Book Image

Up and Running with Affinity Designer

By : Kevin House
Book Image

Up and Running with Affinity Designer

By: Kevin House

Overview of this book

Affinity Designer is a widely adopted creative application, and in a reasonably short space of time, it has become a leading design and illustration application. Affinity Designer, along with Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher, is part of a suite of award-winning creative software applications developed by Serif Europe. Built on the latest technologies, which make it fast and smooth, Affinity Designer is quickly becoming the go-to professional creative application for vector drawing and pixel-based painting. Up and Running with Affinity Designer is a comprehensive hands-on guide to the Affinity Designer software. Whether you're new to the creative industry, a seasoned professional looking for a proven alternative, or an enthusiastic hobbyist, this book will help you get up to speed in no time. You’ll learn how to create documents and explore workflow best practices while working through practical exercises using the knowledge and skills developed in each chapter to solidify your understanding of the fundamentals. Finally, you’ll bring it all together with real-world practical applications by building a fun logo and professional illustration, forming a base for in-depth exploration in your own projects. By the end of this Affinity Designer book, you'll have gained the knowledge and confidence to use Affinity Designer as part of your creative toolset.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Familiar with Affinity Designer's Interface and Layout
5
Section 2: Deeper Exploration of Affinity Designer's Documents, Tools, and Workflow
9
Chapter 7: Tools – Pixel Persona
12
Chapter 10: Workflow: Symbols, Assets, and History
13
Section 3: Bringing It All together

Summary

Well, we sure covered a lot of ground in this chapter! Our journey took us from building the paths and curves based on a concept sketch all the way up to a fairly realistic, stylized couple of fun characters. We utilized the skills learned from the previous chapter and put them to good use creating a more advanced illustration.

We learned how a cohesive color palette can contribute to giving overall harmony to an otherwise complex illustration. We discovered how to transform flat, 2D colored shapes into dimensional surfaces with the use of shading and highlighting. We explored using Inner Shadow effects and Linear and Elliptical Gradients to describe form and shadows from a consistent light source. Not least of all, with the exception of part of the background, we created all of this using an all-vector workflow, with the advantage of making it easy to continue to refine it at any time while maintaining its resolution-independent nature, allowing it to be used at any size...