The aim of this project was to primarily learn how to use a new design software I had just purchased, Serif Affinity Designer.

To learn I decided to take inspiration from the synthwave art style and tried to create an image using different features available in Serif Affinity to create a new synthwave image.

The first step was to take inspiration by viewing popular synthwave images and media, including the music to get a feel for the style, there are 100's of synthwave images available, I chose common features to add into my image.

Common features include mountainous backgrounds, green grids and cyber lines, triangular 'mountains', rising suns and outlined objects.

Starting with my background I first built the grid. making it half the page in high with a green glow effect on the lines, I used one point perspective for green grid lines going into the distance.

Behind it all I placed mountain, the mountain I made by outlining the ridge of a real mountain with the pen tool. The shape was filled dark purple and outlined green with a purple glow.

I added gradient backgrounds to the image, using red and purple, common synthwave colours.

Around the edges of the mountain I made a polygon triangular mountain range, fulling in some parts of the ridge to give a 3D effect while leaving some unfilled.

Multiple asteroids were outlined with the pen tool and added over the image with white outlines, this is similar to the old nostalgic game Asteroids, nostalgia and cheesy sci-fi is core to synthwave.

Using extrude tools I built a riding sun behind the mountain with a black core, the sun itself has a wide gradient to give it more weight in the image.

3 rays of sun come out from the sun, behind the mountain, each with a glow, bringing the eye to the centre of the image.

A large abstract shadow appears on the side of the image, the shadow is a slightly abstract dark circle that uses an effect to darken all the objects beneath it.

In the end this project helped me learn a wide range of techniques and tools on Serif Affinity Designer.