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Typefaces can be controversial things. One person's Times New Roman could be another's Papyrus. Perhaps the only sure-fire way for a typeface to win the hearts of designers is if they're reasonably priced. (We even went one better and sourced the best free fonts for you to download right now.) But how do you separate the good typefaces from the bad? Such a task would surely require a chart breaking down the gradations of font quality. Luckily, we have exactly that. The chart follows a pattern you're sure to recognise if you spend a lot your time plugged into social media. It's based on the Dungeons and Dragons character alignment scale, but the structure has become a popular design meme in itself. In this chart, typefaces are split between good, neutral and evil types, then further sub-divided based on whether they're lawful, neutral, or chaotic. Do you agree with how these famous typefaces have been sorted? See the original thread here. As you can see, the old reliable Times New Roman is the most clean-cut of the typefaces as it takes the lawful good crown. On the other end of the scale, Papyrus occupies the chaotic evil spot. Meanwhile, Cambria sits slap bang in the middle. Although we can't help but notice the absence of Helvetica, which would surely sit comfortably alongside the good guys? But as Michel points out, this is a typeface scale for writers, who have different priorities when it comes to letter shapes. This begs the question: what would a typeface alignment chart for designers look like? We bet it would look a little different, although Comic Sans would probably still be filling in one of the evil sections. Related articles: QUIZ: Which typeface are you, really? Font vs typeface: the ultimate guide How to choose the right typeface View the full article

If you're a regular web user, you'll no doubt have seen notifications from websites you regularly visit appear in the top right-hand corner of your screen. Every website has to ask permission to send these, but just because you pressed "Allow" once, doesn't mean it has to stay that way. Should you ever change your mind, you can turn web notifications off or stop them at any time. While push notifications from Creative Bloq are a great way to keep on top of the latest design industry news and trends, we recognise and understand that you might not want to receive them. That's why we've put together this article to help you disable notifications on Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Safari whenever you want. Note: iPhone and iPads automatically prevent web notifications, so anyone with a portable Apple device needn't worry about deactivating these. How to turn off web notifications in Google Chrome Open up Google Chrome on your device and go through the following steps: and head to the ‘Settings’ tab, found on the drop down menu when you click the three vertical dots in the top right hand corner of the browser itself. Scroll down to the ‘Advanced’, and open up the ‘Content Settings’ section under ‘Privacy and Security’. Open 'Settings' (find via the three vertical dots in the top right hand corner of the browser) Scroll down to 'Advanced' Open the 'Content Settings' section under 'Privacy Control' In here you'll find a 'Notifications' tab, which when clicking on it, will reveal all the sites you've both allowed and blocked from sending you web notifications. To block a site, simply click on the three vertical dots next to its name under the 'Allow' section and hit Block. Choosing the Remove option will mean the website in question will be able to ask you if you want to reactivate web notifications next time you visit, which is something to bare in mind. And if you want to switch them back on? Simply the follow the same steps above but instead of hitting Block, click Allow All setting changes are applied to your Chrome account, so you don't need to worry about updating individual devices (as long as you're using the same browser login in for each). Turn off web notifications in Firefox (PC, Mac, Android) If Firefox is your browser and you're using a Mac or PC, the easiest way to turn notifications off is by entering about:preferences#privacy directly in the URL box at the top of the browser. Then follow these steps: Scroll down to ‘Permissions’ Then ‘Notifications’, and click ‘Settings’ From here you can edit which sites to Allow and Block from sending you any in-browser pop-ups before hitting Save Settings at the bottom. Firefox on a phone requires heading directly to the website you want to stop notifications for. Find the padlock in the top left corner, click on it and 'Edit Site Settings' will appear. Press that and you'll see a 'Notifications' option with a check box on the right hand side. Click the 'Clear' button at the bottom of this window and you will have unsubscribed. Turn off web notifications in Microsoft Edge (PC) If you're a Microsoft Edge user, you need to access the Over Edge section (main menu) via the three horizontal dots in the top right corner. Here you'll find an option called 'Settings' followed by 'View Advanced Settings', which has a 'Notifications' option. Here you need to click on 'Website Permissions' to control what each page can do with your Microsoft Edge browser, including unsubscribing from web notifications. Turn off web notifications in Safari (Mac) Safari, again, is a little different. With this browser you need to start by opening up Safari Preferences and finding the 'Websites' option along the top of the screen. Click this and in the list on the left you'll find 'Notifications'. Here you'll find all the sites you're subscribed to, and you can check either Allow or Deny in the drop-down menu next to each. View the full article

It's no secret that the animation and gaming design industries are expanding extensively. Job opportunities are growing daily in the field, and more and more qualified applicants are being scouted. With the right tools and fundamental training, you can let your imagination run free and become a trained professional. These course bundles bring you everything you need to kickstart the career of your dreams or finesse the skills you already possess. The Complete Beginner's Guide to Animation Bundle Learn all the fundamentals you need to become a successful animator with this complete beginner's guide bundle. You'll learn how to use essential Adobe tools like After Effects, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro and learn concepts such as techniques on how to speed up your animation time and how to design memorable characters with strong personalities. The 8-course bundle includes over 250 tutorials, helping you become an expert animator and trained professional. MSRP: $549.92 / Buy Now: $24.99 (95% OFF) Viddyoze Animation Templates: Lifetime Subscription Video is quickly becoming one of the best mediums for engaging with an audience and driving sales. Viddyoze brings you an immense library of easy to use video templates that are designed, tested, and approved by a dedicated team. The lifetime subscription comes complete with licenses for both commercial and personal use, allowing for customised animations for projects of any scale. MSRP: $2,000 / Buy Now: $89 (95% OFF) 3D Game Modeling & Animation with Blender Course With more than 40 lectures and 22.5 hours of content, the Blender 3D creation suite will help you tackle the art of 3D modelling and animation. Bring your creations to life by learning techniques on low poly modelling and how professionals use them to create 3D models, characters, and VFX for games. There are even quizzes, and interactive chatrooms included so you can put your skills to the test. MSRP: $199.99 / Buy Now: $19 (90% OFF) Master SVG Animation Using HTML & CSS: Build 8 Projects SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) programming is a top tool needed to code two-dimensional graphics. With 55 lectures and 24/7 access, you'll learn the ins and outs of SVG and have the ability to design your logos, images, and complex animation. Taught by Kunal Asudani, a seasoned web developer, this lifetime course even includes a certification of completion once the course initiatives are mastered. MSRP: $199 / Buy Now: $10 (94% OFF) Related articles: How to move from animation to illustration Create animated CSS art Is this the new Lucasfilm Animation logo? View the full article

Creatives from all walks of life have become increasingly reliant on the internet to get their work seen. You might share your designs to an audience of millions on social media (complete with your personalised Instagram font, of course), but you could also be leaving yourself vulnerable to hackers. With cyber attacks on the rise, it's enough to make anyone paranoid. After all, your personal information or financial details could be floating around on the internet for hackers to steal. That's where ex-hacker and Twitter user @somenerdliam comes in with his thread "How to delete 99.9% of your digital footprint from the internet". And it seems to be the advice that users have been waiting for. Despite having only been posted a couple of days ago, at the time of writing the thread currently boasts over 110,000 retweets and 439,000 likes. Perhaps he's on to something... While his advice isn't going to help you disappear completely (the author admits his knowledge isn't completely up to date, and the "99.9" claim in his title isn't a practical claim), the tips in the thread are a good starting point when it comes to monitoring your digital hygiene. It makes for chilling reading. Not only does it ask you to trawl through a decade's worth of email addresses, it also acts as a wake up call to the amount of data people willingly share. Take a look at some of the stand-out points below. To read the full thread, click here. One point highlights the importance of using a VPN, which @somenerdliam admits is a personal preference. Find the right one for you with our guide to the best VPN services in 2019. And as for @somenerdliam, he's not letting his new-found viral fame go to his head. Instead, he's been wondering why the thread struck a chord. His conclusion being that the tips were popular because they were accessible. Related articles: 9 security tips to protect your website from hackers Here's how hackers are stealing your data Is it okay to build sites that rely on JavaScript? View the full article

