The project went really really well I had no issues using affinity and only had issues was creating the spaceship as the shape I wanted was really specific and I couldn’t get it to look right. The first asset that I started working on was one of the large planets I started with a circle didn’t matter what size. I then used the pen tool and made these tower looking shapes and selected all the corners to make them all rounded.
I then Filled in the shape with a light red colour to match the dark pink of the planet (which was changed later along with the whole planets colour scheme). I made the shapes blend with the planet by putting them into child layers on the original circle and I repeted this with almost every asset that I had made for the background.
I created the second coloured part to the planet and decided to change the planets base colour to a yellow and have the second coloured part as a darker yellow but kept the original part red. this ended up being the final colour scheme for this planet. I also added this into my assets in case I wanted to use them again in another project in the future.
After I made this planet I moved onto making it’s moon which would be made of a dark orange colour almost brown I really like what I ended up doing with this moon you’ll see later. This moon looked really go with this planet it stuck out and didn’t blend in with the planet but also looked like it belonged with the planet it was orbiting. I also added this planet into my assests.
After I made this moon I moved onto making the comet which was my favourite part to make but one of the most tedious as I had to make lots and lots of tiny different shapes. I started by creating the base shape which was a rectangle and I got the corner tools and then curved them to what looked good. to finish the base shape for the comet I did the collumn technique to make the curvy lines which worked as the trail for the comet.
I moved on after making the base to making the outer part of the comet all I did for this was make the original shape purple then altered the lines on the end of the comet just so it wasn’t a direct copy and paste and looked like it was travelling through space and had variety to the trail.
Once I had finished making both peices I put the orange one on top of the purple one and started adding the small peices coming off which was as simple as getting the pen tool and making two points which I copied and pasted over and over and changing the lengths and colour to fit with both shapes.
After I had made the final shape for the comet I grouped all the parts together including the floating pecies and then moved onto making the flame trail coming off the comet I did this by using the same tecnique as I did making the smaller ones on the main part by making two points with the pen tool then using the corner tool to smooth the edges fitting with the curvy theme of the whole peice. I think it turned out really well but the ammount of layers it made was crazy and everything had to be grouped together so it was easier to navigate my layers.
After I made the comet I started work on the rocket which is one of the stand out features of the peice I started by trying to making the shape from scratch but nothing looked right so I moved onto thinking I could make a trace of an image which also didn’t look right as I wanted it to look a cetrain way but the way I was making it wasn’t right and all of the images of a rocket just looked terrible and didn’t fit with the theme of the wallpaper. When tracing the images they all had weird shapes and wern’t straight enough so I scrapped everything to do with the ship and then I tried a new technique.
With my new technique I got the teardrop tool and a rectangle tool to make the body of the rocket. Using this technique it gave me the body and shape that was what I wanted and easy to work with. Once I had the basic shape I added a rounded rectangle at the bottom for where the engines where going to go and then got the corner tool and rouned off the top of the rocket as it didn’t look right being sharp and pointy.
After that I then moved onto making the fins to the rocket which was an arrow tool with points on both ends and the bottom point pulled in to create a traingle shape and then the middle point pulled down to make it into a good shape for the fins which were also rounded off to match the rest of the rocket.
For the engines on the bottom of the rocket I had created a shape with the pen tool and moved the points and pulled the lines to create the shape I wanted and matched with the rocket. When I finished with the shape I added lines for a bit of detail. These were just two points with the pen tool put into a child layer so it didn’t go out the edges of my shape.
I also started working on the body for the rocket adding small circles that looked like bolts and experimenting with lines that would look like the rocket was made in someones shed as I thought it added a bit of charachter to the rocket if it was beaten up and broken but none of these lines worked so I just stuck with the bolts. I also added a red nose to the tip of the rocket before I fully rounded it off as I thought if I was sticking to what a classic rocket looked like I should have a red nose on it. Which was nade with a curved line then a solid bock of red was put in a child layer of the rocket body this was the easiest way I could think of without creating another shape completley.
After doing that I added the window and some patches to the rocket which all had the small circles on them I wasn’t too happy with how this turned out so I eventually added the line shapes that matched with the different colours and shades of the rocket and eventually turned out how I wanted it.
Once I had finished off the rocket completley I tried out the different assets with a black background which didn’t look right so I decided not to use a black background and went with a purple colour instead in the end. The reason why I tried out the assets on the black was to see what the planet and comet looked like with a glow around them and it worked really well and decided to keep it for every asset that I made and created for the background which made the wallpaper feel more colourful and alive.
I removed the black background to make it easier to work with when making new assets. I started to add flames coming out of the engines but nothing that I came up with was working. At the same time I was working on some space clouds that you see on pictures of space I made thm out of purple and oranges but it wasn’t working when I turned down the opacity and didn’t fit in when I put them on the purple background so I had an idea to put them under the rocket and make them all reds and oranges. It completley solved my issue for having no flames for the rocket. I also added the glow to the rocket and flames each with their own colours.
I continued to make another planet which was made of a semi circle as only part of the planet was going to be visible. This planet was really bright made up of blues and white. I also created a moon to go along with this planet which was completley made up of greens and was placed behind the planet to make it look like a moon and also had a shadow placed on it which was a black circle with the opacity turned down. I think these ended up being my favourite planets/moons on the wallpaper as the colours I chose worked really well with each other and really stuck out and they looked even better with the glow added onto them.
After I made these two assets I thought it looked a little bit empty and needed more adding so I decided to make three more planets using the same technique as for all the other planets adding an outer glow to them all aswell. My favourite of all those planets is the yellow and brown planet. I really like how the yellow works with the brow and looks different to all the other planets.
Overall I was happy with how everything turned out. Everything I had made looked how I had imagined it in my head right at the very beginning and I also solved the problem of making a new wallpaper for someone who wanted a new wallpaper.
Finlay Bolton Media Blog 