's a second example. Alternatively, you can
spread all the assets that you created
on one art board. See, so I have it on
this one art board and then I opened my assets
panel and in this way, you can also take a
screenshot and you can upload this into your
project gallery. The winner will be
announced on March 21st, 2023, here on Skillshare
and on my Instagram. Best of luck.