A Retro TV Icon

**Rik** · 22 September 2016, 08:38 PM

Drawn in Affinity Designer.

I drew this by following a tutorial.
Mainly so that I can start to learn the tools.

And whilst the tools are much easier to use in Xara, I still need to learn the ways and means in Affinity designer.

The real reason for posting this here, is the fact that Affinity Designer allows you to add noise to whatever you draw.
Which adds a real touch to the drawing.

The icon in the tutorial is obviously small, and I've just enlarged it here for demonstration purpose.

**gwpriester** · 22 September 2016, 10:39 PM

Noise is nice. Would be a good filter to have in Xara.

**mwenz** · 22 September 2016, 11:46 PM

Nice one, Rik.

Noise. Wasn't there a live effect for that in the past in XDP? I cannot remember as I generally stay away from those effects. They use modal controls and generally are slower to apply than they ought to be.

Something like the illustration above is too easy to do in a decent image editor. Because XDP will export to PSD using layers, it is easy to add noise over the whole like the above or on parts that are on their own layer. Or even post-processing the flat image.

In fact, one can just generate a file that has noise as a B&W image, bring that into XDP and use transparency. I have done this in the past. I cannot tell the difference between doing this method and natively in-application.

So while it would be nice inside of XDP, to me, it needs to be handled better than XDP's live effects.

**angelize** · 23 September 2016, 08:22 AM

very nice Rik. I've played around a bit with Affinity Designer (windows beta) and yes the ability to add noise is nice. AD has a few nice tools that would be nice to have in Xara.

When I need noise in Xara I turn to filter forge and use it as a standalone to generate seamless tiling bitmaps as Mike suggests.

**Mike Bailey** · 23 September 2016, 03:40 PM

Noise is nice. Would be a good filter to have in Xara.

Whats this?

**wizard509** · 23 September 2016, 06:53 PM

Very nice Rik, however I don't think that long cast shadow is quite right.
I could be mistaken but it seems to me that if the main box is casting the shadow, wouldn't it come off both corners like you show at the top right and not off the foot on the left bottom and the box at top right.

**Rik** · 23 September 2016, 07:02 PM

The great thing in AD, is that you can add as much or as little noise to individual parts that you've drawn.

What Affinity have done is to give you a control, right there and then, for you to use and add the effect to whatever you're drawing.
And there's no degradation in drawing speed, or anything, that I could see.

Mike: I can't see what image you've posted? It just says Attachment 114354

**Rik** · 23 September 2016, 07:11 PM

Originally Posted by wizard509

Very nice Rik, however I don't think that long cast shadow is quite right.
I could be mistaken but it seems to me that if the main box is casting the shadow, wouldn't it come off both corners like you show at the top right and not off the foot on the left bottom and the box at top right.

The shadow is not meant to be a real shadow.
That's the way these flat type icons are designed.
And, having said all that, I merely followed a tutorial.
And the main reason for following the tutorial was to start learning the tools in Affinity designer.

**Mike Bailey** · 23 September 2016, 07:12 PM

Mike: I can't see what image you've posted? It just says Attachment 114354

Yea, something went wrong when I posted the image. I think its fixed now.

**wizard509** · 23 September 2016, 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by Rik

The shadow is not meant to be a real shadow.
That's the way these flat type icons are designed.
And, having said all that, I merely followed a tutorial.
And the main reason for following the tutorial was to start learning the tools in Affinity designer.

Tutorials can be wrong. I have noticed that before on some tutorial.