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Simple technique enables attackers to leverage Windows OS component to maintain stealth and persistence post system compromise. View the full article

Texture is often what blurs the lines between traditional and digital artwork. Often it’s easy to tell the difference between the two if your digital artwork doesn’t have any kind of canvas behind it, but by applying your own textures in Photoshop, you can help to give your artwork a little more realism. In this Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to be applying a simple noise and canvas texture, which will look and feel a bit like paper. We’ve created a simply chalk and charcoal drawing to use it on so that we can see it clearly, and it’s going to help add a little more shape and tone to the image. This is why texture is great; without some kind of texture behind this picture, it looks rather obviously digitally drawn. Get Adobe Creative Cloud It’s not just paper textures that you can add to your artwork. You may want the illusion of a film texture for more realistic pieces, or even a wall of some sort for a street art effect in your urban sci-fi composition. There are plenty of pre-made and even free textures online that you can insert into your work and change the blend mode of. Okay, let’s see how much of a difference a texture makes… 01. Add noise as the basis of your texture Creating a new layer over your painting means that we can apply the effect to blend it with the layer below Start by setting your foreground and background swatches as black and white by hitting D. Create a new layer then go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Choose an amount of 400 per cent, check the Monochromatic box and make sure you choose Gaussian, before you hit OK. We're using black and white as it makes a subtle grey colour from a distance; this means that altering the blend mode will display the texture cleanly. However if you wish to add a colourful tint to your texture, create a new layer, fill with colour and alt/opt-click to clip it to your texture. 02. Adjust the Blend mode of the texture Experiment with different Blend modes Because we want to blend our noise texture in a little with the digital artwork that’s sitting on a layer beneath it, this is the stage where we’re going to change the Blend mode. Set the Blend mode to Linear Light in this case, and reduce the Opacity to around 40 per cent. You don’t have to use Linear Light; experiment with Color Dodge for a more dramatic effect, or Overlay and Soft Light for a more subtle look. Reducing the Opacity can also help to lessen the effect slightly without taking away from the actual noise. Press 4 to set the layer at 40 per cent Opacity. You can also drag horizontally where it says Opacity in the Layers palette, to change the Opacity. You can tweak your custom texture by clipping adjustments to it using clipping masks. You may wish to edit the tone, brightness or exposure of the texture. 03. Blur the texture layer Applying a blur smooths things out Now we’re going to apply a blur to the noise to just smooth it out a little. Go to Filter >Blur > Gaussian Blur to apply your blur, and choose a radius of around 3-5px before hitting OK. You can see in the preview dialog how it will affect your work before you apply it. Photoshop will show you how the blur looks when applied over your actual picture, as well as in the preview. You can use the slider to alter the blur, or simply enter a value, and use the Magnifying glass icons to zoom either in or out of your image as a whole, to see the blur in action. 04. Set up a canvas texture A canvas texture gives a more believable base Next up we’re going to use a canvas texture, just to give this image a more believable base. Go to Filter > Filter Gallery and choose Texture, then Texturizer. Choose a Scaling value of 200 per cent and a relief setting of 10, with light in the image coming from the top, before you apply. Also note that there are other canvases are available from the drop-down menu, including brick. You can use the Invert option to display a reverse of what you’re applying. Hold cmd/ctrl to bring up the Default button, below the OK button. Clicking this will revert your changes back to the values that were originally set. 05. Sharpen and smooth your texture Sharpening the texture can make your image look crisper Finally, duplicate this texture layer and go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Set your value as 5px and click OK, before setting the layer to Overlay. Merge this with the layer below, set to Linear Light again and then go to Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise to further smooth out the texture. Choose a strength of 5 and leave all other options free to smooth out the texture a little after you’ve sharpened it up slightly. If the texture now looks too prominent, reduce the Opacity a little further. By sharpening and smoothing the texture, you’re blending it further into the picture, while making sure it looks crisp. This article originally appeared in ImagineFX, the world's leading magazine for digital artists. Subscribe here. Read more: How to remove a background in Photoshop 5 best laptops for Photoshop The 38 best Photoshop plugins View the full article

It's been a busy week for fans of Adobe. Over in LA, announcements from Adobe MAX have been coming thick and fast, with the launch of Photoshop CC for iPad and Premiere Rush CC, and voice prototyping added to Adobe XD to name but a few. These announcements are sure to be music to the ears of graphic designers and artists who have been waiting years for some of these releases. And while snazzy updates and game-changing systems are always welcome, you can always benefit from brushing up on the basics of Photoshop CC to make your life easier. Take this infographic from Jamie Spencer, the founder of Make A Website Hub. In it, Spencer breaks down the various keyboard shortcuts that are ready and waiting to be used in your work. This infographic is an updated version of a similar cheat sheet released in 2015, only now it covers more tools, including Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Fireworks, Flash, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Lightroom. Check out this whopping infographic in detail by clicking on the image below and start saving time in your upcoming creative projects. Click to see the full size cheat sheet Related articles: The best keyboards for designers 63 free Photoshop actions How to manage colours in Photoshop View the full article

This article was originally published in 2017. Over the years, many highly successful advertising campaigns have either surfed the wave of popular culture, or in some cases, managed to subvert the status quo and garner a cult following all of their own. A great ad can be an artform in its own right, boosting a brand’s credibility by combining a killer idea with skilful execution and top production values. At the other end of the scale are ads that don’t aspire to brand-inflating greatness. Their purpose is to sell based on simple facts, or price points, or some other quantitative hook. They might not win awards, but they can be effective. 66 brilliant print adverts Where it goes spectacularly wrong, as it did for Pepsi’s hastily pulled Kendal Jenner vehicle, is when an ad aims for the stars, but shoots itself straight in the foot instead. This can be particularly cringeworthy when brands attempt to engage with, or appropriate, counter-culture movements – not often a happy bedfellow with adland. Here are some examples that came short of the mark… 01. Pepsi tries to bring people together An impressively unconvincing protest march provided the backdrop to Pepsi's now-pulled ad Unless you were under a stone last year, you’ve heard about this one. And it’s perhaps most grating for Pepsi that comparisons with its bitter rival Coca-Cola, and particularly its iconic 1971 ‘Hilltop’ spot, are all too easy. Hilltop will be familiar to Mad Men fans. After going off the radar and embracing a New Age lifestyle, Don Draper is meditating on a hilltop when a knowing smile comes over his face, and it cuts to the iconic ad – implying that his own personal experience with counter-culture translated onto the screen as one of the most iconic ads of all time. There's a twist of ambiguity, however: did Draper have an epiphany about cross-cultural unity, or just shrewdly appropriate the hippy zeitgeist that he’d witnessed just to shift some cola? In reality, McCann Erickson’s Bill Backer got the inspiration when he was stranded at an airport and spotted a group of his fellow passengers laughing and bonding over bottles of Coke. It was a simple observation about how the brand could bring people together, expressed at a time when protests against the Vietnam War were coming to a head in the States, promoting unity and peace over division and war. Crucially, however, it was an abstract message, told through song, sentiment and simple but beautiful filmmaking. Over 45 years later, Pepsi's in-house ad was both heavy-handed and trite against the backdrop of another hugely turbulent period of political protests, from the Black Lives Matter movement to anti-Trump marches and more. Handing a Pepsi to a riot gear-clad cop to diffuse a pretty anodyne, corporate-feeling ‘protest’ is far too literal a metaphor, and as industry commentators have reported in unison, is spectacularly tone-deaf in terms of how the brand tried to position itself as a catalyst for unity and harmony – especially when compared to that Coca-Cola spot. It even had the dubious honour of being ripped into by Saturday Night Live: 02. Sony attempts to tap into graffiti culture Pepsi received plenty of flak for its ad, but it’s far from alone in missing the mark when it comes to tackling counter-culture references. Another global corporate behemoth that tried to take its marketing to the streets in a different way was Sony. In an attempt to engage with the urban youth market for its PSP handheld console back in 2005, the Japanese tech giant decided to pay graffiti artists in key cities to spray its message on selected buildings. Sony paid graffiti artists to stealthily spray its message onto buildings It was a direct assault on rival Nintendo’s grip on the handheld gaming market, and made use of original commissioned artwork, depicting kids treating PSPs like skateboards, ice creams, rocking horses and more – without Sony or PSP branding anywhere. Unfortunately, the public quickly recognised the ads for what they were But the urban youth market was too savvy to be fooled and many of the images were subsequently vandalised, directly calling the scheme out as "advertising directed at your counter culture”, thus neutralising any stealth marketing value they may have had. 03. Reebok risks glorifying gun violence So far we’ve had street protests and street art. But sportswear brand Reebok went the whole hog, and decided to take on street shootings. Brand association with hip-hop culture is nothing new, and there have been plenty of notable successes, but this particularly gritty choice of content backfired in Reebok's infamous 50 Cent-fronted ad. Part of Reebok's global ‘I am what I am’ campaign, the spot focused mostly on how the rapper had been shot nine times, and even used the phrase ’Who do you plan to massacre next?’ (albeit in the context of 50 Cent's next album release). 50 Cent's association with gun violence played a key role in this campaign The ad was pulled after attracting widespread criticism for portraying gun violence as edgy and cool with a view to selling trainers; another example of how an attempt to align with counter-culture can backfire very expensively for a brand if it’s not pitched carefully. 04. Rappers refuse to sell out for McDonald's Controversial or not, at least 50 Cent agreed to the Reebok spot in the first place. This cringeworthy attempt at stealth marketing didn’t even get off the ground, but unfortunately the backlash happened anyway. McDonald's' attempt at a stealth campaign never got off the ground Marketing firm Maven Strategies attempted to replicate its success in getting product placement for Seagram's Gin worked into the lyrics of top rappers such as Kanye West and Petey Pablo with another, rather less edgy client: McDonald’s. Various big-name rappers were approached to name-check the Big Mac in their tracks, and would be paid for every play. But details of the stealth marketing plan made their way onto the internet beforehand, and not a single high-profile rapper would touch the offer with a bargepole. The campaign imploded before it started. The lesson here, similar to the Sony example, is that attempting to infiltrate the counter-culture space through the back door is rarely a good idea, as people will be all too ready to call BS the first chance they get. Read more: 40 must-see examples of billboard advertising 10 killer examples of illustrated ad campaigns 8 divisive ad campaigns (and what they teach us) View the full article