CodePen is a killer toolkit for rapid prototyping, with an inspiring and supportive community of contributors. It has become one of the industry's favourite web design tools by offering hassle-free iteration of creative code, eliminating the headaches of generating fresh development environments, and enabling users to easily tackle myriad frontend concepts ranging from the whimsical and ridiculous to the practical and deploy-ready. In this article, we've pulled together 10 top tips for getting more from the web industry's favourite coding playground – these will change how you use CodePen forever. If this inspires you to get creative, you might also want to check out our roundup of CSS animation examples, or the most exciting open source projects on the web. 01. Explore something new using Topics Searching for tools and tips that suit your project? Look no further CodePen Topics are a relatively new community-driven feature offered to users of all levels, and they’re a great way to set about exploring new frameworks, UI Patterns or JS libraries. Upon opening the Topics page, you’ll be met with a host of options, filtered by category and even further by subcategories. Once viewing a topical category, for instance Vue.js, we’re met with an overview screen with multiple options. Need a starter template to help build out that Vue component? Here’s a list of popular components, and a nifty 'New Pen from Template' button to help us get started. Want to see some expertly curated examples of the framework in action? Filter on over to 'Featured Vue Pens' and you’re met with inspirational works by framework masters and novices alike. While browsing these Topic overviews, we’re offered persistent links to official sites, framework or library documentation and guides, and the project’s core GitHub presence. 02. Prototype quicker with templates Every developer at some point has likely felt real pain when setting up a local development environment, no matter the stack; even a boilerplate setup can require far more time than one is looking to invest in to create and test something like a few submit button prototypes. With CodePen, you’re already there – an IDE standing ready for you to easily dump the contents of your creative mind. But by using CodePen’s template feature, it’s now even easier to spin up the exact environment you need to get the job done. A template can contain any number of predefined external scripts (you can include another pen as an external asset), will allow you to preset your preferred HTML/CSS/JS preprocessor (which will neatly auto compile on the fly), and will even preserve any existing code that you care to preserve. Rapid prototyping gets turbocharged with dialed-in dev environments It’s quite simple to specify a Pen as a template – with your Pen opened, mash that Settings button, click on through to Pen Details, and from there you’ll see a neat little toggle offering the option to save as a Regular Pen or a Template. So how does this differ from forking an existing Pen? Setting a Pen as a template will allow you to choose this setup immediately upon opting to create a new Pen, with no need to search through your previous pens to fork and modify them, no need to re-import all your scripts of choice from the ground up, and no need to reselect all of the syntax options and settings you might prefer for the given concept. Additionally, starting a new Pen from a template treats your Pen as a wholly new creation, whereas forking will create a pen that links back to the original, with a distinct history rather than a blank slate. Upgrading to a CodePen Pro account offers you an incredibly valuable set of expanded features, but even the free user accounts will allow for unlimited template generation. 03. Start a collection CodePen Collections offer a great way to group and locate concepts If you enjoy having the ability to seek out resources using CodePen Topics but wish you could curate your own, Collections are the answer you’re seeking. Adding a Pen to a collection is as simple as selecting the 'Collections' drop-down from any Pen’s edit view, where you can specify a Collection or create a new one. Again, it can be anyone’s Pen (and if you’re a Pro user, you can set your Collection to private). The beauty of Collections is the ability to view all of your Collections in one place with robust filter, sort and search options — a great way to define resources by stack or framework, keep a running list of inspiration, or cluster Pens by UI concepts. Interested in another user’s public Collection? You can even subscribe to the Collection via RSS to stay on top of updates. 04. Improve efficiency with preprocessors Let’s face it, most of us spend more than enough time behind screens than we likely should. Many of us are so overwhelmed with practical career-related endeavours it’s hard to find the time to build a library of useless toggle switches or WebGL page transitions, and while CodePen strips away typical setup time and allows us to get straight to work, efficiency can always be improved. This is where CodePen’s native preprocessors come in handy. For instance: want to build a grid of a few hundred HTML cells, each one’s style attributes randomly updated via JavaScript? You could go about copying and pasting div after div, sure. And by the end of this all the editor window is nearly impossible to navigate. Here’s where HAML, Pug or Jade shine: from the Pen’s settings window, select an HTML preprocessor with ease, write a simple loop, and generate these elements in roughly two lines. Not sure where to get started? There’s Pen for that: a search of 'HAML Loop' at CodePen yields a good number of boilerplate Pens that will give you a cursory understanding of how to efficiently generate your page elements. Preprocessors get your concepts off the ground even faster With CSS preprocessors like LESS and Sass, we can build mixins and predefined functions that accept a multitude of arguments, making them a perfect addition to your CodePen templates and allowing you to write otherwise complex styles with relative ease. Perhaps you’re building out UI elements for a greater project – you can now define all your colour, typeface and spacing variables with clear and concise naming conventions; and again including these in a CodePen template allows you to iterate with virtually zero setup. Enjoy the efficiency of CoffeeScript, TypeScript or Babel? CodePen can natively compile your JS preprocessor of choice too. If at any time if you’d like to peek under the hood and see what your compiled code looks like, you can simply select 'View Compiled' from your code editing pane of choice to get a feel for what your final output will look like – and you should; working with loops and advanced functions can make setup and iteration incredibly fast, but can also wind up spitting out a good amount of unused syntax. If at any time you intend to use these creations in production, be sure to view all of your code fully compiled, and make any reductions or adjustments necessary for performance. 05. Explore CodePen's coolest new feature: Projects Even if you’re writing production-ready code, CodePen’s got your back Still a somewhat fresh feature, CodePen Projects are sort of an unsung hero – CodePen’s original three-pane HTML / CSS / JS setup already allows for custom external includes and real-time preprocessor compilation. So what makes Projects stand out? In addition to the standard editing pages, you are able to add your own local files – meaning you can flesh out your own file structures as you would on a local environment, creating multi-page sites or applications in a singular, self-contained environment without the need to set up complicated Gulp or Webpack configurations, for instance. CodePen projects make it easy to drag and drop your existing files, and will neatly maintain your structure or allow you to make changes from within the editor. And if you’re a Pro level user, it gets a bit sweeter: when you’re ready to deploy your work, you can deploy the environment of your choice with a single click. 06. Turn on the telly CodePen TV offers a delightful diversion for your downtime Hidden amongst all of the powerful, practical tools offered by CodePen is a whimsical distraction known as CodePen TV. CodePen TV is simply a randomised sampling of Picked Pens that gradually rotates in a screen saver-like fashion. Perhaps you don’t care to look at a random selection of Pens and want to curate your own 'channel' of Pens featuring cats — you can also launch a CodePen TV channel based on any CodePen Collection (including Collections created by other users). And if you’re a Mac user, you can even use CodePen TV as a standalone OSX native screensaver! 07. Embrace the community spirit Coding communities are notorious for exclusivity, creating veritable breeding grounds for impostor syndrome that can feel impenetrable and unwelcoming to even the most seasoned designers and developers. This is where CodePen stands out – and why becoming an active member of the community offers such benefits. See a Pen that sparks joy? Mash that heart button, and show another user a little love. You can go ahead and click it up to three times if you really, really love the work they’ve done. Feeling inspired, or maybe thinking of an alternate take on another user’s Pen? With a single click, you can fork a Pen, and then impart your own creative flourishes, or even refactor it as you see fit. Alternately, if you see a better approach, or you find a flaw in a user’s code, consider commenting on the Pen with any constructive suggestions that you have. While most of the comment sections on sites like these are typically an uncontrollable dumpster fire of negativity, the community typically does an excellent job of self-policing, encouraging positivity, and bolstering others. Community is CodePen’s true superpower Perhaps the best way to dive into the community is by joining CodePen’s Spectrum chat – an open forum for sharing work, soliciting advice, and creative collaboration. One example is Pass the Pen, a concept from CodePen user Kristopher van Sant, wherein a Pen is created, and then iterated over by users who would like to contribute. CodePen also offers weekly challenge prompts to keep you creatively engaged. You may not feel your work is worthy of sharing, but you’re probably wrong. Take to CodePen’s Spectrum chat and show off what you’re working on no matter how big or small. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how supportive and helpful the average CodePen user is, and probably learn a few different things along the way. 08. Attend a meetup IRL At the core of what makes CodePen an essential tool for frontend developers is the community. But sometimes it’s helpful to take your skills offscreen – and there’s no better way than to host or attend a CodePen meetup. CodePen will graciously supply you with swag for attendees, and with the help of their sponsors, they can even help you secure reimbursement for food and drink – the location and date are up to you. Meetups provide an excellent opportunity to pair program, publicly solicit strategies or concepts, complete a team challenge or just better get to know what motivates your fellow coders. Or maybe you’re just there for the free pizza. We forgive you. 09. Upgrade to Pro The depth of functionality CodePen offers free of charge is really quite remarkable, particularly considering the burden of thousands of users simultaneously cobbling together some incredibly server-intensive creations. Out of the box, it’s a pretty well rounded experience – that is until you’ve taken a bite from CodePen Pro. So why make the jump? While it carries many useful expanded features, one feature alone makes it worthwhile: the ability to save Pens privately. For non-Pro users, every Pen created is publicly indexed, which is often just fine. But what if I want to flesh out some UI flourishes for a yet-to-launch client project? This is where the ability to save privately comes in super handy – 'private' doesn’t mean hidden, you can still share direct links to your pen with your internal team, for instance. But your pen is otherwise indiscoverable. Perhaps you just need an environment to test out new concepts, or you have limited time to work on a creation and intend to return later – this is where privacy options make the difference. Get a taste of the features of Pro and you’ll never look back So what else does a Pro account include? Asset hosting! Within a 2Mb per file limit, CodePen will host your Pen’s assets, meaning no need to upload images or scripts to an external host, and allowing more flexibility when working with frameworks with strict cross-origin specifications. Pro accounts offer access to Live View – allowing users to see their edits reloaded on-the-fly across multiple windows – Collab Mode – which allows for live pair programming and includes a handy chat option – and Professor Mode, which will broadcast your code updates alongside the Pen’s live preview in real time, ideal for code instructors or conference-circuit masochists alike. CodePen Pro also offers the ability to edit your very own profile page, including custom CSS and JS, and an optional Pen embed as page header – because knowing their audience means knowing frontend developers are clamoring to customise, customise, customise. 10. Dip into the well of inspiration Missing that creative spark? Dribbble is a great place to look A fresh Pen is like a blank canvas, but sometimes creative block will hit, and that canvas will take a long Nietzschean gaze into you. Feeling uninspired? Look into the latest CodePen Challenge or join in a coding challenge group like Codevember or DailyUI. Maybe head on over to Dribbble and recreate (or perhaps animate) an illustration in CSS – just be sure to give credit where due (adding backlinks to your Pen’s public details is the preferred method.) These might seem like exercises in futility, and we’ve all been privy to arguments against coding in one’s free time, but there’s another little-recognised upside to (publicly) creative coding at CodePen: potential employers and recruiters actually spend time scouring the site for folks who display creative ambition. Built some things you’re particularly proud of? Be sure to include them in your portfolio. CodePen makes embedding easy, with multiple display options, and using their new prefill embed feature, you can add a CodePen editor window with rendered code directly from your portfolio site’s codebase. This article was originally published in creative web design magazine Web Designer. Buy issue 290. Read more: Minimalist website design: 12 beautiful examples 8 CodePen features you didn't know about Top Sketch plugins to try View the full article

