In all Affinity apps, a powerful and unique concept is Personas. They are workspaces designed for different design disciplines. Each Persona provides a unique set of tools and panels specific to the active Persona, alongside shared tools for general use.
In Affinity Designer, the in-app combination of Designer Persona and Pixel Persona lets you easily swap between vector and raster disciplines without leaving the app. If you come from Adobe Illustrator or similar, this concept of an integrated raster editor within a vector app may sound like a dream come true—it’s no dream!
Here’s a breakdown of the ways I use both Personas in Affinity Designer, and when I choose one over the other, depending on the outcome needed.
Designer Persona - vector design:
- For creating shapes
- Drawing my final line work
- Adding main colour fills
- Creating smooth and clean colour gradients
Pixel Persona - raster editing:
- For planning and sketching my illustration
- For creating complex shading
- Adding photo-realistic brush textures (natural media, textures and sprays)
Of course, I could spend the whole day listing lots of practical uses for both, but this checklist should be enough to give you an idea of how to get started. Now, let’s see some practical examples of what I listed above.
Sketching
If I don’t have a sketch to work with, the first thing I do when I launch Affinity Designer is switch to the Pixel Persona.
I pick one of the fantastic default raster drawing brushes, or one from my own Frankentoon library and start doodling around until I find something I like. Notice that a Pixel Layer is created automatically the moment you start drawing, although you can do this manually by choosing Add Pixel Layer on the Layers Panel.
I try not to be too careful with my line work at this stage. All I need is to put my idea down as quickly as possible, and then I improve it as I go; it also depends on the level of detail I need for my final illustration. I tend to use raster brushes to draft my sketches to keep a simpler layer structure and because I don’t need to edit my strokes other than erasing or scaling them.
Creating paths and adding shapes
Now that the main idea is clear in my mind, it’s time to create the main shapes. I switch to Designer Persona, and using the Pen Tool or by reshaping the default shapes, I trace my whole sketch over. Here I can also spot composition mistakes or test last-minute ideas until I find a composition I like.
This step also serves another purpose, which is selecting the primary colours of my illustration. Changing the colour of vector shapes only takes a couple of clicks, so you can create colour combos quickly and easily.
Shading with gradients and raster brushes
Once I have my composition laid out, I make a ‘shading pass’. To do this, I use one of two methods (or both in combination):
- Add vector gradients to my vector shapes.
- In Pixel Persona, I add texture to my shapes using raster brushes.
Notice how both methods of shading lead to entirely different results. Sometimes, I use them together to get more accurate shadows, without losing the nice organic look of texture brushes.
With Personas, the ability to explore two different design environments within a single application can help make your workflow a hundred times more effective. You won’t have to keep switching apps each time you need to work with vector or raster images anymore, like in this instance.
“In Affinity, once you get used to this concept of Personas, you'll find yourself jumping between them back and forth without even thinking about it.”
Clipping raster brushes to vector shapes
Wait… but how did I managed to paint textures so accurately just within the frog’s tummy? I used a technique called clipping—this lets you automatically paint within the confines of a vector shape, and never outside it.
To perform clipping, switch to Pixel Persona, select the shape and simply paint over the shape using the Paint Brush Tool. The brush strokes are automatically clipped within the shape, always being restricted to its outline.
You can also clip a vector object within another object by dragging it onto the other object’s layer entry in the Layers Panel.
In summary
With Affinity, you have the freedom to choose whatever technique works better for you. Trying out unique and powerful features, like Persona switching and clipping, will further expand your graphic possibilities in a way you’ve never experienced before in graphic design. Why not give it a try?
Further learning
To explore Frankentoon’s techniques further, open Affinity Designer and go to account > lessons, for a 6-minute lesson explaining how to create another magical Frankentoon illustration. You can also download the artwork and toggle layer visibility on/off to see how it was made and edit individual elements of the design.