If you're a content creator, you probably have a whole host of tools in your arsenal to help you with creative tasks. What if you could have just one to cover them all? That's what you get for just $39.99 with piZap Pro: Lifetime Subscription. With the Pro Plan, you get access to countless fonts, royalty free stock photos, filters, collage layouts, and a whole lot more. You can also use the photo editing features and emoji-making tool to bring your creations up another notch. The interface is easy to use, and you can save an unlimited number of photos straight to the cloud. Best of all, you get to use this program for life, for the low price of just $39.99 – that's 77 per cent off the regular price. Related articles: 8 tools for creating better social graphics 18 top stock photo libraries The 13 best photography websites View the full article

If you're feeling retro, we have a real old-skool treat for you today. Adidas has always had a keen eye for design, not only with its sneaker designs but also in its promotional work, and its latest effort is no exception. Adidas mural celebrates young football legend To promote the latest additions to its '90s-inspired Yung series, the company has gone full retro and unleashed a site that's steeped in the questionable aesthetic of all those GeoCities websites from the exuberant youth of the World Wide Web, and which also hooks hard into the current trend for Brutalist websites. Needless to say, we absolutely love it. A slider lets you view the evolution of these sneakers, with plenty of glitches The new Yung Series website gleefully raids the old GeoCities dressing-up box and flings everything it finds at the screen, to retina-searing effect. You name it, it has it, from flagrant abuse of animated GIFs through to rampant colour cycling, horrible tiled backgrounds, awful 3D renders, system fonts and the obligatory 'UNDER CONSTRUCTION' banners. The only thing missing, as far as we can see, is an invitation to join an Adidas webring, but there is at least an appalling animated button imploring you to join the Adidas mailing list. The Yung Rappa game is unashamedly retro fun Other cool stuff includes Yung Rappa, an actual game you can play in your web browser – it's a Dance Dance Revolution-style rhythm action game set to some banging hip-hop – as well as some splendidly glitchy video and a variety of tasteful desktop wallpaper that you can download in all the sizes, from a sensible '90s 640x480 to an unthinkable 1920x1080. How big a monitor would you need for that? Video on a web site? Good luck with that on your 56k modem Perhaps the best thing about it from a web design perspective, though, is that despite its over-excited use of literally all the visual tropes from the dark days of the early web, it's actually an incredibly slick responsive site that delivers all its crimes against design in a bang up-to-date style. It might look like it's made of GIFs, tables and RealVideo, but if you take a closer look you'll discover that it's made with JavaScript, using loads of clever SVG and CSS animation tricks as well as Flexbox, Canvas and WebGL, to do its thing. Don't take our word for it though; head straight to the Adidas Yung Series site to experience this ludicrous web nostalgia fest for yourself. Related articles: Rebuild a 2004 Flash website for 2018 Famous internet logos get a retro makeover 20 iconic brands – and why they work View the full article

You're reading How to Import Custom HTML Email Template from Postcards to Intercom (YouTube Tutorial), originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! In this video, I will show you how to import a custom email template created in Postcards directly to Intercom. Open the Postcards App and let’s prepare our template for Intercom. First, insert all of the required tags into your … View the full article

I first heard about the headless CMS approach in a talk I watched from Twin Cities Drupal. I liked the idea of a separation of concerns between authoring content and viewing it. I had already experienced how easily one server can go down, taking out all of the sites on it, leading to minutes or hours of heart-stopping panic (there were 24 on mine). I had also seen how a monolithic CMS-based site could suffer a security compromise and take a lot of effort to repair (that took me more than two days of unpaid work). 23 great examples of WordPress websites I'd seen the benefits of CDNs (content delivery networks) that can store your image, audio and video files on servers optimised for fast delivery and can duplicate those files across the world for speedy delivery to those regions if needed. What if your entire website could benefit from this approach? Getting started WordPress comes out of the box with the REST API and that is what we're going to use to query your data. So we don't really need anything else! Our display site is totally separate from our content site, so we won't need WordPress themes or any other customisation outside a few (optional) plugins. Although of course you can add these if you want to. The exception is if you need custom meta fields for extra content areas. You're probably using Advanced Custom Fields to do so; you can add that data to the WordPress API by installing this plugin. Use a static site generator The Gatsby default starter screen Now that we have our content source, let's fetch the data and display it using a static site generator. My weapon of choice in this realm is Gatsby, an excellent static site generator that's built with JavaScript. If you're looking for a good way to build on your JavaScript skills and learn React by getting stuck into some code, I highly recommend trying Gatsby to do so. I've learned a lot myself by playing with it. First, let's install a command-line tool that allows us to create Gatsby sites: Now, navigate to the folder where you want to keep your site and run this command: This will create a new folder called 'blog' and install Gatsby and its dependencies to this folder. Open this folder in your favourite text editor. There might seem to be a lot of files there. Don't worry, we'll only be directly editing the gatsby-config.js, gatsby-node.js files, and the src folder, which is where our templates live. Getting our content The first step we want to take is to fetch our content from the WordPress site's API. To do that, we're going to install gatsby-source-wordpress, a prewritten plugin for WordPress. This illustrates one of the main reasons I love Gatsby – you can get your data from a variety of different sources. A lot of static site generators are restricted to using Markdown files but Gatsby is very flexible. Gatsby's plugin ecosystem is very mature. There are loads of prewritten ways of getting your data and lots of other clever functionality that comes in useful too. To install the plugin, first change directory into your new Gatsby site by using this command: cd blog. Now run this command: npm install --save gatsbysource-wordpress. Once that's done, it's time to open up the gatsby-config.js file. You'll see that there is already some basic setup in place that Gatsby gives us by default. We're going to build on that to configure our plugin here: Did it work? You can check by opening your terminal, typing gatsby develop and watch what happens. Be warned! Even if you got your settings correct, you will get some warnings anyway – this may be Gatsby looking for content that you haven't written yet. You are now able to view gatsby-starter-default in the browser. View GraphiQL, an in-browser IDE, to explore your site's data and schema. Note that the development build is not optimised. To create a production build, use gatsby build. If the Gatsby default starer (right) isn't what you're getting, check your WordPress site isn't on a subdomain, that it's definitely using HTTPS or HTTP and that you have the same in your settings. Now we can go to http://localhost:8000/ and see our Gatsby site! Can we query our data? You may have noticed that there is no WordPress content here. This is because we haven't told Gatsby what to do with it yet. Before we do that, let's just check we have actually got our content available to Gatsby. To do that, visit this url: This built-in tool is called GraphiQL and is another secret power of Gatsby. GraphQL is similar to REST: it's a way to query data. But with GraphQL, you can interact with your data much more easily. GraphiQL (a visual IDE for GraphQL) can show us some of these tricks. On the left panel, try typing the following: This might look a bit like JSON but it's not. It's a new query language that I think one day will largely replace REST as a way of communicating with APIs. What did you get when you pressed ctrl + enter in GraphiQL? You hopefully will have seen your WordPress posts and page on the right-hand side of the screen. We are actually going to use this query in our next step, so keep it handy! You might want to see what other data you can get with GraphiQL while you're here. If you want to do that, try moving the cursor around and typing either ctrl + space and / or ctrl + enter. That will reveal other groups of content. So, we now have content in Gatsby. Next, we need to display it. Display our posts Gatsby development 404 page showing all of our WordPress posts For this next step we're going to be making use of the gatsby-node.js file. gatsby-node.js is a file you can use to interact with Gatsby's "Node API". Here you can control how your site is generated and create pages, posts and more. We're going to write some instructions here to tell Gatsby what to do with our data: This code creates pages from our GraphQL query and for each page it'll use a template we've defined (/src/templates/post.js). So next, we need to create that file! Create post template Inside the /src/ folder, create a folder called templates and a file inside that's called post.js. Add to it this code: This uses a different GraphQL query to get data about the specific post it's been fed by the gatsbynode.js file, then uses React to render that out into the browser. If you want to quickly see a list of all your posts, you can type http://localhost:8000/a into your browser's address bar. This will take you to a development 404 page, which lists all of your posts. Click on one to visit it! Next steps We've scratched the surface of how to use WordPress as a headless CMS and I hope I've introduced you to some interesting concepts and tools that you might be able to use and experiment with in the future. There's a lot more to this story and my colleagues and I have blogged about it extensively at Indigo Tree. I've also written more on my personal blog, Delicious Reverie. Please keep in touch with me via those channels and on Twitter to hear more exciting developments in the world of headless CMS! This article was originally published in issue 308 of net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 308 here or subscribe here. Related articles: 40 brilliant WordPress tutorials 6 top tips for CRO success in WordPress 10 great WordPress plugins for designers View the full article

