hey what's going on youtube today we are inside of affinity designer and i want to give you a
quick tutorial on using the pen tool a lot of people feel a little overwhelmed with this tool
because they're not too sure where to start or how it works but what i'm going to do is
i'm just going to run you through a very quick and easy process of how we use this so as you
can see in front of us i've got a few basic shapes here that i drew out and we are going
to use these as a template or just something to trace around so i can demonstrate the tool
so i'll include this project file in the description if you want to download it and
use the same shapes and follow along to this so before we begin if you pay attention to the right
hand side the layer panel you can see that i've got all of these layers here locked and what that
does is it stops us from moving anything around here while we're drawing or tracing around them
okay so what we're going to do first is head over to the left hand side panel and we're
going to choose the pen tool which is that one right there when using the pen tool you just
got to create a start point which we're going to do in this top left hand corner of this box
and i've got snapping enabled here which is going to make it a lot easier in terms of tracing around
this if you don't have snapping turned on just come up to your top menu bar and ensure you've
got that little red magnet checked up there okay so we're going to create our first start point and
we'll do that simply just by tapping on your mouse and you can see now we've got this little blue box
and when it comes to doing square boxes this is really simple because it's straight lines all the
way around so this is going to be really quick and easy it's just a case of coming down to the next
bottom corner and tap again on your mouse over to the right hand side tap again on your mouse and
back up here tap again and at this point this is what you would call a open path because we
haven't quite made the shape into a square yet so if anyone ever refers to something being an
open path it's because it's not combined with the start point meaning that it's not a full shape
so once we now connect this over here to that one it actually becomes an official square and
we can just come over here and we can color that as well so if you want to we can come
over here and just turn off this stroke which is what we just drew and now you can see on here
that we just simply have the square itself okay so before we start on the circle i just want to
demonstrate how we would make curves with the pen tool so if we come back over to the left hand side
and we select that again and once again we're just going to make a start point so we just tap
anywhere on the canvas that you like and i'll just put the end point there so we've got a straight
line here this is our start point that is our end point so if we just hold down our mouse button
on this square right here and we start to pull over to the right hand side you can see it's
starting to curve over to the left and if you pull down it starts to move up so everything's
kind of backwards so if you move up then you can see your curve is starting to come down
and if you just come back over again to the left hand side it starts to make its way
over to a straight line once again and if you pull over to your left it starts to go right
so a way really to understand is just go backwards and it's going to do the opposite so
if you're going to go up it's going to go down if you're going to go down it's going to go up
and it's just a case of going left to right to get in the kind of curve that you want
and the higher you go up or down the more the curve is going to travel up the line
so i hope that kind of makes sense to you so i'm just gonna delete that because we don't need it
okay so with the circle we've just got a kind of vision four points around this so we've got this
top one this left one here on the side we've got the bottom one and the right hand side one
as well so when it comes to curving around a bend like this we can't just simply start from
the top and go to the bottom and bend here because it's not going to line up perfectly around here
so i'll quickly demonstrate that i'm just going to grab this and start to drag over
to the right because i want to go to the left so if you remember just do everything backwards and
no matter how we try and line this up it's not going to work out right we've got this gap now
at the bottom and the top as you can see so this is why we need to vision the four points and kind
of make our way around that so i'm just going to delete that and we'll start again so if we
come up to the top we put our start point on this one and we head over to the left hand side point
and we put another one there now we can start to bend this around this shape
just like that see it looks a lot more better than it did before and we've got the general
shape that we are going for and now we just need to join this one down to the bottom
so before we do that i just want to demonstrate here this little round bit symbolizes that we
are curved whereas on the square it shows that we are straight so that's kind of a start point
and this shows that we're on the curve so if i was to leave this around now and come down here and
tap there i'm not going to be able to bend this in the way i want it to go it's not going to line up
either so that can throw you off a little bit so what it is actually trying to do is follow this
line just down there and i'm just going to undo that because we don't want to do that so before
moving on to this point down here we need to convert this to a square like
we've got up there and to do that i just got to simply tap on it just like that
so now that creates another start point that we add up there so we're free to come down here
tap there and we can just start all over again and now start to bend around this piece
just like that and once again we've got to convert that to a square by tapping on it
and then back up here do the same again just drag that around remember left and right up and down
just to get the kind of shape that you're going for so just like that this won't be perfect i'm
trying to rush it a little bit but you would never hand draw a circle anyway you'd use the tools
