Affinity Designer for iPad: Vector cartoon faces

1. WELCOME: Turn your Pencil or digital illustrations into scalable vector artwork. Hello and welcome to my class. Unleash the power of the vector flood tool and the shape builder tool in Affinity Designer. This class is all about Vector Art on iPad. I'll show you how you can trace a sketch. Turn that into scalable vector Using the shape builder tool and the vector flood fill tool, it was never easier to do that. And while we're at it, let's also check out how the eyedropper tool can help for consistency in this class. My name is Els Ruiters. I'm a graphic designer, illustrator, photographer and I'm Skillshare teacher from The Netherlands. I have been working with vector software my entire professional life. I love to share my experience and my knowledge with you. You might have seen previous classes I made. If you haven't done any vector before and you feel like this might be a bit beyond you, check out those classes first. You might be interested in Drawing vector plants in Affinity Designer for iPad to get you started. It deals with working with the pen tool and shapes and colors. For who is this class? Well, for everyone who wants to draw using a vector app, simple as that. It's convenient if you do know at least the basics of some kind of vector software albeit on your iPad or on your desktop computer. I know from experience that it takes a little gentle nudging to get you in the right direction because you can look in all the wrong ways sometimes. So let's jump in 2. ABOUT AFFINITY DESIGNER: About Affinity Designer. Well, first things first, this class is for Affinity Designer Version two. If you've got an older version, you won't find the shape builder tool or the vector flood fill tool because those are part of the paid upgrade. Affinity Designer doesn't work with a subscription model. You buy it once and you're good to go. And the good news is, it's not very expensive either. You do get your money's worth. There's also a version for desktop, for both Mac as well as Windows. So if you like to see Affinity Designer on your big screen and you want to edit your artwork on your desktop, you can check out the Affinity.serif website to find the correct current price. They do offer special package prices from time-to-time. So really that's one to watch. The second great thing about Affinity Designer is that it's not really very hard to learn and it has great flexibility. There are many import and export options and it's easily interchangeable with other vector app. Well, the great thing number three is the built-in pixel persona. Once you've got your vector artwork ready, it's easy to add textures to bring more life and dynamics to your art. You can, but you don't need to, import text using PNG. The Pixel persona offers a lot of brushes and options to help you add that special look and feel to your artwork. Well, okay, another one and then we'll move on. Adding gradients and transparencies is a piece of cake. Well, and of course about vectors in general: They're super crisp, sharp and they're endlessly scalable, both up and down, up and down without any quality loss. You want your artwork on a stamp or an apartment building? Well, vectors are what you need! So let's move on. 3. INTERFACE AND START: So this is the interface and that has changed a little if you compare it to the previous version. Live docs are the documents that you have open currently. You can close your documents and they'll be out somewhere on your computer or somewhere in the Cloud and they won't show up here. But these are the ones that are being made and that you're currently working on. An [M] between brackets means that the document is modified. So you can change things and then save it afterwards. Think properly about the name. You can't rename the document very easily as of yet. That used to be a lot easier in Affinity Designer's previous version, but that's what it is. If you swipe to the left, you get three icons: copy, save to document and save as. They speak for themselves, but they're pretty unnoticable unless you swipe. You can also make projects. In new. Projects can hold various things. I've called this Diversen, which means various. And then you can just drag things into that specific project. Let's see. Here are all kinds of faces that I've put in a folder called "Faces, all kinds". It is possible to open documents, to import documents and input from photos. And you have a photo directly in your in your new document. Don't forget that there's also a very extensive Help feature here. So if you are lost at something, take a look at the Help feature, that'll probably will help you pretty good. Now I'm going to start with new, new document. And this tool has changed a bit. There are a lot of presets now, either portrait or landscape. And I'm using, Let's see, my device, which is an iPad, ten and a half inch. And I want it to be 300 DPI. Now, 300 DPI only gets interesting when you start working in the pixel persona, which is a bit like Procreate and Photoshop, where you're working with pixels. If not, then you don't really need to bother. But if you're exporting things, it might be interesting. So just for the safe side, leave it at 300. And I have 'create Art board' turned on, and just tap. Okay. The first thing that I'm going to do is import my image 4. IMPORTING IMAGE AND COLOUR: My image lives somewhere in my photos folder. There is an image that you can use which is available in the resources section. So download it and just follow it as I do. Instead of import, you chose 'Place' which lives under the document version right there. ...Place... Now go to your specified location. And mine is in the photos. So I'll just tap it. It says Show Selection and then add. Just add. And I can either drag or just tap once. Boink, and now it's there. Just let me make this a little smaller. And now I'm going to enlarge this specific drawing