It’s obvious that marketing campaigns for the same movie are going to vary across different parts of the world. And the history of movie poster designs has thrown up some dramatic examples. The official Hollywood versions aren't always as good as they should be (in fact, last year we asked if movie posters were in a design crisis), so you might not be all that surprised to find that some foreign posters for Hollywood movies manage to improve on the original. However, for every great example is another that shows a little less care, or misses the point. And there are some movie posters that are just plain ugly. Here, we take a lot at some of the best examples of movie posters worldwide, and a few of the worst. Click the icon in the top-right of each poster to enlarge it. The good Historically, local distributors have been given free reign to promote Hollywood movies in national markets however they see fit. Here are some of the most artful and compelling examples from the last five decades of movie history. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962): Cuba Half a century on, this Cuban poster was celebrated in a recent exhibition Following the story of an ageing former actress who holds her paraplegic ex-movie star sister captive, 1962’s 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?' attracted most attention in the States for bringing together two actresses who were bitter rivals: Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. The US movie poster, understandably, focused on this controversy. But in Cuba, cinema-goers were less interested in the gossip than the film itself, and so poster designer René Azcuy got to create something very different. This beautiful design was recently on display at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, as part of an exhibition titled From Hollywood to Havana: Five Decades of Cuban Posters Promoting U.S. Films. The Godfather (1972): Cuba This Cuban poster for The Godfather cleverly combines the main themes of the Mafia movie Another Cuban design that’s still feted and collected decades on, this movie poster for Francis Ford Coppola’s mafia classic beautifully combines its themes of tradition, family, religion and deadly violence. It was the creation of graphic designer Antonio Pérez González Ñiko, who was also broadly instrumental in the creation of Cuban revolutionary posters in the 1960s and 1970s. Jaws (1975): Czechoslovakia This minimalist interpretation of Jaws uses pointillism to great effect Back in the days of the Cold War, the modern day Czech Republic and Slovakia were one nation under Communist rule. With every aspect of life under strict government control, local artists were tasked with creating promotional posters for movie screenings in a way that complied with Soviet art, often without actually seeing the film in question. Many of the posters they produced were laughingly bad, but history records a few real gems, such as this pointillism-inspired take on Spielberg’s classic 1975 shark tale, Jaws. We love the cool minimalism of the graphic, and the subtle use of typography to suggest the passage of the deadly creature through the water. Star Wars (1977): Russia This Russian Star Wars poster presents a unique interpretation of the main villain Another Communist-era movie poster, this Russian poster for the first Star Wars movie, by Yuri Bokser and Alexander Chantsev, bears very little relation to the actual film. But at the same time, it’s a stunningly beautiful and eye-catching piece of surrealism that certainly conveys the sinister feel of the main villain, even if it’s way off base representationally (spoiler alert: Darth Vader is not a cat). Carrie (1976): Spain The Spanish poster for Carrie takes a subtle and artful approach 1976’s Carrie was a groundbreaking horror based on a Stephen King novel that beautifully translated teenage angst into supernatural gore and violence. While the US movie poster aimed to shock and sensationalise, this design for the Spanish market takes a subtler, and thus much more engaging approach. Beautifully composed, and with an original and eye-catching colour palette, this design was created by acclaimed French poster artist Jouineau Bourduge. The Terminator (1984): Poland The clash between stark black-and-white and colourful surrealism works well here The so-called 'Polish School' of movie posters during the 1950s-1980s was responsible for some incredible artwork, but typically they were way over the top and bore little relation to the film itself. This classic design by Jakub Erol, however, is an exception. Its combination of stark monochrome simplicity, neo-futurist font and a splash of colourful surrealism all adds up to an evocative design that brilliantly conveys the atmosphere of the first Terminator movie. Short Circuit 2 (1988): Poland The Polish poster for Short Circuit 2 is defiantly European in style Short Circuit 2 is a delightfully cheesy 1980s romp about a man and his robot, but in retrospect the official US movie poster looks a little shabbily put-together. Much more to our tastes is this gorgeous creation by Jakub Erol, which takes the vibrant energy of the kids’ movie and puts it through an Eastern European art filter. Okay, the end result is slightly bonkers but hey, the film is too. The Sixth Sense (1999): Japan This poster for The Sixth Sense evokes the sinister atmosphere of J-Horror Japanese movie fans continually complain that the domestic versions of American movie posters are clunkily done, with too much text, and often missing the point of the movie, or trying to sell it in a way that its content doesn’t justify. Here’s a rare exception, though, in the movie poster to promote M Night Shyamalan's spooky 1990s classic. It arguably improves on the US version, by combining the main graphic with a fuzzy, black and white image and a creepy countdown device in a way that (much like the film itself) summons the tropes of the Japanese horror tradition. Sex and the City (2008): Poland The Polish poster for Sex and the City takes a very different approach than the original marketing One of the biggest TV hits of the 1990s, US sitcom Sex and the City moved to the big screen in the 2000s, and the movie was promoted in suitably glamorous, glitzy and over-the-top style. Poster designer Andrzej Krajewski, however, stripped all that back for the Polish audience, creating this bawdy design, infused with a subtle echo of Cubism, which has since become a collectors’ item. Ant-Man (2015): Russia Ant-Man is shown shrinking in a subtle but effective way, in this Russian movie poster Following a man who can shrink down to molecular size, Ant-Man is challenging to explain to the uninitiated in a single visual shot. This Russian poster takes an original approach, featuring successive shrinking versions of Ant-Man in a way that echoes the tradition of the matryoshka (Russian stacking dolls). It combines this with monochrome background images of the other main characters, and overall the design manages to pack in a huge amount of detail within a simple, geometric whole. Kong: Skull Island (2017): Japan The Japanese poster for Kong: Skull Island is gloriously OTT When you go to see a movie like Kong: Skull Island, the latest reboot of the King Kong franchise, you’re looking for one thing: to disengage your brain and enjoy a couple of hours of fast-paced, breathless action. While the original US movie posters were quite muted and restrained, this hand-drawn Japanese design goes all-out and packs in as much explosive monster mayhem as you could ever expect in one image. In the wrong hands, this could have ended up a chaotic mess, but legendary Japanese artist Yuji Kaida has fused all the elements together into a perfect whole that’s fizzing with kinetic energy; a truly OTT masterpiece. The bad At Creative Bloq, we're all about celebrating good design, and not generally in the habit of slagging off fellow creatives. That said, though, there are couple of examples of bad movie posters we couldn't help but include in our list... Ghostbusters (1984): Czechoslovakia Incredibly, this is actually a poster for the lovable 1980s comedy A true 1980s classic, Ghostbusters was a fun comedy about a group of New Yorkers who fight ghosts like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia, art director Petr Poš presumably didn’t get a chance to see it before creating this hauntingly surreal, sinisterly kitsch poster, which looks absolutely zero per cent like the film it’s supposed to represent. 12 Years a Slave (2013): Italy From this poster, you'd think that Brad Pitt was the main character in 12 Years a Slave 12 Years a Slave is an adaptation of the 1853 slave narrative memoir by Solomon Northup. The main character, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, appears in almost every scene. But you wouldn’t be able to tell that from the Italian poster, which minimises him in favour of a giant picture of Brad Pitt, whose role in the film is minor. This poster, and a similar one featuring Michael Fassbender, attracted a storm of controversy online; another of the actors, Lupita Nyong’o, boycotted the Italian premiere in protest; and the Italian distributors quickly apologised and withdrew the offending marketing material. It’s not the only foreign movie poster to attract complaints about so-called ‘whitewashing’: the Chinese poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens generated similar controversy for minimising black actor John Boyega. The ugly However good the film is, some promotional material is just offensive to the eyes. We'll round off our list of global movie posters with a couple of the most egregious examples. American Werewolf in London (1981): Japan This Japanese poster for American Werewolf in London is just offensively bad An American Werewolf in London was a horror comedy by John Landis about two US students, David and Jack, who are attacked by a werewolf while on a backpacking holiday in England. It’s a classic movie that received critical acclaim across the board, and is considered a milestone in the comedy horror genre for its innovative makeup and effects. It deserved much better, in short, than this Japanese poster, with its crazed, cartoon stylings that are more suggestive of the basest forms of manga porn. Muppet Movie (1979): Poland Youngsters probably ran a mile at the sight of this poster by Waldemar Swierzy "Mummy! The monster is scaring me! Make it stop! Make it STOP!!!" Related articles: 26 top movie title sequences 16 most imaginative movie wallpapers The 10 best stamp designs inspired by TV and movies View the full article

