Create a lifelike butterfly in Affinity Designer with Isabel Aracama
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- čas přidán 28. 09. 2023
- In this creative session, artist Isabel Aracama shows you how to use a combination of Vector and Pixel personas in Affinity Designer to create an incredibly realistic-looking illustration of a butterfly.
Isabel will be also available on CZcams’s Live Chat for this session’s premiere on Friday, 29 September at 4pm BST to answer any questions.
Download the final Affinity Designer file: affin.co/IAFC This file is locked like our in app samples but allows you to browse the layers and see how everything is put together.
A designer and illustrator from Spain with more than 20 years’ experience in various industries and media, Isabel Aracama specialises in digital graphics and has worked for years designing interfaces, apps and digital products. In 2016 she quit her job in the UK to pursue and specialisation in scientific illustration at the UA in Portugal. After finishing her studies there, she started teaching an annual workshop on entomological digital illustration for several years. She has also embarked in the creation of several digital illustration courses.
You can check out a gallery of her students’ work from one of Isabel’s most popular courses using Affinity Designer here: / realistic-vector-art-p...
You can also follow along with another one of her free tutorials here:
www.smashingmagazine.com/2018...
To learn more about Isabel, visit the links below:
Website: www.isabelaracama.com/
Twitter (X): / isabel_aracama
Facebook: / isabelaracama
About Affinity Creative Sessions:
Led by top creatives who use Affinity, Affinity Creative Sessions give you the chance to follow along as incredible artists, illustrators, designers and photographers work on a project using the apps.
We announce details of upcoming sessions on our social channels, so make sure you're following us on Instagram ( / affinitybyserif , Twitter ( / affinitybyserif ) and Facebook ( / affinitybyserif ) to stay updated about future premieres.
You can find out more about the Affinity suite, including getting access to free trials, over on affinity.serif.com/. - Jak na to + styl
that's just insane..... it looks so real
Thanks a lot! 🥰
Very cool, always anpreite more of this.
Happy to see a Portuguese woman here! I'm new with Affinity Designer, but I love the program. I found it much more intuitive than its competitor Illustrator.
Olá! I'm actually Portuguese at heart, but being from Spain, I love my neighbors and I'm looking forward to going back there soon and do some birdwatching in Aveiro and Setúbal area. Affinity is, as you say, a very intuitive tool. That's precisely one of the things beginners appreciate. It's very rewarding seeing them motivated and minimizing that initial frustration when you don't know where things are or how to move around. This makes it also much easier for me to focus on the important things.
Obrigada por deixar seu comentário, e não hesite em fazer suas perguntas e dúvidas, se as tiver. Beijinhos da irmã espanhola! 🥰
I liked it!
Very well explained, even for those who are new to everything.
Very glad to read this :D
Brilliant, I enjoyed watching you draw this specimen. So great to see how you use the eraser brush. Thanks for the video.
Thanks for watching Elizabeth! 😘
Great work Isabel, I did set a reminder after seeing your tweet (can we still say tweet?) but it never happened. But I've just watched now. Thank you for your time and excellence. x.
Thanks Martin for always supporting my work. 😘😘😘
Lovely... Great process..
Thanks so much!
@@isabel_aracama uwc 🥂
Adorable. Como siempre. Muchas gracias por las ideas...😁😘🌹
Muchas gracias por la atención! 😘
@@isabel_aracama Man gönnt sich ja sonst nichts, Isabelissima...😜😁😘
@@literaturix Aaaw, Danke schön für deine netten Worte 😍
This is good Isabel ❤
Thanks very very much!
She’s very good at craft!
Thanks very much for watching!
Well done. F.
Thanks, Friedrich!
🥰
😘
My question would be, if (almost) everything is made in pixel persona, why not use affinity photo?
You could. I actually work these in both (note at the beginning of the video presentation, how one of the butterflies showcased shows Affinity Photo's interface) Sometimes I start and finish in Designer, sometimes in Photo, and sometimes I mix them, especially cause there a few tools one has that the other doesn't. And that's another great thing, how easily I can jump from one to the other. One of the things I mentioned when I proposed to do this particular piece was precisely this, the fact that many would never think of using Designer over Photo here. And why not when you totally can? It's a matter of personal choice and preference, and we have plenty with Affinity. Thanks for watching!
Thank you so much for the quick response and exelent video!
We need linux version please !!
We don't currently have any plans to support Linux.
I really enjoyed the video and the process but it left me wondering. Why would a magazine want to print an illustration instead of the actual (reference) photo? Cutting out the subject from the photo would be so much faster and easier with the same amount of detail. The course with Porsche car I can understand. It's vector and its scalabilty is a huge advantage for print. But here the illustration is raster, the same as the reference photo. I can understand doing art just for the art but why would magazines use it?
Hi Hans, thanks for leaving your comment. This is an excellent and recurrent question, especially in the world of scientific illustration. I was expecting it cause as I say, many people wonder why using an illustration over a photo.
There are many scientific illustration types, and in some, it will be easier to understand the reason for using them (i.e. the inside of a cell, the circulation of blood, etc.).
In the case of an illustration such as this one, it's about depicting the species itself, but not a particular specimen that might have its own individual particularities. In other words, an illustration can show a general concept while a photograph will show a specific one.
What we do here is show the standard features clearly and in the position that best works for our purposes, leaving out the particularities of a given specimen which might for example have atypical patterns and other peculiarities that are no representative of the species.
But there are more reasons. Look for example at the butterfly I recently painted for the Nature Conservancy Magazine. In this case, they wanted to show the ventral side of a newly discovered butterfly of which they only had 2 images of a specimen that was long dead and was really not looking very well in order to appreciate its real features and use it for the article. You can take a look here: www.behance.net/gallery/155182429/Editorial-illustration-The-Nature-Conservancy-Magazine
But not only this. If you look at a field guide, you will see there are many that use illustrations and others that use photographs. Those using illustrations are usually going to present the species in high detail, leaving out what is not needed, better highlighting its general aspects or a particular idea and simplifying when/if needed.
Hope this helps and thanks again for watching!
Hello Isabel, thank you for your quick repsonse and thank you for closing this loop for me :) Otherwise this question would have kept going around in my head. I figured that for example with dragonflies or other insects with transparant wings, an illustration would help to depict them without background but I hadn't thought about it this way. Thank you for clarifying.
@@hans934 Anytime, you're very much welcome!