by dragging the corner until I have the dude's face this cool guy here. Pretty much in sight. It doesn't matter that the guy is only visible in the rest falls off. They're still there, they're just hidden. They fall outside the art board. In the layers section, I tap the photo, I bring down the opacity up to about there. I lock the layer and I add a new vector layer. You can't draw on a locked layer, so you need to add a new one. Now the first thing I'm going to do is draw this with my pencil tool. And let's take a moment to look at the settings. I can tap here and for cinematic purposes, I will use a four-point stroke, but you can make it a little bigger or a little smaller just as you like. This is the sculpt function. And I turn that off and on as I go because sculpting means that you can continue from where you left off or smoothen out lines. That'll show there is no fill and I don't want the auto close on just yet. I can tap that on and off. The colour is, you can see it there as well, the color is pink. But I'm moving to my swatches panel. And I have my Skillshare comics there. If you haven't got those, it's time to import them. Let's see how that works. Go to the swatches panel, tap the hamburger menu, go to import palette. And now there are two options you can either import as an application palette or as a document palette. An application palette will be available for future uses. You can use it always when you are using Affinity Designer. A document palette only is applicable to this specific document. Logical, right? So let's say as application palette, and then navigate to the place where you left or where you put your color palette. I think mine is somewhere in recents, I have something here called a fruit and vegetables and skillshare comics. If I tap that, it will be added and look, there's a (2) because I already had one. Now I don't like to draw with pink or with black. I like to draw in this case with dark brown. So that's the colour I'm choosing. By the way, you don't need to use these colors. Of course, if you have another color scheme that you like better than, well, it's all up to you. There's a number of skin tones here that you can use and there are some other colors that suitable for clothing and hair, and they fit well together. But if you want something else, please do 5. DRAWING PENCIL TOOL: So I have my stroke selected, which is brown. And I'm going to the brush tool So let's take that out of the way. And the settings I've just explained. ... And then I have the rope stabilizer on. That too, is a bit personal. And here's the way that the line is set up and I've chosen none. This will ensure that all strokes, all lines are equal width. Okay, just let me get this a bit bigger. Now I'm going to draw, and I will draw, my lines while intersecting with others. I'll show you. I'll give him a firm chin. And let's draw the eyebrows. And in this case, I'm going to turn on the auto-close because it's a closed shape that I want. And it's closed. For the collar I'm going to do the same. I have my pecnil, so I leave the auto-close on and I'll just start right there. And it's closed. Same on the other side. For his corpse or the torso. I'm going to use the pen tool and I'll just tap, hold my finger on the screen while tapping to get a straight line and tap again. Okay. Right, now I'll make sure that I haven't got anything selected and I'll repeat this to get some stripes. He looks like some kind of saylor like this. Okay. Now I have two more things to do. One is the mouth, and I can do that with the pencil tool. And I will use Sculpt. I'll start there. Let go. It's still on auto-close and that's what I don't want. So I'll just leave the auto- close off, right there. Now just let me drag over it and I have a mouth. Well, he doesn't look too happy, but that's what it should be right? Now let's make an eye, I am going to the Ellipse tool. just hold down, a finger on the screen to get a perfect circle. And I'll repeat this process. I think something like that will do. Now select all three by dragging over it. And I'll pick that up move it to the position of the other eye and I'll place three fingers on the screen and let go. No, I can just position it a bit better. Doesn't look bad. It looks strange, yes! But it doesn't look bad. Let's go to the Layers panel. And I'll turn off the photo. Well, as far as I can tell, all the lines are crossing, are intersecting. And when we are going to use the vector flood fill tool it will all become clear. But first let's clean this up 6. SHAPE BUILDER TOOL: We need to combine all these curves and I'm going to swipe with three fingers down and choose, Select All. Well, there are many ways to do that. And then go to Geometry tool and select Merge curves. The next thing - just let me get as a bit bigger - There's now one curves layer. And I'm going to give that a name. Just tap on the three dots and then tap, call him Guy. It's even possible to give that layer a colour so that you can see that a little better and sometimes that will help to get things organized. Alright, now, with Guy selected I'm not moving off to the shape builder tool. And the shape builder tool is really fantastic. There's so much possible there. It's really worthwhile. Let's take a look at my settings. I have free hand turned on, no clean-up. And I'm using the minus. We're going to delete well, I'm going to delete everything that overlaps and that I don't need. Like, the hair. Just by carefully tapping on it, I can get rid of all the things that I don't want. Let's see how that looks. Okay. Maybe this one, do we want that? No, that's the wrong one. This one. Okay, Now we get the eyes which do look a bit strange like that. So I'm only taking out that which sticks out of the largest circle. Now you can see that it's beginning to look like an eye. All the places where I have excessive lines, lines that don't match up or that don't belong somewhere, I'm