Clever animation can completely transform a character design. But good animation is difficult to achieve, the software is complex, and in general it's best left to the experts, right? Wrong. With Cartoon Animator 4, anyone can become an animator. This animation design software is super simple to use, with professional looking results. Find out more about Cartoon Animator 4 Try Cartoon Animator 4 for free now Take a look at the demo reel below for a taste of exactly what this tool can do. This might be just the tool you've been waiting for to take your practice to the next level. Let's say you're an illustrator or character designer. Cartoon Animator 4 will help you bring your creations to life and capture the imaginations of new clients. Maybe you're a YouTuber or video maker – CTA 4 will help relieve the pressure of daily production. Or perhaps you're already an animator, and on the hunt for a tool to speed up your workflow? It will help you out there, too. Let's take a closer look at some of CTA 4's most exciting features. 2D facial mocap with any webcam Motion capture has been a complete game-changer in the animation industry. It enables animators to capture expression and emotion in their characters like never before. Now, thanks to CTA 4, you can get started with mocap using just a standard webcam. Watch your character design – human, animal, or mythical beast – mimic your facial expressions and eye movements in real time, on screen. Filters and controls let you fine-tune the intensity of different gestures, and there's a clever feature that enables you to start building body movements based on how the head is animated. Finally, try the real time lip sync and audio recording if you want to go one step further. 360 head creator to give 3D power to your 2D art Character artists will know that one of the trickiest elements of the job is turning a 2D face design into a 3D head. This can limit the possibilities of what you can do with your character. Cartoon Animator 4's 360 head creator helps remove those limits. Use the tools to define how your face design should look from different angles, and CTA 4 will use its smart capabilities to animate the transitions in a realistic way. Again, everything is adjustable and customisable, so you can get your characters looking and behaving exactly how you want them to. Want to give it a try for yourself? Download Cartoon Animator 4 trial version and experience exactly what it can do. View the full article

Cisco has issued patches for critical and high-severity vulnerabilities in its Aironet access point devices. View the full article

The flaws in the container technology, CVE-2019-16276 and CVE-2019-11253, are simple to exploit. View the full article

With Halloween fast approaching you might be tasked with any number of seasonal designs that give you the opportunity to let your dark side loose. Without the right fonts, though, your finished work might not manage to get everyone screaming. Fear not, because we've rounded up 13 gloriously ghastly free fonts guaranteed to spook everyone senseless. And not only are they all free, most of them can be used for commercial projects, too. 5 of the hottest typography trends 01. Double Feature Come up to the lab and see what's on the slab It's hard to beat The Rocky Horror Picture Show for a bit of Halloween viewing, and if you want that Rocky Horror vibe for a design then Double Feature should do nicely. Based on the Rocky Horror title font with plenty of dripping blood, it's ghoulishly bold and free for both personal and commercial use. SAY IT! 02. Nosferotica Get that sexy vampire look with Nosferotica For a sexy, vampiric vibe, get your teeth into Nosferotica. A horror font designed by Sinister Fonts, it's a terrifyingly tall and thin serif, and while it's all-caps, the lowercase set is more bottom-heavy while the uppercase is top-heavy – mix them up for an unsettling effect. It's free for personal and commercial use. 03. Buffied In every generation there is a chosen font If all this vampire talk's getting a bit much, here's the antidote: a font inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Created by GemFonts, Buffied is modelled on the Buffy title font, comes with an upper and lowercase set, and it's free both for personal and commercial use. 04. Halloween Spider Halloween Spider's more scared of you than you are of it Feeling arachnophobic? Stay away from this eight-legged font, then. Halloween Spider is a bold brush script with nice thick strokes, and adorned with both spiders and spider webs. Try layering it in different colours and cutting out the spiders and webs in the top layer to add to the effect. It's free for personal and commercial use. 05. Fiddums Family CLICK-CLICK Created by BoltonBros, Fiddums Family is gloriously gothic and inspired by the creepiest, kookiest clan of them all, the Addams Family. Featuring some excellently ornate touches, including some seriously over-the-top swashes, it's a freeware font that's good for personal and commercial use. 06. Vintage Halloween All the spooky imagery you need in dingbat form As well as standard fonts, we've also found some handy dingbat fonts that'll make it easy to populate a design with plenty of ready-made Halloween imagery. First up is Vintage Halloween from Woodcutter, with a stack of useful pumpkins, bats, spiders, skeletons and more, all fully vectorised and free for personal and commercial use. 07. Freaky Halloween ...and a little more A more stylised dingbat font, Freaky Halloween features 26 glyphs covering most of the Halloween bases, rendered in a minimal, cut-out fashion. Perfect for designs with a more simple look, it's free for personal and commercial use. 08. Wild Wood Don't go into the Wild Woods alone There are few things scarier than being alone in the woods at night, especially if you've seen The Blair Witch Project. And if you want to evoke that creepy forest feeling, Wild Wood, with its letterforms sprouting gnarled branches, ought to do the job. It's free for personal use. 09. Spiderfingers Another font to frighten arachnophobes with Ideal for Halloween designs or maybe for death metal album covers, Spiderfingers features tall, grungy letterforms that taper down to viciously sharp points. Designed by Sinister Fonts, this is another freeware font you can use for both personal and commercial work. 10. Ink and Bones Now hear the word of the Lord Nothing says Halloween like a spooky skeleton, and if that's the sort of feel you're after then Ink and Bones does exactly what it says on the tin. Its hand-drawn letters and symbols are built out of bones, and while it's all-uppercase, the lowercase letters are solid strokes while the uppercase set is highlighted by some outlined bones. It's free for personal and commercial use. 11. Castle Dracustein Stay away from the creepy castle Mix up your horror brands with this sinister font from, appropriately enough, Sinister Fonts. Perfectly evoking the look of vintage horror movie posters, Castle Dracustein is another Halloween font that tapers down for a striking visual effect, and its eroded edges just add to the creepiness. It's free for personal and commercial use. 12. Hallowen Please don't write in No, that isn't a typo. Hallowen is a spooky outline serif font by Peter Olexa, and it wouldn't look out of place on the poster for a Tim Burton film. It's an all-caps font with a set of smaller glyphs in the lower case, and it really comes alive if you alternate between them, and it features some lovely spiral terminals for added visual interest. It's free for personal use only. 13. Ill October A final helping of demonic dingbats Finally, here's one last set of Halloween dingbats. Featuring plenty of skulls, spiders, snakes and more besides, Ill October is another minimal dingbat font packed with glyphs that look like they've been carved into a pumpkin, and it's free for personal and commercial use. Related articles: 21 fonts every graphic designer should own 33 perfect font pairings 10 best free calligraphy fonts of 2019 View the full article