Copic Markers appeared on my radar almost two years ago and I haven’t looked back since. It was around the time I started my Instagram page, and my followers could see how the collection of five markers was growing slowly and how much could be achieved with just a few pens. For my ink drawings, I often limit my usage of markers; a few colours can create refreshing works, while using too many can have the opposite effect. I’m proud and happy to be able to inspire over 600,000 followers with my daily drawings. Working in the office and studying during the day, I know how hard it is to find the energy and motivation to draw after work or school, but I try to tell everyone to never give up their passions. I started out by spending a few minutes every evening on sketching, but the joy that finished image brings me is so strong that these days I can spend the whole night drawing without noticing! Each colour is featured in no more than three elements. This adds rhythm and harmony to the painting. Asia Ladowska For this workshop I challenged myself to come up with a simple character design, mostly to focus on and demonstrate how I use Copic Markers, but don’t be deceived! The character and the pose may be simple, but I equipped this girl with accessories and details that add to her personality. At the first glance she may look innocent and harmless, but then you notice a faint smile and one lifted eyebrow complemented by a little patch on her jaw, a sabre cat skull design on her top and claw-like earrings. Then you realise that she’s up to no good. Blue colours calm the painting and pink glasses add to a dreamlike atmosphere. The palette is limited to three main colours: blue, black and pink. If you look closely, they not only work well together, but they’re also composed in harmony wherever I’ve added them to the paper. Each colour is featured in no more than three elements: blue (hair, blouse and rose); pink (glasses, sleeves and material at the bottom of the page); black (her top and the two ribbons tying her twin ponytails). This adds rhythm and harmony to the painting. In addition to the step-by-step breakdown, my video for this workshop (above) also reveals some tips on how I achieve my smooth marker blends. Be sure to check it out! 01. Experiment with sketches Make the time to experiment with sketches It’s okay to spend time developing ideas – sketching them out for a while before developing a final drawing. On a good day, it can take five minutes to draw what I want, when hours of labour won’t bring the same fresh and satisfying result. Take your time and keep sketches loose. 02. Incorporate different media Play around with the image to iron out errors Hello Photoshop! At this stage I’d usually choose my favourite messy sketch, scan and open it in Photoshop CC. Here, I change the image to black and white and make use of the Liquify tool. Flipping it horizontally reveals some mistakes in the drawing. 03. Size matters! Time to supersize your image My sketches are tiny because it’s easier to control the character’s proportions. It also stops me from adding a lot of details at the beginning of the process. I scale the design to A4 size and print out to then transfer to a smooth watercolour paper using a light box. 04. Create first layer of ink Illustrating in Sepia is a safe choice Before inking, I make some tweaks and add details with pencil, and then put down a thin line mostly with the Sepia Copic Multiliner. Sepia is a safe choice because almost all other colours can cover it in the second stage of inking. Note that ink fades when used with markers, so there’s no need to overwork the line art at this stage. 05. Build colour Start from light colours and work down to darker shades Alcohol markers tend to pick up ink that’s already on the paper, so it’s best to start from the lightest parts of the composition and build up darker colours gradually. The tip will always find a chance to pick up dark ink and create smudges. Bearing this in mind, I start colouring the skin first. 06. Decide on the colour palette Pick and choose your colour scheme with Photoshop Photoshop comes in handy again! Digital software makes it easy for me to try out a range of possibilities and colour combinations, to the degree where I almost decide to use the colours I don’t have as markers! When I’m working out a colour palette, I try digital colouring first or draw little five-minute thumbnails on paper and colour them in traditionally. In the end I settle on the blue–pink–black palette. 07. Colour the character's hair Blend your colours before they dry I love using vibrant gradient colours to paint hair! Copic markers can blend seamlessly and to achieve this I regularly switch between markers, using a lighter colour to create smooth blends. It takes some patience, but it’s worth it. I would recommend blending your markers while the ink is still wet. 08. Use the magic of Copic blending A broad nib is great for creating a fabric texture I’m using the same colours for both the hair and the blouse tied around her waist. I use the side with a brush nib for her hair, which enables me to blend softly. For the blouse I use the broad nib of the markers to create a realistic material look. Using markers with different tips makes it possible to create a range of textures. 09. Design accessories Accessories help to bring the composition together This is the fun part of the process. Her top shows a cute sabre-toothed cat’s skull with cat ears. Adding a flower makes the cat look cute and complements my colour composition, which was missing a blue accent. Her glasses, earrings, patch on her jaw and bows all come together to create a dangerously sweet character! 10. Add second layer of ink A second layer can help bring back buried line work Now I apply a second layer of line work, using various colours of multiliners. Varying the line thickness keeps things interesting. The first layer has already faded with the amount of alcohol and ink involved. Time to bring it back! 11. Add final touches Coloured pencils are perfect for subtle finishing touches I use coloured pencils to make barely noticeable changes to the drawing, such as deepening the shadows and adding a blush to the character’s cheeks. Coloured pencils complement markers well and can cover small imperfections and uneven blending. This article originally appeared in issue 163 of ImagineFX, the world's leading magazine for digital artists. Subscribe here. Related articles: How to draw a character in pen and ink 9 top tips for drawing in black and white 17 stunning examples of ink drawings View the full article

The VR Awards has announced the winners of its second ever awards ceremony. On 16 October a host of the biggest names in virtual reality gathered at 8 Northumberland Avenue for a glamorous evening organised by VR Bound, celebrating phenomenal accomplishments in the industry. 3D Artist was invited along to the ceremony, which was hosted by comedian Phil Wang. The long list of esteemed guests included Oculus, HTC, Bethesda, Google, Jaunt VR, Framestore, Neurogaming Limited, AWE and REWIND. Over 400 nominations were received internationally; 105 finalists then underwent a rigorous judging process from a panel of 40 industry experts. The evening’s events saw the following 12 winners take to the stage – celebrating work including an eerie experience from Flight School and cutting-edge film from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. VR Headset of the Year: HTC Vive Pro VR Game of the Year: The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone by Cloudhead Games Ltd VR Experience of the Year: Manifest 99 by Flight School VR Film of the Year: CARNE y ARENA by ILMxLAB VR Marketing of the Year: Coco VR by Magnopus Rising VR Company of the Year: Neurogaming Limited Innovative VR Company of the Year: Ultrahaptics VR Education of the Year: HoloLAB Champions by Schell Games VR Healthcare of the Year: Virti Out-of-home VR Entertainment of the Year: Star Wars™: Secrets of the Empire by ILMxLAB and The VOID VR Social Impact Award: Window to our World by VISYON & The Cornerstone Partnership VR Architecture and Real Estate of the Year: Bostoen – Creating your dream house before it’s even built by Nanopixel Red carpet highlights, backstage interviews with the winners, clips of the nominated projects, and images from the night are all available at awards.vrbound.com. Read more: How to bring a 2D character to life in VR The best VR headsets for 2018 Level up your VR art View the full article

Even when we finish school, we should never stop learning. The continuation of your professional development is what eduCBA Professional Training: Lifetime Membership is all about. This collection offers more than 900 courses on all different subjects, from entrepreneurship to marketing to sales. No matter what field you're in, you can enhance your knowledge and further your skills with this extensive video library. New content gets added all the time, and having a lifetime membership means you'll have access to all the new content that shows up on the platform. When you finish courses, you'll earn certificates of completion to help you track your progress. For just $49, get eduCBA Professional Training: Lifetime Membership. Related articles: Take your freelance career to the next level 12 tips to turbocharge your design career 5 articles to improve your web design career View the full article

Walmart has plenty of TVs for sale. If you're looking for a cheap TV that won't break the bank but you're not where to start, you've come to the right place. Here, we've found the best cheap TVs on sale at Walmart right now. Even better, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 just a few weeks away, we're about to see a swell of Walmart Black Friday deals on TVs – and our cutting-edge price comparison will pull the best Walmart TV deals in below, so you can be sure you're getting the lowest price. But, why Walmart? Well, Walmart is one of the biggest retailers in the world, and that means it has a huge selection of TVs to choose from. Because of its size, it also means it can aggressively price cheap TVs , which makes it one of the best places to shop for a cheap TV. When buying a cheap TV from Walmart, or any store, there are a few things you should consider. First of all, you'll want to think about resolution. The vast majority of cheap TVs are 1080p, and for most people that will be enough. TV shows, Netflix streaming, console games and Blu-rays all take advantage of this resolution (also known as Full High Definition), and the technology has been around long enough now that you can get a very good 1080p TV for cheap. Some cheap TVs may offer less resolution, such as 1080i or 720p. These will be labelled as High Definition, HD or HD Ready. These will be even cheaper, and while they might seem like a steal, we'd recommend caution, as they won't give you as good a viewing experience as a 1080p Full HD TV. Cheap 4K TVs are also becoming increasingly common. While there are some good deals to be had, in some cases cheap 4K TVs cut a few too many corners, and you're better off getting a better 1080p set for your money. Also, if you don't have a 4K Netflix subscription, 4K-capable games console or Blu-ray player, then you'll not see the benefit of 4K. However, getting a cheap 4K TV now does at least mean you're future-proof for when 4K content becomes more readily available. Vizio has been making a name for itself as a manufacturer who specialises in budget TVs that offer good image quality and features despite their low price. The hard work has paid off, as the Vizio D50-F1 is our pick for the best cheap TV from Walmart. It delivers high-quality streaming via a built-in Chromecast and supports 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, which helps reduce buffering times. Even better, Walmart has dramatically reduced its price tag from its original list price. Samsung is a brilliant brand when it comes to TVs - especially 4K TVs - and while its products are a bit more pricey than its competitors, if you have the budget to spend a bit more, then it's well worth it. Take the Samsung UN55NU7200. This is a great 55-inch 4K TV with HDR (High Dynamic Range), which makes colors even more impressive and vibrant. You get some excellent features that don't often appear on cheap TVs, making this a worthwhile purchase. If you have no interest in 4K content, and you don't want a huge room-filling TV, then the TCL FHD 40S305 Smart TV is a great choice for a brilliant price. At 40-inches it's enough for smaller rooms, and the 1080p display means you're not paying for a resolution you won't use. The price is extremely tempting, and it has a built-in Roku device, allowing you to stream online content direct to the TV. If you want the absolute cheapest TV Walmart has to offer (while also offering decent image quality and screen size), then the Sceptre 43-inch 1080P LED TV X435BV-F is a great choice. Not only is it incredibly cheap, but it offers good enough image quality to keep you happy. It doesn't come with smart TV features, but it's a good cheap choice for a second (or third) TV to put in a bedroom or spare room. At 43-inches, it's not a large TV, but neither is it too small either. For many people, this size will be just right. Smart TVs offer built-in apps for streaming TV shows and movies via services such as Hulu and Netflix, as well as games, news websites and more. Smart TVs don't have to be expensive either, as the Sony KDL40W650D proves. Sony has built a brilliant smart TV platform that allows you to easily access a large number of apps and services, with an attractive interface. This TV has a brilliant build quality that Sony is well known for, it's just a shame that at 40-inches it's a bit on the small size. If you're looking for the best large screen cheap TV at Walmart, then the Sharp LC-55Q7030U is the TV to get. It features a hefty 55-inch screen, as well as 4K resolution and HDR. For screens of this size, 4K resolution really is worthwhile, and the HDR support is a great touch. Best of all, despite its large size and high resolution, it's still an impressively cheap TV from Walmart. For the price you're getting a large TV that is future-proof for the next few years thanks to its 4K and HDR support. The RCA RLDEDV3289 is the best small cheap TV at Walmart. While 32-inches might not seem that small, compared to many modern TVs that have screens well above 40-inches, it seems positively tiny. This small TV not only saves space thanks to its small screen, it also has a built-in DVD player, which means this is the perfect TV for places where you don't have a lot of room, such as camper vans and mobile homes. Of course, it's also nice and cheap as well. Also read: The best cheap Walmart laptops in 2018 The best camera for photography The 10 top fictional brands from film and TV View the full article

