Pdf Cartoon Drawing

[Rosamunda Froats]

Ihave been using Affinity Designer for a little over a year now, so I will teach my style to the people on the forum. There are of course many ways to draw, but this will cover a cartoon style. I will teach the style I used originally, and I will teach the style I use now. With the new brush stabilisers implemented in Designer 1.6, I decided to begin a brand new approach, but I will explain what I did for my original style first.

For all of the line work, I used the Pen Tool, because curves created by the Pencil Tool and Brush Tool were too jagged and could not continue lines. However, the Pen Tool does not allow free control, so creating a character entirely from scratch is certainly a challenge. You will need to start smaller.

Above is a long but particulate example. You are probably aware that there are both vector and pixel tools in the program, so I decided to first start off with pixel tools. (In the Brushes tab in the Pixel Persona, I used "Size 2" under the "Assorted" category and with the "Force Pressure" button toggled on.) Before starting the actual character design, Angie, I wanted to have a pose thought out, because drawing a character from scratch in an particular pose may not always be accurate. Therefor, I started out with a figure, then I traced it with a rough sketch, then I used the Pen Tool for the line work but I had to figure how to close each path, and then finally I added coloring.

Creating the figure is the same as just creating basic shapes for a simple guideline, but you still have to be accurate. You cannot make the head larger than the body or have arms rotated in a position that does not make sense. Even though you are just making basic shapes, you are still bound to mess up, so rather than create each shape in one stroke, do so in several sketchy strokes. To make a simple circle, for example, sketch lightly in a round motion. If you mess up, sketch a little darker right over the messed up region.

Now that there is a main figure, you can use it as a main guideline for drawing your character design. It is okay to draw out of figure's boundaries. Just don't make things too simplistic. While it is not necessarily the case here, a good character has different features on each part of the body. With female hair, for example, there can be the front bang, side bang, and upper hair. If you can figure out a way to divide these three features, then you are on the right track. Also, as you sketch over your figure, you may think to add a little more details than regular shapes. For the Angie's shirt, there are two lines below the breasts which crisscross to indicate a fold in the fabric. Rather than having the shirt in a regular square shape, it sticks out towards the bottom. Other lines were added to indicate the fold.

Now we will trace the rough sketch exactly with the Pen Tool, but we have to do so in closed regions. This time, we cannot leave the boundaries. While you don't have to do it this way, I divided each body part in its own layer (from top to bottom: Glasses, Top Hair, Head, Shirt, Shorts, Arms, Legs, Back Hair). The reason I did it this way is in case I wanted to change something. Maybe I wasn't happy with the shirt design, and I wanted to replace another shirt on her. If she were wearing long sleeves originally and I wanted to give her short sleeves instead, then that would mean I would have to extend her arms since they would have originally ended at the palms of her hands.

As long as the paths are closed, then coloring is very easy. Just select each path you want to add color to, and add color to the fill. There are also different shading features such as clipping other objects or pixel layers. For this, I used gradients and a 3D effect. If you do use gradients and if you divided each body part in separate layers, then just be careful. The "Top Hair" layer is not actually closed because there is an open region on the bottom with the "Back Hair" layer behind it. If you use the gradients, make sure they smooth out.

The above style, although is very particulate, does take a really long time, and that can delay production. With the new brush stabilisers, I feel very confident to draw with the Pencil Tool now. While it does not continue paths like with the Pen Tool, we can work around that. We will also never be expanding our line work for in case we need to make adjustments such as change the shape or size. We will also be drawing with more free control (open paths). If you feel you need to create a sketch figure before jumping into the vector tools, that is okay, but you will not need to create a rough sketch this time unless it helps you.

I did say that we won't be expanding our line work, so we cannot use the boolean operations. And it wouldn't make sense to use the Pixel eraser, so how the heck will we be able to erase our lines? The answer is, with the node operations. We have three powerful options when the Node Tool or Pen Tool is selected in the "Action" category, and those options are Break Curve, Close Curve, and Join Curves. These three things can really go toward our advantage, especially since joining curves will take the ends of the multiples curves and close the ends which are closest to each other. I forgot that when I used Illustrator, I never actually used the Eraser Tool on the line work because it always deformed the shape. If I could've, I would've.

Here is an example. King Dino's tomahawk has a squiggly line that needs to be removed, but it is part of a closed shaped. To do that, add a node where the squiggly line starts and click "Break Curve," then add another node where the squiggly line ends and click "Break Curve," again. The squiggly line is now its own shape, so you can go on and delete it. Now, you can select the remaining part of the object and select "Close Curve." Now let's say that the stick to the tomahawk was originally an open path. That means breaking the curve would convert it to two different shapes. So rather than closing it with the "Close Curve" button, you will use the "Join Paths" option. Do not forget just how important those node operations are.

Since the new style was done in open paths, the coloring technique will have to be different than the way explained above. First organize your artwork in two separate layers, Line Work and Color. The Line Work layer must be above the Color layer. Now there are several ways to color in your artwork.

This is probably the most common way to do it, but it may not always be the fastest way depending on the example. This means to draw a path around the closed region of your drawing to create a closed path.

Depending on how small the close region is, use the Brush Tool to color in your artwork. It helps to brush around the edges first and then fill in the remaining area. After you fill in the region, select all of those brush strokes either on the canvas or in the Layers panel, and expand them in the "Layer" menu. Then click the first option in the boolean operations to add them as one object.

Depending on how large the drawing is, some times both the Pen Tool and Brush Tool will not work well for coloring. Select each curve that makes up a closed region (holding shift to select multiple curves), and copy them to your Color layer. Hide the Line Work layer. For the torn up cape in the second drawing of King Dino, imagine what the closed fill would have to look like and what nodes would need to be added and removed. Again, use the "Break Curve, Add Curve, and Join Curves" options. At the end, be sure to remove your stroke and just keep the fill. For the torn holes in the cape, you will need to copy and paste those curves separately, break, add, and join paths as appropriately, and then subtract them from the main cape object.

There are multiple ways to add shading such as clipping vectors, adding gradients, and using pixel brushes. However, these techniques require you to add shading to each object individually. If you would rather add shading to multiple objects all at once, a new technique is to use a mask. This video will show an example.

Cheers bleduc, lots of great information there and a nice cartoon style as well. Very well explained. It's always interesting to see how other people go about creating stuff, it never hurts to learn something new. Thanks!

Brian, that's a nice give-back to the forum, thanks. I remember the earlier posts you made when creating Angie and looking for the best methods to pen shapes, layer them for exposure or not, and to hide crossover spots. You have really progressed!

BTW, one question I have for your text is about fills: How do you decide when to just use fill for the shape vs when to use brushes? Does it have anything to do with fills allow you to add additional fills on top with transparency gradients for shadows/highlights? Or is it a texture thing, or what?

That is just explaining different ways to add fills to open shaped objects. It wasn't implied for shading as well, but the first and second method can be used for that as well if the objects are clipped. If you have a small region to fill up, you can use the brush. If you have a long region but close to horizontal, you can use the pen. In large or complex regions, you can use the node operations.

Once the feature to convert pixel selections to vector objects comes around, that will mark a fourth technique. That may work out better than all others, but the Selection Brush Tool can be a bit too sensitive at times.

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