Some design flaws are obvious. They smack you in the face immediately; everyone tears down the designer, and the project either gets redesigned or fades into oblivion. Other mistakes are just small enough for most people not to even notice, but once pointed out they can't be unseen. It's like have a tiny pebble in your shoe you can never get rid of. What's the point of this long-winded introduction? Someone has spotted that the Send button in Apple's Messages iPhone app is very slightly wonky. Behold: The thoroughly unwanted PSA came from Anh, and it will surprise precisely no one to hear he's an interface designer. Having announced it on Twitter, he unwittingly opened the door to other fastidious designers pointing out myriad other tiny interface flaws in iOS app icons. Bjorn pointed out that the play circle in Spotify isn't really a circle at all, but an oval. Noel Cornell flagged up this glaring error: Product designer Donnie Suazo shared flagged up this blue-one-black monstrosity within the Maps app. Ugh. Take a look at the full thread here, if you're feeling brave. Of course, some are making the point that optical illusions are often used in design – and sometimes a technically 'perfect' design looks wrong to the eye. Case in point, this massive debate surrounding Google's 'incorrect' logo. It doesn't make it any less irritating once you've spotted the inconsistency though, does it? If this hasn't put you off Apple products forever, take a look at our guide to making the most of the Apple Black Friday sale. Read more: Apple’s 2020 MacBook and iPad Pros could feature all-new display tech Surface Pro 7 vs iPad Pro Why Apple's rumoured iPhone SE 2 feels like as BIG disappointment View the full article

Twitter is a popular place for artists and designers share new projects, and digital art guru Gal Shir is no exception. The talented creative currently has over 70,000 followers, and when you scroll through his inspirational Twitter feed, it's not hard to see why. It's back-to-back with the most beautiful digital illustrations, but its his most recent post that has got thousands of people talking. With Halloween just around the corner, Shir has embraced a spooky theme in his most recent videos, the latest being this adorable ghost illustration. The one-minute video where Shir pens this little guy, on what looks very much like a new iPad in top digital art software Procreate, is absolutely mesmerising. Shir starts with a simple line drawing before going on to pencil in shadows and highlights in such a way that the spooky little fellow immediately begins to pop out from the screen – and frustratingly makes the entire process completely effortless. As a final, lovely touch, Shir added a little animation to end the video with his new pal floating out of the screen in true ghost-like style. We recently posted about the best Halloween Doodles, a list this artwork would top if it were ever to land in the laps of Google bosses. Shir's videos are no strangers to countless likes, but there's something about little ghosty here that has really captured people's imaginations. At time of writing, the tweet has been shared over 30,000 times, has racked up over 78,000 likes and that shows no signs of slowing. The post also now has hundred of comments, the majority of which are commending Shir's talents, with others very appreciative but also clearly frustrated with how the artist manages to make such beautiful artwork look so easy. While another Twitter user noticed something about Shir's workflow other digital artists might find useful: If ghosts and Halloween aren't your thing, never fear, Shir's Twitter feed has hundreds of different illustrations to suit all tastes. So if you're on the hunt for some inspiration, learning how to draw or simply want to enjoy a master at his craft, this is one digital artist to follow on Twitter. Read more: The best iPad Pro deals in 2019 The 13 best iPad apps for designers The best tablets with a stylus for drawing View the full article

A luxury phone company has released a set of iPhone 11 Pros that come with a piece of Steve Job's famous black turtleneck sweater sealed in their casings. With prices starting at over $6K, these devices are not only expensive, they also fly in the face of the Apple co-founder's design principles – we don't think Jobs would be impressed. Apple makes some of the best smartphones around, and new iPhone 11 looks set to continue that trend. However the design of the device is a key part of its popularity. That's because Jobs' was meticulous when it came to the look and feel of Apple products. The best iPhone apps for designers One of his mantras was to prioritise "focus and simplicity". Hence why so many Apple releases look so sleek and elegant. These iPhone 11 Pros throw that philosophy out of the window though, as they clutter the device with a swatch of Jobs' wardrobe and an engraving of his autograph. With price tags south of $6k, you'll be paying steeply for this bastardised design too – the standard 64GB model starts at $6,290, while the 512GB Max version goes for up to a whopping $7,460. In our opinion, you're better snapping up a bargain iPhone with the upcoming Apple Black Friday deals. Created by Russian luxury phone company Caviar, the iPhone 11 Pro Superior Jobs models is "a tribute to the immortal genius". "The strict Apple design is embodied in the body of firm titanium: only clear lines and moderate color solution," it adds. You won't want to drop this phone down the toilet Nice try, but we're not buying it. We just feel that a better tribute to Jobs would be a limited edition model that exemplifies his design principles, rather than cluttering a device with signatures and fabric. If you've got deep pockets and you're looking for a new phone though, you'll need to move fast. The iPhone 11 Pro Superior Jobs range is limited to just nine pieces worldwide. Related articles: 13 creative free iPhone apps for designers The 100 greatest Apple creations The 10 most beautiful Apple products (and the 5 ugliest) View the full article

For many security decision-makers, the real challenge is communicating the ongoing IR process to their management. View the full article

Finding the perfect image for your project can have you spending extra hours that you simply don't have. Figuring out where you can use them and how much they cost can be a job in itself, taking time away from your creative process. Cut that time in half with lifetime subscriptions to thousands of ready to use images and assets. From travel to lifestyle, The Stock Photo Mega Bundle: 80,000+ Images brings you over 750 diverse themes, niches, and more. With a royalty-free license included and photo formats available in JPEG and PNG for extra flexibility, this bundle comes complete with animated motion backgrounds and cinemagraphs, so you can truly bring your content to life. Get a lifetime subscription for $29.99 (94% off $594). If you're looking for the perfect photo for your next project, Scopio Authentic Stock Photography: Lifetime Subscription may be the bundle for you. Commercial-friendly and royalty-free, Scopio's photos are sourced and curated from talented photographers and creators all over the world. With photos added daily, your versatile content will be continuously updated. Get a lifetime subscription for $29 (98% off $1,740). With unlimited access to more than 17,000 stock photos and vector images, the Webmaster Design VIP: Lifetime Subscription is the ideal destination for supercharging any project in need of eye-catching imagery. The subscription provides you with an endless amount of photos, textures, mockups, and more. With updates included and boundless file downloads, this subscription is a mecca for continually growing your design resources. Get a lifetime subscription for $49 (95% off $999). Related articles: 8 stock image clichés and how to avoid them 10 uses for Adobe Stock you might not have thought of 4 stock images that would cost a fortune to shoot yourself View the full article