once again turn that to a square so at this point we can't just join this one to this one
because we're not going to be able to curve it the right way either so i'm going to demonstrate
that quickly so we're going to close that path and as you can see i haven't got the control
to bend that where i want it it's kind of messed it all up so i'm just going to go
back with command z on the mac and control z on a windows computer and back to where we started
and what we're going to do here is we're going to come really close to this as close as you can get
without it snapping and we just put that right there and then we're going to start to bend it
to get the general shape that we want and then at this point we need to come over here to the left
hand side and change the tool to this node tool this is a little white triangle right there so
once you select that i just want you to come back over to your circle and we can move that as you
can see and i just want you to drag it over to the square on top of it it turns yellow so now that is
locked into that so that we now have a closed path which is a shape once again but this time
around we can come over here to this handle and we can adjust this to get the shape that we needed
like that as you can see and then we can just simply color that as well like we did before
we are on the stroke there at the moment so i'll change that back to black and i'll change that
fill to a different color and like i stated before if you want to you can just turn off the fill all
together so we're good for the circle itself so with this cloud kind of shape down here it's the
same principle as the circle we've got the kind of vision some points so one here one there and one
there so if we grab that pen tool again so i can demonstrate we'll just start off here and then our
next one needs to be somewhere in the center here because if we was to go straight down here and
bend it we're not going to get that curve that we wanted the same as we did originally on the circle
so i'm just going to command z to get rid of that or control z on the windows and we'll start again
so if we just start our point right there come roughly into the center just going to start to
bend that by pulling to the left hand side so it goes right change that again to the square back
down to this one and bend that around and it is literally the same thing all the way around
this shape so all you've got to really remember is just keep changing that back to a square otherwise
it may throw you off a little bit and send you in the wrong direction that was a mistake sorry
and just keep making your way all the way around it until you've got the shape
okay so i speeded that a little bit up for you so you have to sit there watching me draw all the way
around this so just as a quick recap remember at the top of this like we did on the circle
we have to make sure that we don't connect this from there to there as we're not gonna be able to
make that bend so once again just get as close as you can without it snapping draw your rough shape
and grab that no tool again and just connect these together so it goes yellow and then we can just
move that however we like and then we've got our complete closed path once again so we just give
that a color as well always cover the stroke by accident there we go turn that strike off
and that is that one so if you hit escape twice that will actually come off the shape for you
and what we've got next is this heart but it's pretty much all the same as what we did you got
a vision your curves and your points to get it around the way you want it to go
so if we just grab our pen tool once again and we just start off here with a heart i'm guessing
it's going to have to be roughly around there it will be trial and error and you will learn
as you go on using this tool in the future so that's a pretty good curve so from here probably
down to around there will be the next one that's it just like that and then always change this to
the square if you're having problems with your curve and there we go and then all we're going
to do really is just line this up now it should snap on each point to come back up the other way
there we go that one's snapped to that one
and once again we're closing this path we can't join them together like we did so get as close as
you can so there will be fine and we just draw that shape grab that no tool and connect those
together and just adjust your handle give that a color make sure we are on the fill this time
and it's not a perfect heart but you get a general idea what you've got to do the more time you spend
on it and get your cars better the better it's gonna look so the last but not least is this
one which is just somewhere i created with the pen tool just to show you how easy it really is
so if we just grab that pen tool once again and we start off here this one is simply a straight
line so we just start there we come there and we click so there's our first straight line and then
from this point down here we've got to kind of break this up in the middle so if we put
another point there like that we can now start to bend that around that corner and it's kind of the
same thing down here if we made that into a square and we're just gonna break this up into the center
here with this curve and just gonna do that because it wasn't quite where i wanted it
we just got that snap so there will be fine and we can just bend that down by bringing it up
and same again just drag that right to the end and then we can just slightly curve that a little bit
and get the general shape that you want and hit escape twice to come off that
and that's going to cover strike on it that's why you can't see it because i turned it off
a moment ago so i've put that back on it you can see that line so that is all there is to it it's
really straightforward if you just take a little bit of time just go around some few basic shapes
you'll get the idea of how this tool works and how great it generally is it's something you will use
ninety percent of the time when it comes to doing any kind of vector work or tracing
around sketches or any kind of thing like that so i hope you enjoy the rest of your
day if you found this useful hit that subscribe button to check out any other videos i've got
currently and coming in the future but for now i will see you in the next video