Illustrating an athlete in Affinity Designer with Chris Rathbone

Chris Rathbone is back at it again! Join us for another masterclass in vector illustration as Chris takes you through his complete workflow using both Affinity Designer on desktop and iPad.
Chris has provided the working file for this Creative Session to download here: affin.co/CRFC
A freelance illustrator and graphic designer, Chris has created illustrations for a host of clients and agencies within the sports industry, including Formula 1, NBA, Formula E, the Grand National, Tour de France, the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Ferrari, RedBull and Puma. His artwork has also been featured in leading magazines such as CAR Magazine, Top Gear and Match of the Day.
Chris will be available to answer your questions on KZbin’s Live Chat for the premiere on Friday, 2 February 2024 at 5pm GMT.
You can follow him on Twitter at / r4thbone and on Instagram at / r4thbone

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.
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You can find out more about the Affinity suite, including getting access to free trials, over on affinity.serif.com/.

[@JAmediaUK]

The problem with all this is, whilst I have the tools to do all this, my version's of Affinity don't have the plugins required to do it. You know the ones..... "Skill" and "Talent" once I download them I am sure I will be able to produce illustrations like that. :-)

[@victoriomarasigan9774]

they take a while to download but definitely worth it; they work with all past and future versions and even other programs!

[@JAmediaUK]

@@victoriomarasigan9774 I have done a lot of looking for "skill" and "talent" but only ended up with "experience"

[@kencory2476]

You can buy skill and talent with time and effort.

[@Affinitybyserif]

They say practice makes perfect :)

[@NothingHereIsReal]

A great video. Nice to see the whole workflow like this.

[@gileswhitaker9656]

Thanks Chris and Affinity. Great video! It's very valuable to just study other people's illustration processes like this.

[@Welcome_to_real_life_]

I think it's a good idea to bring this little 22 second video with a quick preview about the content. Affinity, never stop improving.

[@Affinitybyserif]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

[@7775Kevin]

Thanks so much for this. Great work and so many good ideas to incorporate into my illustrations.

[@wd112]

Great seeing a Pro at work, for many, many reasons! - Thank you

[@BarNoneWranglers]

Outstanding illustration tutorial. Nice to see the start to finish, shadows and highlights and background setting. Well done!

[@armingabriel572]

You're a real artist. Increcible!

[@karenbluesky]

Thank you this was great!

[@PrB2024]

Nice job, looks great. Thanks for the video. I got out of the graphic design field four years ago, but I was thinking of purchasing this program for my own personal use.

[@mrbrianparker]

Informative and enjoyable.

[@johnykubis]

Awesome. For creating shadows, lights, etc. you need talent :-) and practice. I need to train more and now Chris, you are my inspiration.

[@darkcrab]

Cool to see a professional work with the software. I was wondering though: is there a way to use the "mobile interface" from the iPad version on my Windows Surface Pro to have it cleaner and optimized for pencil usage. Like a tablet mode for the Windows version?

[@Mrwagzilla]

vary nice thanks for the demo

[@Dreamkid62]

Really Great and very interesting work too.😎😎😎

[@arale1402]

Hi Chris, many thanks for the great tutorial. I noticed (eg 41:40) you seem to draw the shadows very precisely around your line art. Is there a technical reason why you did not instead clip the shadow layers to the base colour shapes? Or is it your preferred workflow? (I am lazy, so I clipping-mask my shadow/highlight layers 😅).

[@glen1951]

excellent!

[@user-tx4wz4dn2g]

WOW!

[@wikevo]

Great to see this, really nicely done. Still me.🙂

[@gurumonkey]

Fantastic! What talent. I learned a lot from watching.

[@colingreenidge3397]

Impressive...Very!

[@diegobionda3673]

nice process i use Affinity from the start but i'm still searching a perfect way to export to pdf for print without saving as image and without loosing transparence and blur effects. Could you publish a tutorial for that? thanks

[@staffordknotty70]

An impressive and educational demo on how to use the facilities, but it has shown that Chris has nothing to fear from an artistically incompetent engineer like me!

[@jayedwin98020]

I'm curious. How much time did it take to actually do this illustration?

[@davidbauer7]

Briiliant work, Chris! Thanks a lot for sharing your workflow! And just out of curiosity - why are you still using Designer V1? Are you like me and cannot get over the horrible UI of V2 or is there another reason? ;) D.

[@gyananchan4256]

Hey affinity, when will vector animations happen?

[@Affinitybyserif]

Hey, we don't currently have any plans for animation features.

[@gyananchan4256]

@@Affinitybyserif noo! After effects has an iron grip on mption graphics so I thought maybe serif would change that and eat up some of their market share! Anyway, thanks for replying even if you dont ha e plans. Means a lot ✌

[@candidocordero5213]

video utilissimo per un vecchio grafico come me. Grazie tante!😂

[@stefangloeckner]

Das ist mega interessant … aber was mich brennender interessiert, ist die Frage, wieviel bezahlen die Firmen Dir für diese Illustration? Welchen Wert setzt man an? Wenn ich all meine Kosten zusammenrechne, muss ich 120€/h als Preis aufrufen… und dann wird es meistens sehr still am anderen Ende der Telefonleitung…

[@jayedwin98020]

Do you prefer Affinity Design over Procreate?

[@brianwilson9800]

the ball looks a bit flat upper right but hey! what a marvellous video thank you!

[@clauderoosens]

Très bien, mais RIEN compris, désolé d'être Francophone avant tout

[@jctutos14]

Bonjour, avec la traduction automatique des sous-titres en français et une vitesse de lecture à 0,75, c'est compréhensible. Faire de poses, revenir en arrière, ne pas attendre d'avoir regardé la vidéo en entier avant de faire des essais. Voilà mes conseils. Cordialement.

[@clauderoosens]

@@jctutos14 je savais même pas que l'on puisse traduire les sous titres.

[@jctutos14]

Ok. Autre conseil si on utilise la traduction des sous-titres, couper le son de la langue traduite. Avez-vous trouvé comment afficher et traduire les sous-titres ? Jacky