Have we just been treated to a sneak peek of the redesigned Sonic the Hedgehog from the upcoming Paramount movie? Apparently so, if a couple of images currently doing the rounds on social media are to be believed. And while there's a chance they might not be the real deal, they're such an improvement on the original we've got our fingers crossed they're legit. Maybe the animation studio read our guide to character design for advice? In case you've forgotten, the original Sonic the Hedgehog trailer outraged fans when it dropped due to Sonic's disturbing design. With strange teeth and an unsettling texture, the speedy hedgehog looked like he'd crawled right out of uncanny valley. In fact the backlash was so intense that Paramount announced it would redesign him. 8 appalling CGI fails in modern movies So could these two images shared online by Twitter user @BestInTheGalaxy be the redesign fans have been waiting for? We hope so. While it's not exactly hard, this version works much more than the original. The eyes are larger and positioned more closely together, the texture is stylised but still looks realistic enough to work next to live action footage, and he's even wearing his signature white gloves. All of these elements are key to nailing the look of Sonic the Hedgehog, and they were all bizarrely missing from the first trailer. These tantalising images are much closer to the mark. Of course, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. But there are a couple of factors that give these images some credibility. The image of Jim Carrey, who plays the villainous Dr Robotnik in the film, also appears to be new. So unless somebody's been playing around in Photoshop (or dabbling in deepfake tech), this would suggest these pictures are somewhat authentic. Another thing to keep in mind is that character design leaks surrounding this film aren't anything new. Back in March the film's branding deck was accidentally revealed by Hamagami/Carroll, Inc, which also included a version of Sonic that's remarkably similar to what we saw in the official trailer that enraged fans. ...it really is hard to accept this Sonic design If it turns out that these aren't real pictures, Paramount better have something better up its sleeves because fans seem to be giving them the thumbs up. Perhaps we won't need to wait too long to find out. As one astute Twitter user, @pablothinghouse, pointed out: "Remember when they leaked robotniks design a day before the trailer came out? Not saying the trailers coming out tomorrow but the trailers coming tomorrow [sic]". Related articles: 27 top movie title sequences How to improve your character art The 10 best 3D movies of 2019 View the full article

These handy Blender shortcuts could transform your 3D texturing workflow. Blender is one of the best pieces of 3D modelling software around, and unlike its competitors it's available to download completely free. And while it has a bit of a reputation for being tricky to use, its most recent version, 2.80, is much more approachable, and there are loads of Blender tutorials out there to help you master its tools. Even experienced Blender users can benefit from a few tips to speed up their workflow, though. To help your texturing process along, here are ten of the most useful shortcuts; once you've committed them to memory you'll be able texture at warp speed! How to create interiors with Blender's EEVEE Local View – Numpad / This hides everything except the selected object while still being independent from the regular Hide function, so you can for example have only one object you're working on in one area and the whole scene in another. Zoom to Selected – Numpad , Almost standard, working without it doesn't seem very enjoyable to me. It centres the screen on the selected object or, when in Sculpt Mode, on the spot where you placed your last brush stroke. Maximise Area – Ctrl + Space Maximises the size of the area you're currently hovering over. Very useful when you've got plenty of areas open (timeline, references, shading editor) and want to concentrate on the model itself for once. Circle Select – C Turns the cursor into a circle brush that lets you 'paint' a selection of faces, vertices or edges. This is very useful when you want to quickly isolate certain parts of the mesh for selective unwrapping or assigning vertex colours. Grow/Shrink Selection – Ctrl + +/- This enables you to grow (+) or shrink (-) the current face selection radially in all directions. Especially when you're dealing with cylindrical objects, this comes in handy by being able to let you 'wander' the selection across the model. Pin UV Vertex – P When you're in UV Edit Mode, you can pin certain vertices to let them be fixed if you unwrap the model again. Further unwraps will then consider their position. This is very useful for cleaning up UV coordinates. Flip Brush Colours – X This lets you switch between the two active colours in Texture or Vertex Paint Mode, just like in Photoshop. When you're figuring out contours between two colours, this is especially useful and speeds up your work. Free Rotate – R + R If you're about to place leaves or other random stuff without a particle system and want to quickly alter their rotation, just hit R twice and you can nicely rotate the object trackball-like. That way randomising becomes easier. Walk Navigation – Shift + F (Blender 2.8: Shift + ^) A very cool feature in Blender is the Walk Navigation that lets you move around in your scene with the camera like you would in a first-person game. You can move with the WASD keys and even jump. Select Linked under Cursor – L When you have separated your mesh with seams (Ctrl+E), you can select the individual islands in Face Selection mode with L while hovering over them. This makes selecting larger pieces very fast. This article was originally published in issue 250 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 250 here or subscribe to 3D World here. Related articles: How to speed sculpt in Blender 2.80 Create stunning tileable textures in Blender How to model a complex 3D city scene in Blender View the full article

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday just around the corner, consumers are gearing up for another bumper sales event. We spoke to a trade and stocks analyst to get their insights on how 2019's event is likely to shape up. Here's what they had to say... With previous years seeing some of the best Apple Black Friday deals and top Adobe Black Friday offers, the event has become a staple holiday for US consumers but is slowly growing around the world. Australia and Russia are two countries that have particularly embraced the Black Friday holiday over recent years, with sales more than doubling on an annual basis. In the UK, purchases during the two events jumped from just £4.5 billion in 2017 to over £7 billion in 2018. And spending is set to grow once again this year as Black Friday falls slightly later, on November 29, when more people will have banked their pay checks. The sales event has become a larger and more extravagant affair every year. But people have been increasingly shopping in the comfort of their own home rather than heading out to the shops. For example, in-store spending fell around 7% in the UK last year while online spending reached new records. Discounts during the sale season can range anywhere from 20% to 60%, and averaged around 37% in 2018. Prices on everything are slashed but the biggest savings are usually reserved for premium products, especially tech like laptops and televisions. Argos, John Lewis and Currys PC World are among those set to launch deals at this year’s event. Top tech savings In terms of computers, consumers will not be short of choice. HP Chromebooks, Microsoft Surface devices, the Asus ZenBook 13 and the Huawei MateBook X Pro are all set to have their prices reduced this year, with discounts north of £100 seen on some models in 2018. Apple products, including MacBooks and AirPods, will also be available on the cheap but you won’t find the savings if you buy directly from the company. Instead, you will need to head to somewhere like John Lewis, which offered some of the largest discounts last year. Be sure to bookmark our best Black Friday MacBook deals and Apple Airpods sale articles to get the very best prices. You can expect deals on the new iPhone 11 or 11 Pro, as well as the Apple Watch 5, but you will find better offers for the older models, like the iPhone XR or Watch 4. If Apple is not for you then do not fear, as prices of Samsung products will also be slashed this year. Concessions on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 are touted to be particularly deep following the release of the new Galaxy 10 range of phones. Retailers to watch Amazon will remain the number-one destination for shoppers this year, having accounted for over one-quarter of all Black Friday sales in 2018, and it will continue to practically give-away its ownrange of products of smart speakers and Fire TV sticks. The online giant is expected to give away more of its own products with other purchases. Expect these bundles to include services and subscriptions too – including on Kindle Unlimited, Music Unlimited, and Audible. If you aren’t already a member of Amazon Prime, you could use the free trial period to ensure you get the best deals and free next day delivery. You will also be able to get yourself creative software at knockdown prices. Adobe slashed up to 40% off its Creative Cloud subscription last year, while Serif offered deals on its Affinty Photo image editor and Affinty Designer graphics suite. How and when to get the best Black Friday deals Black Friday is no longer a one-day sales event and has expanded into a month-long extravaganza. Deals tend to start being released at the start of November but over two-thirds of all discounts last year were launched between the Monday and the Thursday before Black Friday. Still, most people waited for the day itself to take the plunge, with transactions peaking at over 1,000 per second on Black Friday last year, but this is not necessary. You have more time to find the best deals and this means you don’t need to make impulsive purchases. Plus, you may be better off waiting for Cyber Monday, an online-only sales event famed for its tech deals, on December 2. Retailers tend to release a slew of new deals but many of the Black Friday discounts will still be available. This year’s event is expected to bigger than ever but be careful not to be swayed by false deals. Make a list of what you want to buy – including any Christmas gifts you want to snap-up early - and research the standard RRP prices to understand whether you’re getting a good deal. One of the best international price comparison sites is Shopping.com, which is part of eBay. You can already register your interest with most online retailers to make sure you are the first to know when a new deal is released. Lastly, stay in this year. Trends suggest heading out to the shops is unnecessary because it is likely that any stellar in-store deals will also be available online. Read more: The best Surface Pro Black Friday 2019 deals 10 top tips for making the most of Black Friday Best iPad Black Friday deals: Get an Apple tablet for less View the full article

