How to Create a Flat Design Castle in Affinity Designer

This time we'll be making a medieval fantasy
castle in a trendy flat style. We’ll be using basic shapes and various
functions and operations of Affinity Designer, paying a lot of attention to
aligning and arranging the elements. 

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able not only to create this flat ancient castle, but also to apply these useful techniques to make any kinds of flat houses, cityscapes or any other flat architecture objects
or buildings.

Let’s begin!

1. Create the Entrance of the Castle

Step 1

Let’s start building our castle from its
front wall with the gates. Take the Rectangle
Tool (M) and make a 200 x 130 px
rectangle of a stone-grey color with a tint of orange. You can edit the size of
the created shape in the Transform
panel, setting the needed values for Width and Height.

Step 2

Let’s add a group of stones to the top of
the wall, forming a row of merlons. Make a 20 x 20 px square of
the same color and place it above the wall. Select both shapes and use the Align panel in the upper control
toolbar to align the shapes to the left
side.

Step 3

Let’s attach the merlon to the wall,
deleting the gap between them. We can either do this manually, by moving the
stone a few pixels down, or head to the upper control toolbar and open the Arrange panel. From here, click Space Vertically and remove the tick
from the Auto Distribute checkbox,
so that there is 0 px distance
between the shapes. 

Great! Add a second rectangle on top of the wall and Align it to the right side of the wall.

Step 4

Now let's build a so-called crenellation. It is a construction along the top of the walls of medieval castles, which looks like a row of stones with even rectangular gaps between them. 

Hold Option-Shift
and drag one of the squares to the side, creating a copy. Make three more copies and select
all the stones. Head to the control toolbar on top and open the Arrange panel. Click Space Horizontally and check the Auto Distribute box to make the space
between the squares even.

Step 5

Now let’s construct the main gates of our
castle. Take the Rounded Rectangle Tool
(M) and make a dark-brown 65 x 120 px
shape with fully rounded corners. You can change the Corner radius in the upper toolbar.

Duplicate (Command-C >
Command-V) the shape and make it somewhat smaller. Fill the copy with lighter-brown
color for the doors of the entrance. Finally, create a copy of the smaller
shape and make its color a bit lighter.

So, in total, we have three rounded shapes: a bigger dark-brown and two smaller light-brown copies.

Step 6

Let’s work on the doors of our gates.
Select the upper light-brown shape and use the Vector Crop Tool to cut the left half of it. This is a
non-destructive way of editing the objects, which means that you can always
use the Vector Crop Tool again and
return the shape to its initial size.

Move on and use the Ellipse Tool (M) to make a 7 x 7px
circle for the door handle.

Step 7

Add a second circle to make the gates
symmetrical. And group (Command-G)
all the elements of the entrance.

Step 8

Obviously, we need to delete the lower part
of the gates. We can either use the Vector
Crop Tool again or use the wall of the castle as a clipping mask. Let’s try
the second option. 

Head to the Layers
panel, select the gate group, and drag and drop it right above the wall shape.
You will see a blue stripe in the Layers
panel, indicating that the gates group will be placed inside the wall shape.
Great! Now the bottom part of the gates is invisible.

Step 9

Now let’s add windows or loopholes to the
wall. Make a 20 x 40 px rounded dark-grey rectangle and place it at the left side of the wall. Use
the Vector Crop Tool to cut off the
lower part of the window, making its bottom edge flat.

Add a second window on the opposite side of
the wall.

Step 10

Let’s add some stylized stones to the wall,
depicting simplified masonry in order to make the wall more detailed and
textured. Use the Rectangle Tool (M)
to make a 15 x 7 px tiny rectangle of
a lighter-grey color. Create two more copies and combine them into a group of bricks.
Make multiple copies of the stones and spread them over the wall here and
there, making the composition look balanced.

2. Create the Towers of the Castle

Step 1

Now that we have the front wall ready, let’s
use some of its elements to make the towers of our fortress!

Use the Rectangle Tool (M) to make
an 80 x 200 px grey rectangle for the tower. Make it slightly darker than the front wall, to create an illusion of
the distance between the objects.

Let’s add a stone border at the top part of
the tower. Create a narrow rectangle of 85 x 15
px circle and fill it with the same color as the front wall. Use the Eyedropper tool to pick the color from
the wall and apply it to the border. You can find this tool at the top of the Colour panel.

If you’re not sure how to use the Eyedropper tool, then check out Part 2, Step 5 of the following
tutorial, in which we use this handy tool as well!