Welcome to our pick of the best cameras on sale at Walmart in 2018. In this guide we're not only look at your standard digital cameras, but also Polaroid instant cameras, security cameras for your home or office, and dash cameras for placing in your car. And the good news? With Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 so close, we're expecting hundreds of Walmart Black Friday deals on cameras soon. As soon as they drop, our price tracking tool will pull them in below, so you can be sure you're getting the cheapest price possible on your new Walmart camera. Walmart is one of the biggest retailers in the world, and that means it has a brilliant range of products on offer – and at very competitive prices. So, if you're thinking of buying the best waterproof camera for your holidays, or an affordable, cheap DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) for taking snaps of the family, then this guide will be for you. Buying the best camera for your needs doesn't have to be an expensive or confusing ordeal. Here are the best cameras you can buy at Walmart right now... The Nikon D7500 is our pick for the best DSLR camera at Walmart overall. It offers a brilliant balance of features and affordability. Sure, there's more accomplished DSLRs at Walmart, but they are a lot more expensive. The Nikon D7500 packs in an excellent 20.9MP sensor into a compact and affordable body. Despite its relatively inexpensive price, the D7500 still offers a wide range of features, such as 4K video capture, tilt-angle touchscreen and 8fps burst shooting for high-speed action shots. If you're looking for the ultimate DSLR at Walmart, then the Nikon D850 is the one you'll want. This is our pick for the very best high-end DSLR camera at Walmart, which means it's more expensive than the Nikon D7500, but for serious photographers the extra cash is well worth it. It comes with a massive 45.4MP sensor that delivers incredible images that are rich with details, and offers exceptional noise performance even at high ISOs. This is a DSLR camera that comes with more features than we can list here, and a robust build quality that allows it to cope with even the most demanding of locations. OK, so this list has started off pretty Nikon-heavy, but we can't argue with the Japanese company's brilliant products. Not only does it offer the best all-round and high-end DSLR cameras at Walmart, with the D3400 it also offers the best cheap DSLR at Walmart. It comes with a brilliantly sharp 24MP APS-C sensor and a very good retracting kit lens. Overall it offers superb value for money, with features and performance that put some of its more expensive rivals to shame. Its simple button layout, along with its cheap price, means the D3400 is perfect for beginners. Fujifilm's X-T3 is our pick for the best mirrorless camera at Walmart. It improves on its predecessor in pretty much every single way, with a new 26.1MP X-Trans sensor benefiting from a higher resolution and better noise control. With 2.16-million phase detect AF pixels, X-T3 tracks focus smoothly as well. Add in touchscreen control, 4K video and 11fps burst mode, as well as a stylishly-designed body, and you've got one of the best cameras on sale at Walmart in 2018. If you're looking for the best waterproof camera Walmart has to offer, than the FinePix XP130 is for you. It's the perfect choice for family holidays at the beach, with a robust, waterproof casing and some nice features, such as a variety of fun filters to liven up your snaps and Wi-Fi connectivity for easy uploading and sharing to social media sites. It's not the most rugged of waterproof cameras, and the simple-to-use button layout might frustrate more experienced photographers, but if you want a simple point and shoot compact camera for the beach, this is a brilliant choice. The Netgear Arlo Pro 2 is the best security camera at Walmart. It's a high-end set-up that offers a professional-quality security system for your home or business. The Arlo Pro 2 comes with a hub and two cameras. The cameras are capable of recording crystal-clear 1080p HD video, and can work either indoors or outdoors, thanks to their IP65 waterproof rating and strong magnetic mounts. It also features an 8x digital zoom, a 'smart siren' and a powerful Night Vision mode, giving you peace of mind when away from home. You can view the cameras through a smartphone app or web interface. If you're looking for an instant camera with a huge dose of retro charm, then the Polaroid OneStep 2 is definitely for you. With a design based on the original 1970 OneStep, this updated camera is just as easy to use as Polaroid's original. As soon as you press the button, it prints out your photo on the classic square file (Polaroid I-Type). The film is a bit more expensive than its instant camera rivals, but for pure nostalgia and excellent photo quality, the OneStep 2 is definitely worth buying from Walmart. Garmin is a well known brand for action cameras and fitness trackers, and its applied its experience to the Dash Cam 55, creating a feature-packed dash camera with brilliant image quality. It's by far the best dash camera for your car at Walmart, and thanks to its 1440p video capture at 30 frames per second, video footage is brilliant, and the 122 degree viewing angle is also decent, giving you a wide view of the road. It has a built-in GPS unit, so all footage is stamped with time and location, which can save a lot of time and effort if you are involved in an accident. Also read: The best camera for creatives in 2018 The 10 best point-and-shoot cameras in 2018 The best camera phones in 2018 View the full article

Want to buy a cheap Walmart laptop but not sure which machine to choose? You're in the right place: our guide to the best cheap laptops at Walmart will help you decide. (And with hundreds of Black Friday Walmart deals just a few weeks away, you can be sure you're getting the lowest prices over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals period – our price tracking system will pull the best deals in below.) Happily, these days, buying a low-cost laptop doesn't mean you have to settle for less. Walmart offers some very competitive deals on a good selection of brilliant cheap laptops – but you will have to manage your expectations. At this budget price point, you won't get the best laptop – it won't be the most powerful or have the latest technology. However, there are some brilliant laptops with a slightly older spec that are much cheaper than newer models. To help your decision, we've listed the best cheap laptops that Walmart currently sells, so you can buy safe in the knowledge that you're getting a great machine at a great price. The Acer Swift 3 offers plenty of power considering it's low, low price, which makes it our pick of the best cheap laptop Walmart sells for creatives and designers. It comes in a variety of configurations, which means you can pick a model that suits your needs perfectly, without you paying extra for features you'll never need. Definitely worth considering when looking for a new budget laptop. At the higher end of the cheap Walmart laptop scale, this budget Surface device is easily one of the best low-budget laptop/tablet PCs Walmart currently sells. It's thin, light, portable and elegant without sacrificing the ability to get some work done, especially for creative people. It's beautifully designed, supports stylus inputs for digital art, and runs Windows 10. We's say it's well worth upping your budget if you can to get hold of this. The Lenovo Yoga Book, and the Windows 10 version of it in particular, is a brilliant cheap laptop for designers and creatives. It has a keyboard that doubles as a Wacom touch panel, which means it's great for digital art, and it has enough power to run full Windows 10 programs, giving you plenty of tools to work on your creative endeavours. As the name suggests, it's a flexible and versatile device that can be used as a laptop or tablet-like device, and best of all, it's impressively cheap If you want a really cheap laptop from Walmart, but don't want to compromise on style or performance, than the Acer Chromebook 14 is a brilliant choice. Like other Chromebooks, it doesn't run Windows, and instead uses ChromeOS. This is a lightweight operating system made by Google that means the Acer Chromebook 14 can use lower powered (and cheaper) hardware, but still run brilliantly. It means you can't use Windows applications, but you have access to the huge Google Play Store, which comes with loads of apps for creatives and designers. If you're looking for a cheap laptop for under $100 from Walmart, then your options are limited, as there are very few that sell that cheaply, yet are any good. This is one of them, and while it is technically an Android tablet, it comes with a physical keyboard that allows you to use it as a laptop. While that means it doesn't run Windows 10, or any Windows app, it gives you access to loads of Android apps through the Google Play Store. For less than $100, that's not bad at all. The excellent Asus Chromebook Flip C302 is a brilliant cheap laptop from Walmart, and another Chromebook that combines premium features in an affordable package. For the price you get an Intel Core processor, full 1080p display, touchscreen, backlit keyboard and USB-C port. It can be turned into a tablet-like device, giving you more flexibility when doing creative work, and as we mentioned earlier, you also get access to a huge range of Android apps. If you like the idea - and price - of a Chromebook, but want something that's a little bit larger, and more comfortable, to work on, then the Acer Chromebook 15 is a brilliant choice. It’s rare that a laptop can truly provide all-day battery, but this cheap laptop can last an astonishing 17 hours – on top of providing enough power to get your work done online. If you’re looking for a 15 inch Chromebook that will give you the most bang for your buck from Walmart, look no further. Also read: The best laptops to buy at Walmart right now The best laptops for graphic design in 2018 The best drawing tablet at Walmart View the full article