So, you want to learn how to remove wrinkles in Photoshop? This tutorial will show you how. Before we get started, let's talk about wrinkles for a bit. Personally, I love wrinkles. They make me think of the long life story of my subject where the folds and creases have gathered over the years. Also, they evoke a strong emotional connection between myself and the person I’m photographing and have carved out their own verbose corner in the English language. Laughter lines indicate happiness, puckered lips express love, and even a furrowed brow conveys a story from the past. However, many of us see it as a sign of aging and we use creams and ointments to rid ourselves of the pesky lines. We needn’t fork out for the latest fancy moisturiser when we have photo editing software such as Adobe Photoshop CC. In this tutorial I’ll demonstrate how leaving skin texture alone, but parsing out some choice crows feet and toning down a few deeper folds can enhance our look. If you fancy expanding your Photoshop skillset even further, check out CB's Photoshop tutorials roundup for more how-tos. Get Adobe Creative Cloud It’s important not to completely remove all wrinkles, they add depth and dimension to the person, as a good portrait should. Leaving skin pores and facial hair (no matter how small and inconspicuous) is essential for natural-looking portraits. But with gentle use of a few handy tools, you can get portrait subjects looking like they’re well-rested, and if you’re lucky, a few years younger. You can watch the above video for a step-by-step tutorial or read on for a written guide. Read more: How to resize an image in Photoshop All the best free Photoshop brushes The 10 commandments of Photoshop etiquette View the full article

Unknown, vulnerable systems are present in nearly every ship environment that researchers have pen-tested. View the full article

There are plenty of reasons for buying a new phone, and often one of the most pressing questions is how well it can take photos. We can help you out with our guide to the best camera phones, but right now that's all up in the air with the announcement of Google's new Pixel 4. It comes with plenty of cool features; we're intrigued by its built in radar – yes, radar – that you can use to control your Pixel 4 by waving your hand around, and it also features face unlock, voice control and a new and improved Google Assistant. What we're really excited about, though, is the camera. Google's big claim is that it can take studio-like photos, but without the studio, and it definitely boasts some impressive tech. There are two lenses doing the business, and thanks to a roughly 2x telephoto lens you should be able to take some razor-sharp close-ups without having to crop. The hardware's pretty cool, but Google's particularly proud about what it's doing in software. The Pixel 4 has a Live HDR+ feature that captures and combines multiple images to create a single, better picture, and also allows you to adjust the exposure in the viewfinder so that you can get just the right balance of highlights and shadows. The Pixel 4 also has a Portrait Mode, designed to give you DSLR-style shots with artfully-blurred backgrounds, plus a Super Res Zoom that let you take quality shots from far away. There's also a learning-based white balance to help you get the right colours every time, and for low light situations there's an improved Night Sight. It's designed to help you take photos at night without having to use a flash, and Google claims you can use it can take photos of the Milky Way (and it's provided a shot to prove it.) And if all that tech wasn't enough to get you excited, what about a celebrity endorsement? Legendary American photographer Annie Leibovitz took to the stage at Google's event earlier to discuss a year-long project involving the handset. "I just let the camera do the work, in all honesty, and I really enjoyed myself," she said. How's that for a bucket-load of credibility? If it's good enough for Annie, it's good enough for us. Add all of the above up and the Pixel 4 looks to be a serious smartphone contender for creatives. The technology and features running this device make pro photography tools accessible to everyone, potentially opening new doors for some that remained, up to this point, firmly shut. There's no doubt about it, the Pixel 4, its camera in particular, looks very impressive. We'll have a full review on the new handset very soon, so stay tuned to see just how powerful the new smartphone really is. The Google Pixel 4 is available to pre order now, however if you're not bothered about having a shiniest new Google device, you can currently get a great deal on the also highly capable Pixel 3: View the full article

The bug allows users to bypass privilege restrictions to execute commands as root. View the full article

UX design is so popular right now, the field is flooded with both new talent and seasoned designers shifting their focus to get a job. With more competition every day, it’s becoming difficult to secure a design role in user experience. At the same time, companies are still learning how to hire UX designers and what it means for their business. Given these challenges, it’s more important than ever to have a great design portfolio that sets you up for success. But that’s only the beginning – you need to position yourself and your work in a way that stands out from the crowd. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced UX designer, here's my advice for creating a winning portfolio that will help you secure that coveted UX design job. 01. Show, don’t tell The word 'empathy' is thrown around so much in the design industry, especially within UX design conversations, it’s beginning to feel trite. In my experiences as co-founder of portfolio system Semplice, I have seen so many portfolios that lead with “empathetic designer crafting meaningful experiences”, it’s hard to remember who is who. At this point, you will be noticed for thoughtful, original writing that shows you understand UX beyond the buzzwords. Make it clear you are empathetic through your portfolio case studies, rather than spelling it out. Instead of saying you craft meaningful experiences, explain how a specific project impacted a client in a positive way. Rather than saying you care about inclusive design, show us how you approached your UX work with inclusivity and accessibility in mind. Disclaimer: Empathy is indeed relevant to design, or really any job, so feel free to mention these terms in your portfolio – especially because companies have been trained through the industry to look for these buzzwords. Just don’t lean on them. 02. Don’t deny your past Considering how many people are tacking 'UX' onto their capabilities list, you can make an impression by simply proving you have real-world experience. If you specialise in UX design and have served in that role on a project, you are already one step ahead of many other designers. Curate your portfolio to show your best UX design projects so companies and recruiters know you’re not just another designer taking advantage of a trend. Considering how many people are tacking 'UX' onto their capabilities list, you can make an impression by proving you have real-world experience However, your other design experience is still relevant here. If you have worked as an interactive designer, product designer or something similar in the past, feel free to include a couple of those projects to show your depth of experience. But aim for every project to make your case stronger, pointing back to why you’re the best UX designer for the job. To be clear, most designers are not wrong to add UX design to their offerings. For a long time, user experience was part of any interactive design job. Given the fact that UX design as a field is not only relatively new, but encompasses a wide variety of skills (strategy, design, content, and so on), it’s fair to say many 'traditional' designers can meet the job description. That’s why showing genuine passion and a specialised focused in user experience will help you stand out. 03. Be a great communicator Strong communication skills may be the most important requirement for a UX design job. You not only have to make abstract concepts tangible for your team and your client, you also touch many points of a project. In this role, you collaborate with developers, strategists, designers, copywriters, project managers and more. In some cases, the UX designer even writes UX copy. Any good design director or recruiter interviewing you will look for this skill. Show you’re a strong communicator from the beginning of your relationship with a company. Write concise, professional emails when you reach out. Speak clearly and with intention on the phone and in an interview. Create compelling case studies that tell the story of your work without rambling and wasting your reader’s time. And most importantly, proofread everything. Ask a friend to read your writing and point out typos or areas of improvement. As designers, we tend to focus on the visuals. But especially for UX designers, the content is just as important, if not more so. 04. Deepen your understanding of design It’s easy to say, but it’s the surest way to land the job you want: Strive to be the best at what you do. With a saturated field comes a range of talent. That naturally leads to undercutting, which lowers the overall quality of the work being produced in that field. If you want to rise above all this mess, you have to be great at what you do. Knowing UX fundamentals is a given. Thanks to the accessibility of digital fields like ours, we can attend a three-month UX design course and become certified UX designers. That means many UX designers today (with plenty of exceptions) have a shallow understanding of design as a whole. So what makes you stand out? A deeper, sharper grasp of our field. Beyond growing in UX design and all that comes with it (strategy, research, etc.), seek a deeper understanding of graphic design. Learn what defines good typography (CB's roundup of typography tutorials can help with this). Learn the function of layout and composition. Immerse yourself in media and culture that refines your taste (beauty is function, no matter who says otherwise). Aim to get better at copywriting, too. Combined with some common sense, research and curiosity, you'll be in high demand. Read more: The wrong way to build a portfolio The ultimate guide to user experience A designer's guide to the golden ratio View the full article