• 
  Affinity Designer
  
  
  How to Create a Game Character Sprite Sheet in Affinity Designer
  
  
  Yulia Sokolova

Don’t forget to use the Align feature in the top toolbar panel
to center the objects to each other.

Step 2

Add a darker-grey border in the bottom part
of the tower by making a 75 x 25 px
rectangle. Copy the loopholes and the stones from the front wall to make the
tower more detailed. Group (Command-G)
all the elements of the tower.

Step 3

Copy
(Command-C > Command-V) the tower that we’ve
created and move it to the opposite side of the wall.

And let’s build a bigger tower in the
center of our castle. Make a 145 x 255 px
rectangle, placing it on top of the wall and making it slightly darker than the
wall.

Step 4

Now let’s add the loopholes to the tower.
I’ve copied those from the wall but decided to make their shape slightly
different. Change the Corner radius
of the shapes to 0% in the upper
control toolbar, making the windows square.

Start adding details to the tower. Form a
lighter-grey border right under the windows.

Step 5

Add another border on top of the tower,
making it approximately 10 px wider
than the tower. Add a group of squares on top of the tower, forming the
merlons. Align the objects to each
other, if needed, and put some lighter-grey stones here and there over the
tower wall.

Step 6

Now let’s form a pointed roof!

Use the Triangle Tool to make a 125 x 80
px triangle of clay-orange color. Click it with the right mouse button and Arrange > Move Back One or press Command-[ to place the roof beneath the
merlon stones.

Step 7

Duplicate the roof and make the copy
slightly darker. Use the Vector Crop
Tool to cut the copy by half.

Step 8

Let’s make the roof a bit brighter and add
a couple of small bricks to both halves.

Step 9

Grab the Pen Tool (P) and hold Shift to make a vertical spire on top of the
roof. You can adjust the Strokes
settings either in the upper control toolbar or in the Strokes panel, which you can find in the tabs next to the Colour panel.

Step 10

Use the Triangle Tool to make a 15 x 15
px shape for the flag. Attach the orange flag to the top of the spire.

Here is how our castle looks at this stage.
Nice, yet small. Let’s add more towers to make it look larger!

Step 11

Use the elements of the small towers to
shape another tower at the back left side of the castle. Make it slightly
darker than the rest of the towers and cover it with a pointed roof as well.

Step 12

Add minor details to the dark tower, such
as stones and a spire with a flag.

Step 13

Group the elements of the dark tower, hold Option-Shift and drag it to the right,
creating a copy.

Step 14

Add two smaller towers with merlons at the
both sides of the tower, making the whole castle look symmetrical.

3. Finish Up the Castle by Adding
Minor Details

Our castle is already built up to the end,
but the image still needs some more details. Let’s add a few simple finishing
touches to the composition, making the illustration look complete!

Step 1

Use the Rounded Rectangle Tool (M) to make a narrow green stripe of 650 x 15 px right under the castle,
depicting stylized grass.

Step 2

Arm yourself with the Ellipse Tool (M) and make a 70 x 70
px green circle for a simplified tree or bush. Move it to Back
(Shift-Command-[), partially hiding it behind the tower. Add more circles,
varying their sizes and filling the empty spaces at both sides of the castle.

Now it looks much better! Let’s finish up
by making a simple background.

Step 3

Make a large, even circle of 780 x 780 px size. Fill it with light
yellowish-beige color and Move to Back
(Shift-Command-[), placing it beneath the castle.

Step 4

Finally, create a square of the size of our
document and fill it with a more saturated tint of yellowish-beige color. In my
case its size is 1000 x 1000 px. Remember
that you can always adjust the size of your document in File > Document Setup, where you can set the needed values for
the width and height.

Such yellowish background gives a warm, sunny look to our illustration.

Behold! Our Castle Is Completed!

Great work, my friends! We’ve successfully
built our great flat castle, using basic shapes and handy Affinity Designer
functions and operations. I hope you’ve enjoyed following this tutorial and
discovered some useful tips and tricks, which can help you not only to build
fantasy medieval castles, but also to draw flat cityscapes, flat
cartoon houses and any other stylized architecture objects.

You can continue adjusting our castle by
adding, for example, some clouds and trees, or by changing the position of the
bricks on the towers in order to make the image more diverse. Use your
creativity—everything is up to you! If you want to take a closer look at the
source file for this lesson and you want to have it in some other formats, be
sure to get it here at Envato Market.

Have fun, and stay tuned for more Affinity
Designer tutorials!