Looking for some great Walmart Black Friday deals this year? We can help. The retailer is well-known for its Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, so if you’re thinking about doing some Walmart Black Friday shopping this year, read on for our pro tips and tricks for finding the nest Walmart Black Friday deals – and making the most of this year’s Black Friday Walmart sale. When will the 2018 Walmart Black Friday ad be released? Walmart usually drops its Black Friday ad roughly two weeks before Thanksgiving. Last year, we saw the Walmart ad scan on Wednesday 8 November, and in 2016 it was Wednesday 9 November. Based on the previous years, we expect to see the Walmart ad on Wednesday 7 November. Walmart Black Friday opening hours: when will they be? Based on previous years, we expect Walmart to open its doors on Thanksgiving at 6pm – and for most stores to be open all day Friday. That said, for the last two years the retailer has also released its doorbuster deals online at 12:01am EST on Thanksgiving. We expect this to happen again this year, so if you’re not a big fan of crowds, you can still bag the best Walmart Black Friday deals stress-free from the comfort of your sofa. If you’re not a turkey-induced coma, that is. Walmart Black Friday best deals: what we expect to see in 2018 As usual, we would expect some of Walmart’s best Black Friday deals to come in the form of smartphones, 4K TVs, Xbox and PlayStation bundles – and don’t forget free shipping. Walmart will offer free two-day shipping on any orders over $35. Here are a few areas in particular where we expect to see some decent discounts: Apple iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR: We predict that Walmart will offer a $300 Walmart Gift Card when activating a new instalment plan. Samsung Galaxy S9, S9+, Note9: We think Walmart will also offer a $300-$350 Walmart Gift Card when activating a new instalment plan. 4K TVs: We expect Walmart to be selling 55-inch 4K TVs from respected brands for around $200. Last year we saw a 4K LG 49-inch smart set for $328, and a Samsung 65-inch curved 4K smart set for $848. Chromecasts: We think we’ll see the Chromecast from $20 this year. We saw it for $20 in 2014 and 2015, $25 in 2016, and $20 again in 2017. Power banks: We saw 20K Power Banks on sale for $15 in 2016 and 2017, and would expect to see the same Black Friday deal at Walmart again this year. For a better idea of the best Walmart Black Friday deals this year, take a look at the last few year’s Walmart black Friday Ads. 2017 Walmart Black Friday Ad 2016 Walmart Black Friday Ad 2015 Walmart Black Friday Ad 2014 Walmart Black Friday Ad How to get the best Walmart Black Friday deals in 2018 The best way to get the best Walmart Black Friday or Cyber Monday deal is, firstly, to do a bit of research beforehand. Know what you want to buy, which specs are good and which accessories you do – and don’t – need. Retailers often make their money with add-on accessory sales, so go in with your eyes open about what you do and don’t need. Remember that supplies are limited. Doorbusters are only available as long as stocks last, and the best Walmart Black Friday deals will disappear quickly. But this is where your early research will pay off: often, the biggest discounts (particularly on Walmart Black Friday TV deals) come on off-brand models, so make sure you assess the specs before pulling out your wallet. Who are you buying the product for, and what do they need? If you're buying a TV for your kids, for example, a great Walmart deal on an off-brand product could represent excellent value for money. A huge discount on an off-brand product for professional use, however, might not end up as good value as it initially seemed. We'll say it again: always check the specs. Another good tip is to check for Walmart gift cards and online credit. The retailer regularly bundles electronics deals with both of these, so you might be due some money back with a purchase. And remember: the best Walmart Black Friday deals tend to drop not on Black Friday, but on Thanksgiving. There are usually twice the amount of quality offerings on Thanksgiving – and nearly double the total deals – than Black Friday. So if you're looking for the best Walmart Black Friday deals this year, our best advice is to start a day earlier. Stick with Creative Bloq for the best Walmart Black Friday deals in 2018 Our team will be working around the clock to bring you the very best Walmart Black Friday deals for designers, artists and creatives, so bookmark this page and check back regularly in November. Also read: The best Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals Adobe Black Friday 2018: the deals we expect to see this year The best Microsoft Surface deals in 2018 View the full article

The update includes one critical flaw in Oracle GoldenGate with a CVSS 3.0 score of 10.0. View the full article

Looking to buy the best monitor for photo editing that you can? You’re in the right place. No matter your skill level, we’ve gathered together the very best photo-editing monitors right now, for all budgets, in this buying guide. The 5 best laptops for photo editing Sign up for Adobe CC now Whether you’re a professional photographer or graphic designer, a student or an enthusiast who just appreciates the best possible picture quality, you need a display that will bring your creative ideas to life. Colour accuracy – the conformance of a display’s imaging capabilities according to various globally defined specifications – affects whether you can expect an image to look the same on all kinds of devices. And for professionals, that matters a lot. An eye-catching book or magazine cover depends heavily on whether the artist is aiming for a deep red or muddy orange, and that job becomes much harder with a poorly calibrated, inaccurate display. And while it’s still wise to invest in a monitor calibration tool, the best monitors for photo editing will have excellent colour accuracy straight out of the box. 45 best photo apps and photo editing software You'll also want to consider brightness and contrast levels: similarly, these give you the best possible perspective on black and white levels in an image. Additionally, there are now a whole lot of display form factors to choose from, with a range of sizes that support 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution. Ultra-wide curved monitors will give you masses of space to work in and the thinnest possible bezels, but not everyone. But if you opt for one, remember to set the monitor up at an appropriate distance and height from your sitting position. Either way, there’s a lot of choice out there. To help you decide which is best for you, here’s our pick of the best monitors for photo editing… The BenQ 27-inch SW2700PT display is a more affordable colour-accurate monitor for photo editing than some of the 32-inch behemoths on the market. It requires less desktop space to boot, but without sacrificing a high standard of image quality – making it one of the best monitors for photo editing you can get right now. It features a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution using the same 14-bit look-up table and offering the same 99% AdobeRGB coverage you find on displays from other manufacturers that can cost more than twice as much. Similarly, you get hardware calibration support and it comes with a nifty shading hood to eliminate glare from ambient light. While it may not support 4K resolution, the image quality is very good for digital photography. The SW2700PT is an excellent purchase if you want a professional display without the high prices of larger 4K screens. The 32-inch Asus PA329Q is a 4K monitor with a fairly hefty price tag: it's considerably more than other displays of its size. However, you can literally see where this extra money goes when you first catch a glimpse of its sumptuous image, thanks to its full support for Rec.709, sRGB and AdobeRGB (99.5%) colour spaces. It features proper 10-bit colour depth (as opposed to cheaper 8-bit monitors which use trick called frame reference counting to simulate 10-bit colour depth) with a 14-bit colour look-up table. Features-wise, it has a lot to offer as well, with a three-port USB 3 hub, four HDMI inputs, two DisplayPort inputs and full tilt, swivel and rotate capability. Best of all, it has a joystick to quickly navigate through the on-screen menus, vastly speeding up the time to flick through all the different preset colour options or make changes to the display brightness, gamma or contrast. Eizo trades heavily on a reputation for being the ultimate professional display brand. When you first see the clarity, vivacity and brightness of an Eizo display, it’s immediately obvious why they’re so much more expensive than other monitors and cost far more than most of us spend on an entire PC. The latest version of Eizo’s flagship 31-inch professional monitor, the Eizo ColorEdge CG319X, builds upon its predecessor, using an unmatched 24-bit look-up table for 10-bit colour depth, supporting 99% AdobeRGB, 100% Rec.709 and 98% DCI-P3 colour spaces. It also supports a slightly wider 4K resolution of 4096 x 2160, conforming to the professional DCI 4K standard used by some professional studios. It has a unique built-in hardware colour calibration tool that pops down with a click every time the monitor is power cycled, ensuring the colours remain in sync without needing to use a third-party colorimeter. New to this generation are hybrid-log gamma and perceptual quantisation for working with HDR video – a feature that, again, will be of most interest to studios and freelancers working with high-end imagery. Although most of us will take one look at the price and quickly move on, it should be remembered that the CG319X is a display that’s on another level. It's aimed at a niche professional audience where business demands the best possible colour accuracy, and boy, it sure delivers on this front. If you’re looking for a great monitor for photo editing that fits a more reasonable budget, Dell’s UltraSharp range delivers a great image. This 25-inch UltraSharp U2518D squeezes in under the £300 mark, and although it doesn’t offer the same absolute premium colour reproduction of the priciest displays we’ve suggested, it’s still capable of full sRGB coverage with a quality IPS panel that is accurate to a delta E of less than three. Contrast levels of 1000:1 are some of the best in this price range, with 350 nits of brightness to product a crystal clear image. The response time can go as low as 5ms, making it great for gaming on too – the U2518D makes a good all rounder display whatever you’re using your computer for. This is the best budget photo-editing monitor you can get. The ultra-wide form factor is usually found in displays aimed at gaming or general computer use, so it’s a pleasant surprise to see ViewSonic has stepped in to offer graphic artists a massive 37.5-inch 21:9 display with the VP3881. Ultra-wide displays such as this are like having two smaller monitors together on the desk, without a bezel breaking up the desktop space. It gives you space to have multiple windows open at once, boosting productivity immensely as you can have webpages, file explorers, and multiple editing applications on-screen simultaneously. The image quality isn’t quite in the same league as other displays listed here – it offers 100% sRGB coverage but a slightly narrower AdobeRGB conformity, and the 10-bit colour depth is compensated by frame reference counting. But it has a very complete set of image customisation settings in the on-screen menus that's enough to make the VP3881 a cut above other ultra-wide screens. Acer’s 32-inch colour-accurate 4K display, the ProDesigner PE320QK, is aimed squarely at people who care about professional-grade graphics work and photo editing. It comes with an anti-glare hood to eliminate ambient light that may affect on-screen colour accuracy. And rated at 550 nits brightness, it supports 10-bit colour, covering 100% Rec.709 and 90% DCI-P3 colour spaces. Unlike the other photo-editing monitors here, there are a few extra features that may appeal to gaming use as well, such as a 4ms response time, a few gaming presets in the menus and support for FreeSync adaptive-sync technology (which only works with AMD graphics cards, unfortunately.) If you’re a gamer and a photographer, those extra features could be enough to persuade you that the PE320QK is the only display you’ll ever need. Also read: The 5 best laptops for photo editing right now 45 best photo apps and photo editing software 63 free Photoshop actions View the full article

