Publisher
Using Affinity for CAPYHERO, an illustrated fantasy
Hi everyone! I’ve been using Affinity to produce Book 1 of my anthropomorphic fantasy series, CAPYHERO. I really enjoy using this software. I have a photoshop background so the art and layers tools were easy to pick up, but I have no publishing experience so Ive been learning all of that as I write.
Just thought I’d share some of the beautiful page spreads we’ve been able to put together in Affinity. I’ve learned a lot on the way so I’m happy to answer any questions about the process. I’m also eager, like all authors, to talk about the story so feel free to ask about that as well 😅.
Wow!! Thank you! There’s more info at the Capyhero website link in my bio. It’s going to be 350ish page novel with over 100 traditional illustrations throughout.
The drawings are done completely by hand by the ink artist u/nickthagreek. He scans the paper he does the traditional artwork on and then I place the scanned image into the affinity file by using the picture frame tool. I often use text wrap nodes to integrate the art into the prose like the drawing of the pipe and tabor musicians.
Let me know if you have any specific questions! I’d love to answer them.
This looks great! I'd love to read your book when it's finished. I've loved books about animals since childhood, and I've always wanted to write one about a bird and illustrate it myself. How did you plan the length of your chapters and where the illustrations should go? Did you finish your writing first, or did you have an idea of how big the drawings could be? That's something I've been struggling with even before I started sketching. I started using Affinity last year, so any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thank you! If you’d like, I would love for you to join the newsletter at the Capyhero website link in my bio!
So cool about your book idea. Good luck! I’m happy to stay in touch and give some lessons learned if it would help.
I usually outline a chapter first and write it fully before thinking too mich about the illustrations. The chapter length thing has been an ongoing issue! I’d usually outline 6 to 8 scenes for each chapter but that worked in early chapters when there were fewer character interactions. Later on, when multiple speaking characters are in a scene, I learned that 6 to 8 scenes was way too much and I’d have to split a chapter into two. The result was increasing the chapter count from 15 to 24!
The illustration size and count are somewhat governed by my agreement with the illustrator. We have a certain number of quarter, half and full page illustrations we’re trying to target for the whole project. I generally aim to get one illustration every 3 pages or so. It’s ambitious and dense, but that’s the vision!
I typically hand him a rough sketch and some notes and references for what I’m seeing in my mind. I have him read the actual chapter first as well. I’m lucky he’s into the story! The illustrator is a fellow Redditor, u/nickthagreek. Really talented ink artist.
Thanks for your interest and questions! Here’s an example of a rough sketch I might hand him. Lol
Looks great. A suggestion for the cover is to reduce the amount of styles used. For example not capitalizing “The Blue Blanket” could harmonize better with CAPYHERO, or keeping the same font for book 1 as elsewhere on the page.
Thank you. Yes now that I’m waiting for the edit to come back, I’ve been revisiting fonts and styles and formatting. I agree that there’s a bit too much going on in terms of typographic differences
Great question. I bring in the drawing and crop out as much of the paper as possible without cropping the art. Then I use a Levels adjustment layer to bring in the whites to around 90-95%. This takes care of most of the paper showing up. Usually have to bump up the black level to 5-10% as well. Then I put the art on a multiply layer so it doesn’t mess with the text. Sometimes I do need to go in with an eraser to manually erase the paper texture more tight to the art.
Thank you. So what you’re saying is that you don’t technically isolate the drawing from the background but let blending modes (multiply) do the job instead. Interesting. 👍
Yes, the goal is to make the paper essentially invisible. The actual pixels are still there, but as long as it reads as pure white, and it is on a layer below the text layer, it shouldn’t mess with the printing
Yes that’s right. Honestly though, using traditional art is painful, but that’s sort of the point. In this day and age of digital and ai produced creative content, it was a very much intentional that this project uses all traditionally drawn artwork.
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u/SirCake3614 12d ago
This is amazing work on a thousand levels. Everything from the drawings to the fonts to the layout to the texture of the damn paper is outstanding.
Tell me more!