taking them out. Let's see. His chin is a big chin, so that can stay. That can go, that can stay. If you take away too much, if you tap the wrong way you take out lines, you see afterwards just tap Backwards, Backwards, Backwards, undo. And then you can start that last part again. Now, my guy is looking more like a guy. The only thing I need to do is take a look if I have to change anything. And I would like his eyebrows to be a bit wider on this side. Brushy like that, right? There are quite a few things that you can still change afterwards. So that's alright. And if something doesn't really close, well and take care and change it because you will get overlapping parts that fill more than the desired area. Okay. Now, my guy seems alright just his eyebrows. Select all again, use the shape builder tool and take out the excessive parts. And I think this looks good. Alright. I just check to see if everything is properly aligned. Well, this looks good. So it's time to move over to the vector flood fill tool 7. VECTOR FLOOD FILL TOOL: Okay. We're going to defector flood fill tool. That's this one. And defector flotfill tool is remarkable and it is different than a normal shape because it can fill shapes that appear through intersecting lines. It sounds a bit abstract, but I'll show you what happens. Normally, you would not be able to fill this shape like the face because it would be some kind of weird form outside your black or your dark lines. But with the vector flood fill tool, it does, and I'll show you. Just the vector flood fill tool, go to the panel here. You can see there is no stroke. Well, that's logical because it's a tool, not a stroke tool. Now let's go to the swatches, and I'm going to use a light color for the skin. And I'll just tap once and tada I have the face. And I'll tap again and I have the air. That looks go. Now, let's take another one. Let's choose yellow for the hair and the eyebrows. And I want this light blue for the shirt as if he was a sailor, right? And this dark green for the shirt, and maybe maybe this light green for the color, like that. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. Now we're going to do the eyes, and I'll use this light green as well. I'll pick black. For the pupils. As you can see, it's just a matter of tapping and you get your fill. Don't forget to fill the eyes as well, and teeth if you have them, come, right? I'll do the shirts and I want the inside of the mouth to be this light pink. Well, do is almost ready, and that was very easy, wasn't it? 8. EFFECTS: So now I like to add some cheeks to my characters. This sturdy guy will look somewhat friendlier here with rosy cheeks. So here's how we'll do it. I've drawn a circle, an ellipse, and I give this the pinkish color. Now I'm going to the effects studio and I'll tap gaussian blur. And then I can just drag this up, move this slider up until I think there is enough blur there. And I want to, bring down the opacity of result. I think that's enough. Alright, now I'll grab the Move tool. I'll move it to another place on the other cheek. And then again, I'll just put three fingers on the screen and I let go. If needs be, I can just move that up little like that. In the layer studio, I'll select both ellipses, go to the geometry tool and I'll merge the curves. And so they become one and they will act the same way. I still think they are a little too bright, so I will just move the opacity slider down and just tap the opacity slider and move down so you can see the number here getting smaller. Okay, so far, so good. Now what I want to do is, let me see. I'm going to add the curve or put the curve insight the face. But first I'm going to clean up this layer. Let's bring it down a little... If I look in the layer studio, I can see that here's the big face curve. Let's turn off guy so we can see it a little bit better. Then I also have an ear. I select the curve of the head and the curve of the ear. In a geometry tool, I'll merge these curves or I'll add them, that is this same. Here are stripes and I don't want the stripes to be the same curve as well. I'm doing this because it's easier to apply a lot of colours at the same time or some effects if you have the curves, well, as one curve instead of separate things. Of course, it needs to be somewhat logical. But like the collar, you can easily put the collar and the collar together to make one color, not a colour, but a collar, right? Okay, merge curves like that. The eyes... And I will merge the curves. Here's one white, where's the other one, there's no other white. Oh, I probably forgot the other one. And I've got the shirt here. I can see if the eyes and other spaces that are white, are filled with white or still transparent by adding a background color to it. So I'll move this all the way to the back. I can see that my eye is still unfilled, so I'll go to my layer. I'll select my guy. And I'll use the flood fill tool again. I'll select white and I'll add it right there. And now everything is filled. the mouth should be this colour, So that's okay. Take up the background. That's right. Let's see. These eyes can be merged. And I have eyebrows and they can be merged. I think, well, is that that seems alright. Now... ... the cheeks are going in the face. Just move it on there and it won't stick out anymore. Now it stays inside because it's a clipping mask. There's a little thing that I think I should do and that is add some highlight white to the eye. So I'll select an ellipse. I'll give that a white fill. Maybe a little smaller, and needs to be there. And then I'll add another one. Now if my eye, my guy has a nice eyes, right? So in fact, well, we're done right now. What I should do is - merge these again - is select the entire layer and group it. Now it's a group and I can freely move it around. Now that our guy is ready. We can do things with it like change the color of the stroke or the width of the