The flaw affects thousands of servers; but GitHub, a major libssh user, is unaffected. View the full article

The vendor only plans to patch two of the eight impacted devices, according to a researcher. View the full article

It’s fair to say Adobe really has pulled some impressive updates out the bag for Adobe MAX 2018. But, without a doubt, the biggest buzz came on Monday when Adobe chief product manager Scott Belsky introduced Photoshop for iPad. A 15,000-strong crowd went wild as Belsky handed over to product project manager Jenny Lyell, who demonstrated some of the app's capabilities, stating: "This is not a watered down version, this is full Photoshop on the iPad." Sign up for Adobe CC now However, despite the impressive demo, getting any further information about the app, in terms of price and release date, was like getting blood out of a stone. Adobe is keeping a lot of information about Photoshop for iPad close to its chest, but we managed to get a few minutes with Lyell, who gave us a little more insight into this tablet-version of Photoshop… 01. It's taken almost three years to make Approximately three years in the making, Photoshop for iPad came about after two engineers realised user demand via constant online searches for the term Photoshop for iPad. They decided their next challenge would be to see if it was actually possible to get the 28-year-old code base of Photoshop onto a tablet. For years, Adobe had tried it with other apps, including Sketch and other drawing apps, but these didn’t have the code base of Photoshop. So that was the dream, that was the challenge. "The code base for Photoshop is 28 years old, it’s a mammoth," says Lyell. "So how do you even comprehend that?" But a small team at Adobe believed it was possible, and so chatted with their leaders in engineering and product, who gave them the blessing to go work on the project. The project was to be kept quiet in the early stages. "Some people were extremely skeptical in the company and weren’t sure we should be investing in this," says Lyell. Bet those guys feel silly now, huh? 02. The alpha build had just five features As the technical aspects were going on with the development of Photoshop for iPad, Lyell was busy talking to customers, asking them questions like 'why do you actually want it on iPad? What does it help you with, what problem are/will you be solving with this software?' "So much of the product roadmap is influenced by our customers," says Lyell. "Once we saw the life of this happening, we knew that we wanted to preview and announce it. But I didn’t want us to get away from the customers, and so we recruited this small group of people to work on the alpha build. "At this point there were literally only five features in there. We set their expectations, telling them it would be like using Photoshop 1.0, but that we wanted them to run with us, from the beginning, and give us as much feedback as possible so we could make sure that even at the preview stage, the product we were creating was what the users wanted. Diverting from customers' needs, even just slightly early on, could have had huge ramifications. Customers have to be by our side." 03. It can handle hundreds (if not thousands) of layers At a private Apple event, Photoshop for iPad product lead Jenny Lyell delved a little deeper into the app's capabilities As the Adobe design team collected hours and hours of one-on-one interviews, trying to understand user needs, there was a breakthrough moment in the timeline when they got large PSD to open on the iPad. "The whole team was in tears, freaking out," Lyell says. “This is impossible, we thought. But we’d seen it with our own eyes!" So what constitutes a large PSD? "It was hundreds of layers that we got to open," says Lyell. With the same code base as Photoshop on desktop, Photoshop on iPad will open up any size PSD file. When asked if this would present any technical limitations, Lyell told us: "It would affect it just as a massive document on any machine would. So having the biggest single file on your mac would slow you down a few seconds vs a smaller one. Photoshop for iPad will work in a similar way, but we've optimised it a lot in terms of performance and we didn’t want to bring this out until we knew the hardware and software was ready." 04. It won't necessarily feature all your PS favourites If you're expecting to see the full toolset in this app, you'll be disappointed. Instead, the company has armed it with all the core tools users need to do real work in Photoshop. "Photoshop has a dozen different ways you can select an object – the 1.0 functionality is still in the code base!" says Lyell. "So we’re really rethinking how to give users all the core tools they need to do all the work they need, and give them the modern, best version of these tools so that they don’t have to feel any frustrations or inefficiencies." 05. It will feature Adobe's new AI technology Part of the update to Photoshop CC this year includes a new Adobe Sensei selection tool. When asked if Photoshop for iPad will include this, Lyell was quick to confirm. "We definitely want to get the newest Sensei technology in there, so it’s prioritised on the roadmap," she says. Support and pricing Adobe is pretty elusive about release dates and pricing models for Photoshop for iPad. When asked about when creatives can actually get their hands on the app (and trust us, we were persistent), we weren't even able to get a rough estimate as to when this is expected to ship. "It will be available in 2019, and we're still working out the business model in terms of pricing," Lyell said. We also asked whether it will be part of the CC suite or if Adobe is going to offer this as a standalone product and were told "we’re having conversations about that right now". Android users, we didn't forget about you either. When asked if this will be an iPad-only app, Lyell replied with: "Our plan is to extend to as many devices as we can right now. We still trying to sort out what's the best experience, and so are testing the different versions to see what’s optimised and what’s best for performance. We don’t want people having a poor experience, so that information will also come out during the launch." For what will almost certainly be a highly sought-after product, it’s a little frustrating to have no details as to when we can realistically expect this to ship to the masses. That said, 2019 is just around the corner, so let's hope it's sooner rather than later. Read more: Adobe launches video app Premiere Rush CC 13 iPad Pro apps that come alive with Apple Pencil Project Gemini: Adobe announces new digital art app View the full article

