Shaun T. Dy's Adventures in Casual Digital Art

A few days ago, I learned to make my own Mandala pattern. I decided to try and put power duplication to a whole new level. I'd love to imagine what two best friends could come up with, if they put their heads together to make a pattern. I bet it'd be much better than this! 

  A Mandala pattern is a circular pattern. No, I didn't arrange them manually. Instead, I used some power duplicating techniques to create these two versions. Both versions were made on Affinity Photo instead of Affinity Designer. Affinity Designer is more handy for isometric drawing. Although I would seldom use Affinity Designer for making sketches. Now, here's two different versions of my basic Mandala art.  For those who want to make Mandala art, here are some basic guides.  Take note that both procedures can be done using either Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer. Just make sure to know  which  type of graphic you want in the end. You may also review some basic mathematics along the way when doing the designs.  Right now, I'd prefer people to creatively explore so they can create something better. 

Using Affinity Photo and Affintiy Designer, I considered creating two types of Monstera Plant drawings. There are times I alter between Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer--depending on what I want to achieve. Affinity Designer does better with isometric art. Now, here are my Monstera plant drawings. 

I dug through some of my spaghetti art. Some of them were drawn using Affinity Photo and others used Affinity Designer. So far, I haven't really made good noodles using curves. But as always, feel free to enjoy my art! 

Here's a group of seafood art I made using Affinity Designer. I made them a few days ago. Enjoy my simple art! As always, all art here is already converted from AFDESIGN to PNG for uploading purposes. Isometric art is easier said than done!  Trying to draw a crab dish using a bird's eye view. Not so good huh?  Drawn this cottage setting with a prawn dish and a crab dish. This is a basic start-up for me. This may also help encourage adults to teach children Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer.

Most illustrations for the animal cell and plant cell, are usually 2D-looking. I decided to try using Bevel/Emboss effects to make my "biology project" more interesting. I couldn't draw 3D objects either. I could only use Bevel/Emboss to give the illustion of 3D when it isn't. Just enjoy the art I dug up from my older works. 

I was still learning how to use Affinity Photo and EZGIF online. It's not exactly what I wanted for Affinity Photo,  not to have the animations panel. However, that's better than if I paid PHP 3,000+ per month just to make animated GIFs. I used Affinity Photo to create the frames and uploaded them to the EZGIF website.  This one wasn't really all that difficult.  This one had me learn when to put objects forward or backward to create the desired effect. 

Anybody who was born in the 1980s to 1990s may be familiar with Spongebob Squarepants. Here's my art based on Mr. Krabs' greedy personality. I used Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer to draw the frames per animation. Now, to present the two works I created.   This was done last year. I was still obsessed with the Bevel/Emboss art that I did this 3D looking greedy crab. This year, I thought on trying to improve the 2D style drawing. I added a hamburger for more laughs. 

Previously, I created two burger arts using Affinity Photo . I used Affinity Designer to draw these two burgers. Take note that all of them have been converted to PNG format. 

Here's some early experiments I did with animated GIFs, involving vehicles. It's obvious that the backgrounds move in some of these. It creates the illusion that the vehicles are moving when they aren't.  This is my first animation involving a helicopter. Nothing moving but the propeller here.  I started to experiment on how to create a spinning propeller--facing this direction. It turns out that I just need a line that's getting longer and shorter to create that illusion. I added moving backgrounds for an extra effect. I decided to try it moving background with airplanes. One's an airplane and the other is a fighter jet. It's obvious that I'm no professional artist.  Here's one involving a car moving. Actually, it's the background that's moving instead of the car. Once again, I wish Affinity Photo will be able to add an animation feature in a future version. Of course, that will cost additional money. 

I decided to try and "perfect" the chocolate house art. However, there's no such thing as the perfect art. Just enjoy it for what it is!  See also my first attempts here .

Top 10s Facebook Page It's too bad that I learned of this fabulous old lady, only after she died of old age in 2023. It was in 2004 that she enrolled in art school and was gifted a computer . It's strange but true that this old lady managed to learn to use the PC. Not only that, she used MS Paint in such a way that had my mind blown. I personally stopped using MS Paint when Adobe Photoshop (which I no longer use now) came. Today, I use Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer to compensate my lack of painting skills.  The This is Glamorous Website gives the story of the old lady last 2018: We came across one such discovery recently, happening upon it in the local newspaper. The account belongs to Concha García Zaera: @conchagzaera, whose profiles says “Soy una señora de 88 años. Me gusta pintar con el programa Paint. Y sobre todo estar con mi familia y con mis amigas.” / I am an 88 year old lady. I like to paint with the Paint program. And above all be with my family and with my ...

Trying to master some "detail" with flat drawing. I tend to get overly reliant on Bevel/Emboss effects to make my digital art look better. However, I feel there's some degree of improvement but there's always room for improvement, as long as I'm able. 

I decided to draw some kimbap after having some today. Drawing with Affinity Designer might offer me some great knowledge for my hobby. Here's the results of today's drawings.  I decidd to use the isometric persona to create the plate. After that, I decided to do a rather huge animated GIF. This animated GIF took several minutes before it got complete. It's around 9.08 MB given the number of frames. So yeah, this is the biggest animated GIF I created. 

Kimbap happens to be my favorite bento meal. That's why I drew these kimbap arts using Affinity Photo last year. Enjoy! 

Last year, I drew a "3D" version of Chairman Mao's red braised pork. This year, I thought I might want to "step backward" by drawing a flat version of the braised pork belly. Enjoy!

 Affinity Photo can be effective in drawing what I drew in Affinity Designer. Well, but I'd choose Affinity Designer if I'm going to go for massive isometric sketches. 

  Mastering Affinity Designer is easier said than done. There's a charm in art without the 3D illusion. Sure, I could've done this using Affinity Photo . However, I feel like drawing in Affinity Designer might help me learn more about vector graphics. As always, the photo above is already rasterized into PNG. 

  Digging through my steak art is was easier said than done. I would display what I consider the bottom and the top of my work.As you can see, this is basically me trying to make the best steak.  I'd say this was my shoddy piec eof wor--when I just began drawing a steak.  Here's a picture of the steak with marrow. But honestly, I'm not fond of the bone marrow.  This might be my default piece of steak to use for future artwork. That's unless I'm going to draw a bette rpiece.  I tried to do some isometric drawing. This time, the sauce is much thinner.    A steak dinner for two. I added several vegetables as they're needed for a balanced meal. This is another attempt of mine to do a meal tray. This is my first steak animation. This is pretty standard.  I wanted to do a steak flipping but I might need to find ways to draw the other side. It would be easier said than done. 

I'm still wondering when I'm going to use vector-based images and pixel-based images. Both images below (now converted to PNG, so they're rasterized already) were made with Affinity Designer . These might be some good instructions for a child's creative learning. So far, there's no real answer to which type of art is better. It's all about what I want to make or need to make.  This illustration might be best for a standard company logo. On the other hand, this might be better for a presentation.