Creating Shadow.

As part of my project I have to look into Affinity designer and creating shadow to add to the realism of my designs which is of course very important. Although I had a basic idea of what to do regarding shadow I wanted to see if there were any more ideas out there on how to make shadow look great. As can be seen in an example of one of the operators shadow is very extensive and used well to create perspective and realism.

GamersDecide.com. (2019). Rainbow 6 Siege Best Loadouts For Each Operator. [online] Available at: https://www.gamersdecide.com/articles/rainbow-6-siege-best-loadouts-each-operator [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].

The use of shadow and lighting here is really effective to make the character pop out. The lighting on his helmet helps make the character add effect. The shadow also helps to add mystery to the character as some of him is in the darkness. A very easy way to create shadow in Affinity is literally just to use the brush tool to colour in parts of a character with the colour black. This will create the effect of shadow.

Another great tool to use is to use the pen tool to draw around a shape such as an arm. You can then use the fill tool to turn the shape black and then finally use the opacity tool to make the shape more transparent which ultimately means that the shadow effect is created.

You can also make the shape larger than the item which adds another great effect to the shape and creates shadow.

I also found this helpful tip on the Affinity forums which is great for shadow effects.

Affinity | Forum. (2019). How to make realistic shadow in Affinity Designer?. [online] Available at: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/24218-how-to-make-realistic-shadow-in-affinity-designer/ [Accessed 2 Apr. 2019].

Overall these are some very useful tips so far and I can’t wait to try them out. A great way to create light such as on Thermite’s helmet is to use the same techniques for shadow but instead using the colour white. The same effects can still be used however. I will be using some of these techniques in my project as this is vital towards my FMP and realism.