Welcome to our pick of the best Walmart iPad sales and deals in 2019. The iPad in all its various guises is a brilliant tool for creatives, and Walmart often has some great deals on Apple's versatile lineup of tablets. There are plenty of reasons why designers and creatives should consider buying an iPad. First of all, they are brilliantly-built bits of kit, and models such as the iPad mini are small enough to easily carry around with you. The iPad Air, meanwhile, is thin and light, again, making it a great device for carrying with you if you do a lot of travelling. If you fancy something larger – and more powerful – then the iPad Pro is the one to get, combining large screens and fast components, making it ideal for digital artists, especially when paired with the Apple Pencil stylus. Make sure to bookmark our best Apple Black Friday deals post for all the latest offers on these products. Meanwhile, the standard iPad is a great all-round tool. No matter what type of iPad you go for, you'll have access to the App Store, which houses thousands of brilliant apps, including some from the biggest names in art and design. Check out our best iPad apps for designers guide for a taste of what an iPad can do for designers and digital creatives. But why buy an iPad from Walmart? For a start, Walmart is one of the biggest retailers in the world. This means it has a huge selection of iPads on offer, so you can be pretty certain that you'll find the iPad you're after at Walmart. Because of its size, it also means its very competitive when it comes to price, and we've often seen Walmart iPad sales and deals which offer the lowest prices for iPads anywhere on the internet! To save you having to browse through Walmart's huge website to find its iPad deals, we've put together this guide that gathers the very best Walmart iPad sales and deals so you'll never miss out on a bargain. iPad As we mentioned earlier, there are several different varieties of iPads these days, but if you want the best all-rounder, than the standard iPad is the best. It's portable, powerful and well-priced. What's not to love? Since Apple launched the original iPad way back in 2010, Apple has continually refined its tablet, whilst not straying too far from its original design. This makes the iPad a brilliant tablet PC for designers and creatives. In 2019, Apple released a new iPad with a 10.2-inch screen, a step up from the 9.7-inch screen of the iPad 2018. Apart from the bigger screen and slightly more RAM, the 2018 and 2019 models are pretty similar. So, if you don't want the larger screen, getting last year's model is the way to go, and Walmart has some brilliant deals on the older version, making it even better value. iPad Pro The iPad Pro is the bigger, more powerful version of the standard iPad. As the name suggests, this is an iPad that's aimed at professionals, and its increased screen size and powerful components makes it a brilliant tablet for creative designers and artists. We're still waiting to see if there will be a new version of the iPad Pro for 2019, but last year's models are still excellent devices, so if you're after a big-screen iPad, you should be able to buy the 2018 models safe in the knowledge that they won't become obsolete any time soon. The 2018 model of the iPad Pro comes in two sizes, an 11-inch version and a 12.9-inch version. If you want the biggest and fastest iPads in the world, these are the ones to get. However, it's also worth noting that these are also the most expensive iPads. Still, we've managed to find some great deals in Walmart. iPad Air The iPad Air is back for 2019. After Apple neglected this version of the iPad for a while, it surprised us all with a brand new version for 2019. The iPad Air sits between the iPad and iPad Pro in Apple's lineup. That means it's more powerful than the standard iPad, but it's not as fast as the iPad Pro. When it comes to price, it's also nestled between those two iPads. The iPad Air gets a 10.5-inch Retina display and upgraded internals, and it's the thinnest and lightest iPad (apart from the iPad Pro), and in our view this is the perfect iPad for people who want a bit more power than the standard iPad, but don't want to splash out on the iPad Pro. iPad mini The iPad mini is, as the name suggests, the smallest iPad on sale. The 2019 edition comes with a 7.9-inch screen, making it the easiest iPad to carry around with you. You can slot it into a bag without any issues, and it's excellent for one-handed use as well. It weighs just 300g as well, so if you're after an iPad for travelling with, the iPad mini is the one to get. However, its small size doesn't mean you're missing out much in the ways of features and functionality. It still supports the Apple Pencil stylus, so it's great as a portable doodle pad, and of course it runs all the apps that larger iPads can run as well. It also features some of the hardware found in Apple's iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max smartphones, including the A12 Bionic chipset, which means it offers excellent performance on par with the larger iPads. However, while it is the smallest iPad, it's not the cheapest (that's the standard iPad). But you don't have to spend more to get a smaller tablet, as the brilliant iPad mini Walmart deals below demonstrate. View the full article

Apple could be set to release a super high-end iPad Pro and MacBook Pro with brand new mini-LED screen technology, according to reports. If the rumours are true, the new devices could be a great option for those looking for top-quality display at larger sizes, for use over long periods. The devices are likely to be released towards the end of 2020 or the first half of 2021. If that's too long to wait, take a look at our predictions for this year's iPad Black Friday offers, Black Friday MacBook deals, or our general guide to nailing the Apple Black Friday 2019 sale. Back to those rumoured devices though. Notes from trusted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, shared on MacRumours, reveal that the cutting-edge displays will use mini LED rather than the current OLED technology. They will incorporate up to 10,000 tiny LEDs – for comparison, the Pro Display XDR monitor in the upcoming Mac Pro uses just 576 LEDs (and that's one of the best monitors around). Why Apple's rumoured iPhone SE 2 feels like as BIG disappointment What are the practical implications of that? Essentially, it will enable manufacturers to offer a top-quality display in a thinner, lighter screen. Kuo's research notes explain: "We believe that mini LED, compared to OLED, will be a more suitable solution to offer wide-color gamut (WCG) / high-contrast / high dynamic range (HDR) / local dimming features because of its longer life and no burn-in issues for Apple's medium- and large-size products targeting at productivity positions." Kuo's notes state that the iPad Pros will sport 10 or 12-inch displays, and could be with us late next year. The MacBook Pros will feature 15 or 17-inch displays, and are likely to be released slightly later, in the first half of 2021. Competition-wise, it's also good news for Apple. Currently, it relies on Samsung for its OLED displays. The mini LED screen are likely to be sourced from a number of component suppliers, and produced by LG Display. Read more: 10.2" iPad lands in stores – and we can't believe how cheap it is Surface Pro 7 vs iPad Pro: which should you buy? Apple's butterfly keyboards could soon be replaced View the full article

