Another thing we have started in this first week back to college is work on a program called Affinity Design. Affinity Design is a program very much like a program we used in the first year of college called Illustrator it lets you use different tools within the program to create artwork, like logos and cartoons. Some of the tools within the app are very simple to use and we learnt how to use them straight away without much guidance at all, due to the fact that were just shapes and all that you had to do was select the shape you want and draw it out.
After having a mess around on the program by our selves and learning the basic tools Andrew took us through the program teaching us some first techniques, like grouping layers, and moving layers behind and in front of each other in order to create new shapes. Another technique we learnt that I used in order to create the piece below is the curve tool where I am able to curve sharp corners like the ones on squares and rectangles and other shapes in order to make smooth edges for things like drawing cars. Another tool similar to the last that we learnt of was the Node tool, which lets you stretch distort and curve any shape you want to, this comes in very useful when making things like bottles as you can curve different parts of each shape, in that case, a rectangle. The last thing we learnt how to do in this session is using the colour wheel to colour the shapes we drew, by selecting the shape you want to colour, you could go to the colour wheel and choose a colour from there to place over the shape. If you are looking for a specific colour you can use the dropper and drag it over the colour you want (even of the program) and then the program will find the exact colour so you can use it.
Above you can see a picture of a tree that I created using the Affinity Design program, to start I used the rectangle tool to draw a thin rectangle, and then I used the Node tool to pull the edges of the rectangle out and curve the edges in a big, so it looks like tree trunk. Next, I coloured this shape I had brown, after this I set to work on the branches, using the pencil tool I just roughly drew some branches from the trunk of my tree, and then after used the Node tool to neaten up the edges and again coloured them brown. from here I was finished with the trunk of my tree and set to work on the main of the tree or the leaves as I should say. For this, I just simply used the shape tool and selected the cloud shape and drew one large enough the fit as the top of my tree from here I moved the layer backwards so that the branches would show through the green part of the tree and make the picture look some more what intricate. Lastly, I just used some of the shape tools and the colour wheel to decorate the atmosphere behind my tree.
So far I am really enjoying using the Affinity Design program and find it good for making different pieces of computer art. From learning this app I can begin to have a think about how I may use it in the future in terms of whether I would consider using it to create a cartoon for my FMP, or whether I would use it alongside my FMP to create things like Logos and titles and whatever else I may want to in-bed into my FMP in the next few lessons we are going to be continuing on the program and learning more tips and tricks to create different pieces of art, I am looking forward to this as it means I can find out more about what the program can do and what I can create using them
LucyJMcGuire- mediayear2 