stroke. Just go to stroke Select the guy, you can change that. But I like for, but there's also a possibility to use pressure to get a more hand-drawn look and feel. Thi is the start of a line. This is the end of a line. And you can do so much as you can really simulate that you're putting pressure on your pen. But I'm going to reset pressure because I want, my pressure like before and I liked what I did like this. Now if you want, you can add some details, but in fact, this is what you should have done by now. Now, there are a few things that you can do. You can offset this guy a little. Just a tiny little bit In that case, I should turn off the magnet to get that look as if there was something in the prints and like an old-fashioned type of print, be careful with the way that you do this. Too much will not do the trick, but you do it very little. Or maybe sometimes just a little colour can be exactly what a drawing like that needs. That's one. Let's bring it back. Another thing which is quite fun to do is adding a shadow and a white line to it as if it is a pin. Now, with this guy selected, I want this brown line to turn white, but first, otherwise we won't be able to see it. I'll make it a little thicker. Let's just type in 25. You can type in a number really tapping on it and you'll get the menu to type your numbers. I think that if I turn on the layer with the guy now, that looks good, can even be little bigger if I want to. This is good, this looks good. Now, let's hide our initial guy and have these lines. Then I go to the Edit menu and I'll say Expand Stroke. Now... Now comes the magic with the curves still selected. I'm going to the geometry tool. I'll see separate curves. And then again geometry tool and I'll say Add. Now I have one solid shape. This shape should be the white pin. Let's add a shadow to the still brown edge, right? Let's say Outer shadow. And the effects rack. And let's bring that up. You see appearing alright, a bit blur perhaps like that? And now back to the Layers panel. Check the curves and change the color to white. Now, if you want to see this in a transparent background, you can go to the document menu, to Canvas, and then Transparent Canvas. And now you see all these little squares. This means that Canvas is transparent. Now that we've got our guy ready, we can add some effects to, for example, his clothes or his hair. Using the effects panel. Let's say I want his collar to have special effect. I'm going in the Layers panel open if if if it was locked, unlock it, and then go to select that. Right? It's selected. I'll go to the effects and go to the bevel and emboss and bring that up a little. You might not see it instantly, but look, here it clearly comes. And it's really like it's on something like a metalish effect. Same goes for the hair. If I tap the hair, if you have already added an effect, you will see it by effects. And then you can just add more effect, make it more visible. And the fun thing is that this actually gives the feeling of an actual pin even stronger. So let's take the face. And I want that effect as well. Just a bit smaller. Alright. Well, I think that we are done. Now to wrap it up. If you want to export this to use as a PNG, for example, in your, in your Instagram account or on TikTok or whatever. Just make sure that the background is transparent as I showed you. And then select everything. I can do it by, swipe by three fingers, swipe down, select all, or use the layers palette, and then go to the hamburger menu of the document and say Export. You will get this and choose PNG file name, give it a filename. And now I have the selection only. And I liked that much because you will lose everything that is around the image and you won't be bothered with too much white around your image. No, that's okay. You can give it a name as I said, and be sure that this is not turned on. Otherwise, you'll have a white or a colored background. Okay? I'll do, okay. And just save it to PNG exports in my case, now our image is ready. Well, that's it. Now it's up to you. Thank you. Let's wrap this up. 9. STYLE PICKER TOOL: Now one last thing. If I want to add the same settings to another cartoon figure, I'll tap on the eyedropper tool. I hold and select the style picker, which is right here. As you can see, the same icon appears at the top where I can specify which settings I want to pick. Now with the tool selected, I'll tap on the shape. And the eyedropper tool has picked up the stroke information, it's loaded. Then you can tell that from this green dot over here. Now, if I drop this onto the shape I want to change. I simply tap it once with a loaded style picker tool. Tadaaaa! The information I picked will stay loaded until I tap the bin next to the style picker. And I can pick new settings or I can leave it altogether. This is an easy way to achieve a consistent look in all your artwork 10. WRAP IT UP: Time to export your artwork and share it in the projects gallery, social media, etc. Together, transparent background. You need to change the setting in your canvas background, which is in the document studio right here. The checkerboard background means that the background is transparent. Now you can export your selection or the entire board as a PNG by using the export feature. Well, that wraps it up. By now, you know a good deal about some of the amazing features that affinity designer has to offer. And you're ready to start drawing your own cartoon characters infected. Ready to re-size endlessly Up and downscale them. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Hopefully, you've gotten through two here and you've gotten enthusiastic about vector drawing as well. And as always, if you have questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment below. I would very much appreciate feedback as well, and maybe a shout-out to my class if you're on Instagram. Thank you, and I'll see you in the next class. Bye