Aaron Blaise has a good story for you if you've ever wondered what it was like working at Disney during the 1990s. He’d just finished Aladdin (1992) – the movie before was Beauty and the Beast (1991). Disney was on one of the great streaks in cinema history. It began with The Little Mermaid (1989), ended with Tarzan (1999), and included many of the biggest animated films of all time. Blaise was promoted to supervising animator on The Lion King (1994). He was in charge of his own character, Simba’s best friend, the young Nala. The anatomy had to be perfect. This lion cub needed to move the way that lion cubs really move. So Blaise went to a kind of workshop, a kind of figure-drawing class, the kind of thing that could only happen at Disney during the 1990s. (If you're in need of some inspiration for creating great characters, check out our how to draw tutorials and article on character design.) Different times These were different times. No internet, no video conferencing, no emailing images back and forth. Blaise worked at the Disney studio in Florida, but the California studio was also working on the movie. That’s a whole country, a whole timezone apart. Blaise photocopied his designs, numbered them and sent them by courier to Los Angeles. It was the same with tapes of animation. Meetings with directors took place on the phone the following day when the stuff arrived. By then, Blaise was on to something else. If things needed amending, he had to switch back to the previous design or animated clip. So a full week’s work might have equalled only a few seconds of finished movie; one or two shots. A film like The Lion King was 90 minutes long and contained 4,000 shots. Before he could begin, Blaise needed to know the script inside-out. He needed to make sure that his designs matched up with the art director’s vision. And he needed Nala to be believable: a character, not a caricature. That, he says, was what Disney did well: it made believable characters by “pulling from reality.” So how did Aaron go about creating a believable lion? At Disney, during the 1990s, it was done like this: “We would draw them from life,” Blaise says. “They would bring the lions right into the studio for us. They’d walk them back and forth across the stage, and we would analyse their movements and anatomy, and everything else, and get it down on paper.” Wild Child Aaron’s development work for The King of the Elves, a Disney project based on a Philip K Dick story. (Elven Explorer) Blaise grew up in Florida. His family lived in little trailer north of the Everglades, near a place called Corkscrew Swamp. He was “a wild child” who never wore shoes or a shirt and was often covered with ticks. Florida was his own private paradise. He always drew and painted, but he couldn’t see anyway of making a living from it. Then, aged 17, Blaise’s home burned down. Things got “a little rough.” He was ready to give up art and get a job in forestry. But Blaise’s stepdad persuaded him not to waste his ability. Blaise graduated with a certificate in illustration from the Ringling College of Art in 1989. His first professional job, aged 20, was an internship at Disney. There was just one problem: he couldn’t animate. He knew drawing, he was good at that. But he couldn’t get his head around movement. He had this dream job, but he almost quit. Then mentor Glen Keane told him: ‘Keep trying. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen.’ And then three weeks later, it happened, it clicked, and seemingly out of nowhere Blaise understood arcs and timing, and slowins and all this other technical stuff. “I could see it happening in my head just because I was living it, breathing it, dreaming about it.” “Here’s a gluttonous grizzly bear hunting for salmon and unwilling to share his catch.” (The Glutton) He went full-time at 21 and worked his way up to director, earning an Oscar nomination for Brother Bear (2003). Then Disney’s great streak came to an end. It closed the studio in Florida which employed 365 people. Everybody was laid off except Blaise and nine others, who were then moved to California. “Things change,” Blaise says. “The market changed, the finances for things changed. It was very hard to see my friends and people that I had grown up with, spent the past 20 years with, to see them all of a suddenly without a job and scattered to the four winds. And so that was my first big blow." Blaise, his wife Karen and their kids all moved to California. They started over and pretty soon Blaise was making movies again. Then Karen was diagnosed with breast cancer. Disney helped Blaise set up shop at home. Some co-workers joined him and he was able to work and look after Karen. “But, ultimately,” Blaise says, “two and a half years into it, on 11 March 2007, she passed away in my arms, and that was a devastating blow for me. I mention this a lot in my talks: how you need to be driven to do your work. And, after I lost Karen, I lost my drive. She was my soulmate. She was the love of my life and I was completely lost and heartbroken and my kids were a mess as well. And so trying to go back to work with that mental baggage and heartache and pain, and trying to make a movie and direct those people, for me, it was almost impossible. It was impossible.” Losing my identity “I’m always trying to give characters some kind of expression or attitude that we can relate to as a viewer.” (Teatime) Blaise stuck it out for a couple of years. But his desire was gone. Studio bosses removed him from the movie he was working on and said he was done as a director. They wanted him to stay with Disney in another role. Blaise quit. “It was the most difficult and scary decision I’ve ever made in my life because I didn’t know anything other than Disney. My whole identity was my family and Disney, and Disney was falling apart, and my family was falling apart. So I was losing my identity.” What did he do next? First, he went home and he panicked. Blaise had a big mortgage but no longer had the director’s big salary to pay for it. Next day, he went into work and cleaned out his desk. There was a job offer waiting for him – in Florida. “It was unbelievable, the timing of it all.” The company was Digital Domain, a visual effects and digital production company. Director James Cameron was one of the founders. Still, this wasn’t Disney. There would be no lions brought in for figure-drawing classes. Blaise was three years into a movie when the company went bankrupt. He was jobless again. The artist considered going back to Disney. Then he got thinking about the way Glen Keane used to push young artists. He wanted to do something similar. Blaise and business partner Nick Burch came up with CreatureArtTeacher, offering lessons and tutorials based on Blaise’s long and illustrious career. “I decided that I really didn’t want to place my career – my future – in the hands of any executives anymore. I wanted to be the director of my own life.” Blaise uses charcoal to create large-format pieces Blaise works digitally and in most traditional mediums. From Alaska to Africa, he’s photographing wildlife for reference. It’s important to see subjects in person. Working traditionally, he starts with thumbnail sketches to figure out composition. He draws the image on to the canvas, tones the canvas, then works through the rendering. But digital’s different. Sometimes he sits down to draw without knowing where it’s going to go. This brings another dimension to his work. Working digitally helps him find compositions he would never have found working traditionally. Memento from Disney “A lion and tiger cosying up to one another. I designed a lion cub for The Lion King and a tiger for Aladdin.” (Best Friends) His studio is at home: a small room that’s divided into into two spaces. One side is for digital work, comprising a desk, Mac Pro, Cintiq 32-inch and a couple of monitors. He uses Photoshop and TVPaint Animation. These day, all animations are done digitally. But he keeps his old desk from Disney – the very desk he used working on all those great movies. He uses it for painting with watercolours now. Blaise’s traditional setup continues with an easel for working with oil, acrylics and charcoal. There’s a large bookcase that’s full of books, and lights and cameras used for shooting video lessons. Twice a week, he does a livestream show with his son Nick. Routine is important. These days, he’s at his desk at 10am. He could be painting, drawing digitally, making a video or working on lessons his teaching courses. But he sticks at it until he’s “mentally spent.” Could be a couple of hours, could be 10 hours. The thing is to be working consistently every weekday. Being his own boss takes a lot more discipline than the structured nine to five at Disney. “Before I start I feel the mood of a piece. I try to get that mood into the character or the animal that I’m creating.” (The Birthday Present) So does he ever regret leaving? Would he do anything differently? People often describe Blaise's art as Disney-esque. He doesn’t mind. He started at the studio when he was 20 and left when he was 42. Disney was a big part of his life. But his time there went hand in hand with the biggest part of his life. Blaise often wonders what might have been had Karen been diagnosed earlier: “If Karen had lived, then what would my life be? I can’t compare it.” Professionally, maybe he’d still be at Disney. Perhaps he’d be directing his fourth movie now. Who knows? But what he does know is that working for himself is ultimately more rewarding than working for a studio. “This digital piece is personal character work, looking at the Indian rhino, which is a vulnerable species.” (Indian Rhino) So the short answer is no. He doesn’t regret leaving Disney. “It was probably the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. But, you know, it’s funny, I don’t know that there’s anything I could do differently. I look at where I am right now, and, creatively, I’m happier than I’ve ever been because I’m able to draw, paint, animate, whatever I want to do to my heart’s content. But it all came about because of the death of my soulmate. “It’s a little sappy, but there’s truth in this. I was thinking about my wife Karen and what she would think about me going on to do whatever I was going to do. I really felt strongly – I still do – about doing something that she would be proud of, that she would want to do, that would drive her, because she was always this very giving, loving individual. And so that was also a big part of our decision-making process in creating CreatureArtTeacher.” This article was originally published in ImagineFX, the world's best-selling magazine for digital artists. Subscribe to ImagineFX. Read more: How to move from animation to illustration Animated music videos: 28 awesome examples 10 ways to create better character animations View the full article