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Affinity Designer

Transcript

Intro

This course covers how to reconstruct the Urnes style in a two-dimensional illustration based on the general principles of the historical style.

These principles are virtually independent of any specific process or setup.

So, although I'll be showing you my personal process for creating illustrations in the style, you can easily adapt it to fit your own preferences.

You don't need any specific hardware, apps or tools to follow along.

In this lesson, I'll show you a quick walkthrough of my personal setup and process for illustrating digitally and what you need to replicate these in similar ways even though you might not have the exact same setup as me.

If you prefer working with a pen and paper, please check out the next lesson, in which I'll walk you through how to replicate my digital setup and process with pen and paper instead.

Setup

Hardware

In the course, I'll be working on a Wacom Cintiq 24HD pen display from 2014.

If you are not familiar with the Wacom displays, it's basically just a giant touchscreen and a stylus connected to a computer.

If you have an iPad and an Apple Pencil, you'll have a very similar setup. Probably even better.

I'm not familiar with other tablet and stylus setups, but if you can draw with a stylus on your tablet, you should be good to go.

Software

You can basically use any graphic design software you'd like to follow along with the course if you prefer working digitally and want to replicate my process 1:1.

Though I'd recommend you work in an app which has the following basic functionality:

• The ability to work in layers.
• The ability to work with a bitmap brush tool.
• The ability to work with a vector pen tool (though this is not a must).

In the course, you'll see me working in Affinity Designer.

Affinity Designer is an app very similar to Adobe Illustrator in which you can draw by creating bezier curves or vectors. 

But you also have the ability to draw with a bitmap brush tool just as you can in Adobe Photoshop.

This is great when you want to create rough sketches with the brush tool before you ink the illustration with the pen tool without switching apps midways through the process.

Considering it's relatively short lifespan Affinity Designer is in my opinion in many ways already a much superior app and incredibly affordable compared to Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

Through the year of 2018, I have slowly but steadily been switching to Affinity Designer from working in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and I'll definitely recommend you check it out for yourself. 

Affinity Designer is available on both Windows, MacOS and iOS.

And just to be clear; I am in no way affiliated with the company. It's just my personal graphic design app of choice. But again you can use any other app you like to follow along with the course.

Process

Here is a quick look at what my process of illustration typically looks like and how it will be structured throughout the course.

Rough Sketch

The first step is an initial rough sketch of the concept and main shapes and lines of the design.

To create this, I'll be using the bitmap brush tool and the eraser to draw and shape it into place.

Detailed Sketch

The next step is to further develop the sketch into a more accurate and detailed rendition.

To do this, I'll continue using the brush tool and eraser to shape the sketch even further. 

In addition, I'll also make use of guidelines and other vector shapes to make sure that the proportions of the design are consistent.

Inking

To finish the illustration, I'll be inking it by using the pen tool to draw fluent curves and even outlines and strokes.

But you can just as easily use the brush tool to ink the illustration if you prefer this method instead.

Layers

Throughout the process, I'll be using layers to organise the workflow of the illustration by separating each consecutive step of sketching and inking onto their own individual layers.

I'll even separate and group certain elements of the composition onto individual layers to keep things neatly organised and easy to pick out when needed.

Outtro

There you have it.

This is how my setup and process looks like, and how it will be presented in the course.

In each lesson, I'll dive a bit deeper into the actual practicalities of each step.

If you have any questions, please let me know, by commenting below or shooting me an email. I'll be happy to answer your questions.