Just as responsive web design closed the gap between desktop and mobile sites a few years ago, progressive web app techniques are currently closing the gap between the web and the app world. With user experiences from desktop to mobile apps rapidly converging, it seems as though a much sleeker, more efficient internet is evolving – although inevitably not without some significant changes to its underlying genetic code. How to build a Progressive Web App Evidently there are some significant selective pressures driving this. First of all, creating native apps for every niche isn't necessarily an efficient use of resources: users end up with hundreds of big apps wasting bandwidth and valuable disk space and companies spend a great deal of money creating apps only for them to be abandoned after their first versions. And most of these apps are just driven by web content: information coming from web services or a content management system. The definition of a progressive web app is not concrete. A PWA is just a web app that uses several new APIs and abilities in the web platform using progressive enhancement to offer an app-like experience on every platform with the same code base. It's more a set of best practices and API usage that creates an excellent app-like experience for your users, so it's not like you have or don't have a PWA; it's more like your site is more or less PWA. The ascent of PWAs With PWAs on desktop, responsive web design has a new meaning as we need to support really tiny viewports and offer a widget-based view of our content While the name PWA was coined in 2015 in the article Escaping Tabs Without Losing our Soul by Alex Russell working at Google for the Chrome team, their journey didn't actually start there. We used to have HTML Applications (HTAs), which were created by Microsoft in 1999, along with many other web app platforms from Nokia, BlackBerry and other companies. Then, in 2007, Steve Jobs presented what was at the time the only way to create apps for the original iPhone: PWAs, albeit with a different name. Chrome started from there, improved the APIs a few years later and invented the PWA name. With so many previous failed experiences trying to bring web content to the world of apps, why do we think it'll work now? Well primarily, it's down to the companies that are now working and promoting the technologies behind PWAs, such as Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla, to name but a few. Also, the performance of the web platform reached a point where there is no perceived difference when you compare a well-designed PWA with a native app. Those conditions have never existed before and that's one reason the web community has decided that the time has come for PWAs. PWAs in action today To provide a good user experience for your iOS users you must supply Apple-specific content Today PWAs are fully functional and installable on: Android with most browsers, with Chrome offering the best experience iOS with Safari Chromebooks Windows 10 from the Microsoft Store Feature phones with KaiOS – a fork from Firefox OS – currently available for millions of users mainly in India Support is also coming to macOS, Windows and Linux through Chrome later this year. It's available today as an experimental flag 'Desktop PWA' if you want to try it now. Installation on Windows on Edge without the usage of the store is coming later as well, although no specific time frame is defined. If you reread the list, you can see every platform has or is about to have support for fully installable PWAs in the following months. And because a PWA is just a website with features on top that will be activated only on compatible browsers, we can even say it's compatible with all browsers from its basic functionality. Also, PWAs are currently being generated from most of the CLIs for different frameworks, including the Angular 6+ CLI, React Create App, PWA Starter Kit from Polymer and Preact CLI. Finally, the Ionic Framework team came up with the idea of Capacitor, an open-source Cordova replacement that makes native PWAs possible on every app store. Installation On different browsers, the manual option to install a PWA's icon is different; on Windows 10, it's just an app in the store One of the critical aspects of a PWA is the installation of the app. This process is done in two optional steps: the download and offline storage of the app's files and the icon installation in the OS. Because both steps are optional, you can offer an offline experience in the browser or you can offer an icon without offline installation. But a true PWA should include both: it must be served with TLS under HTTPS and the user will decide if they will use it in the browser or within its own installed icon. Offline and immediate launch The brain of a PWA is the service worker, a JavaScript file installed on the user's device that is responsible for downloading the app's files, storing them into a cache and later serving them when needed. Once the service worker is installed, it acts like a network proxy for every resource that the web app needs: it can decide to fetch it from the network or deliver it from the local cache, which makes the app available offline and also available in just a couple of milliseconds even if the user has connection, emulating a native app launch. In order to install a service worker, your HTML document will need to include something like: That will install the file "sw.js" onto users' devices for the current folder in the current domain – a concept known as the scope. After it is installed, the next visits to any URL within its scope will be managed by that service worker. Let's say we have a PWA with four files: index.html, app.js, app.css and logo.png. The first thing is to install those files into the cache in the sw.js file. Then for the PWA to be always served from the cache, we need to listen for the fetch event within the service worker and decide the cache policy to use, such as cache first with the following snippet. In this case, every time the user accesses the PWA (both from a browser or from an installed icon), the engine will get the files from the cache. An advantage of PWAs versus native apps is that devices needn't download all the files again when there's a change, only the file that has changed with a transparent process. Also, we can still download parts of the app on demand. But the challenge is how do you know which files were updated on the server so you can replace them in the cache? If you don't want to write a low-level service worker to manage this, you can use the open-source library Workbox, which will help you with the generation of the service worker and the resources manifest to update the installed package. Be aware that the files of your PWA will be deleted if there is storage pressure on the device, unless you request Persistent Storage if available: On Chrome and most Android browsers, your app isn't able to use more than five per cent of the available space; on iOS it's 50MiB (near 50MB) per host only; in Edge it's variable according to the total memory size and in Windows Store, it's unlimited. First-class experience Different ways that browsers have to invite the user to install the PWA; on iOS you have to do it manually We have the brain and now it's time for the heart: the web app manifest. The purpose of turning a website into a PWA is not just to ensure it is available quickly or while offline but also to enable it to have its own icon in the OS and offer an entirely standalone experience like any other installed app. The manifest is a JSON file that defines metadata for the PWA used by a browser or an app store in order to define the installation behaviour. The file defines several properties as metadata for your PWA. Each OS will read these properties and try its best to match the experience you prefer. For example, Android will read 'display: standalone' and create a normal app experience. With 'display: minimal-ui' it will create an experience with a visible URL and TLS certificate – useful for security-sensitive apps. With 'display: fullscreen' it creates fully immersive apps without status bar or visible back button. A set of icons and colours defines how the splash screens or title bars will look for your app's window. There are some manifest generators, such as Web App Manifest Generator or PWA Builder that will also resize the icon for you in different resolutions if you provide a high resolution one (minimum 512 pixels). When you have the manifest file linked in your HTML document, users will be able to install the app using different techniques depending on the browser, typically called Add to Home Screen, Install or just Add. If your PWA is crawlable by Bing, Microsoft will automatically add it to the Microsoft Store so Windows 10 users will be able to install it from there. On some operating systems, your PWA will have the ability to capture links. This means that after the user has installed the app, any URL within the scope of your manifest will be opened within the boundaries of your app and not in the browser, no matter whether it appears in the browser or other apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook or an email. If you pass the PWA requirements that we are defining here, some platforms will offer ambient badging (a small icon usually in the URL bar specifying that the web is installable) or a web app banner. If you prefer, you can also add your own custom Install button using the following snippet: If the PWA is installed, the event 'appinstalled' will be fired on the window object so you can track stats listening for it. App stores is a free tool available from Microsoft that will help you in the creation or publishing of your PWA for different platforms online or in the command-line One of the major benefits of installing from a browser is being able to avoid the app-store approval process or having to pay to be a publisher. That comes with obvious advantages, such as instant publishing, creating private apps for companies or apps that shouldn't be accepted in the stores. But some companies do want to be in the store. As of today, the only stores officially accepting PWAs are the Windows Store and the kaiOS Store. Fortunately, with tools like Capacitor (currently in Alpha) or PWA Builder, we can create and sign native packages for other platforms as well. There are some PWAs already published in the Google Play Store, such as Twitter Lite and Google Maps Go, currently under custom implementations. Chrome will offer a solution from Chrome 68 via trusted web activities. From that point, we will be able to create an Android package (APK) with a launcher to our PWA and upload it to the store. For the Microsoft Store on Windows 10, the site PWA Builder is currently helping with the generation of an APPX Windows 10 package. Using a web view, you might be able to manually create an iOS app for the App Store but be extremely careful about the store's rules. Platform integration A basic PWA in action on different platforms; on macoS, it's still an experiment on Google Chrome By implementing progressive enhancement techniques, you will be able to use many features, including push notifications, camera and microphone access, geolocation, sensors, payments, share dialogs and offline storage. All of these features run directly within the browser's security model, including permission dialogs. We can also communicate with other apps through URI schemes, such as opening Twitter, YouTube or WhatsApp through their URLs or custom URIs, such as whatsapp://. Finally, when creating native PWAs that are published to the store using Capacitor or to the Microsoft Store, we will be able to bridge to native APIs that will enable us to execute virtually any native code. That integration with Windows 10 includes hardware access but also integration with the OS, offering options such as Pin to Start. For example, the Twitter PWA lets you pin any user to your start screen. Design and UX challenges Lighthouse will give you a score stating how PWA your solution is based on a series of tests on a Chromium engine Designing PWAs has unique challenges, so it's important to spend some time researching, testing as much as possible and considering the following: Users will expect app-like experiences. The installation process is still new, so we need to make extra effort to explain how to install the app. Updating the app in the background without user interaction is great but it also adds some challenges for the UX. On the desktop, responsive web design takes a new frontier as PWA windows can be tiny, much smaller than a mobile viewport. This means we need to create specific views or small widgets for this format, as seen in Chrome OS today. Push notifications should add value to the user only, so learn to ask at the right moment and don't waste the opportunity sending messages that are not useful or interesting. We need to design for web performance and for offline access. The year of PWAs With the addition of iOS and desktop this year, PWAs are everywhere today. But we need to remember that their journey is just starting, so expect frequent changes and make sure to keep yourself updated with the latest techniques and ideas to deliver an excellent user experience while the platform evolves. This article was originally published in issue 308 of net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Buy issue 308 here or subscribe here. Related articles: 69 fantastic free web tools How to make an app Hot new CSS rules to try now View the full article

The update also features 23 security fixes. View the full article

This step-by-step guide is set to reveal how to go about the creation of realistic clouds. This tutorial is ideal for 'travel through the clouds' scenes in 3D movies, for example if you are aiming to shoot an aeroplane flying through the sky. There are also a variety of different cloud effects we can build. How to render a photorealistic sky There are a number of different types of software and plugins that we can use to create such an effect, for example the FumeFX and Phoenix FD plugins for 3ds Max, Maya, Houdini, Cinema 4D, Vue and so on. However, many big VFX and animation studios use the FumeFX plugin in their pipeline, as this software is old, trustworthy and most importantly user-friendly. There are different techniques you can use in order to make this effect in FumeFX, for example using Simple Source, Object Source and Particle Source, but in this case we are going to be using Object Source. Before you start working on this kind of effect, you should have a good knowledge of smoke properties. You must know about turbulence, velocity, buoyancy and so on. There are also different types of clouds you can create, including small cloud patches, lots of thick clouds (cloud bed), stormy clouds, thin cloud layers and cloud belts, and each one has different properties to consider. I can't teach you each and every parameter of this plugin and software, as these are vast and need a lot of time to go through. So as far as the thin cloud effect is concerned, we will learn as much as is required for this particular tutorial only. This is a very interesting subject, because you can't define one particular process for creating this effect. As you begin to work with the tools, you will find different types of effects every time. So, it very much depends on your own understanding of the techniques, as well as some creative experimentation. Download the files for this tutorial. 01. Create an object By using Object Source, our clouds will be emitted from an object, which we will initially model in 3ds Max Open 3ds Max. Before we start working on our scene, remember that we are going to use Object Source in FumeFX. This means we are going to use an object to emit smoke for the clouds and for that purpose, we are going to create an object. To create an object, we will use Geosphere; go to the Create panel, then Geometry > Standard Primitives > Geosphere. Now change the parameters to Radius: 20 and Segments: 10. Now we need to add a Noise Modifier and for that, go to the Modify panel, then Modifier List> Noise. Now change the parameters to Scale: 5.0, Strength X: 10, Y: 10, Z: 10. Now make 10 to 15 copies of the Geosphere that we have created, then scale them randomly and place as per the image shown. 02. Make FumeFx object source Add your object and then adjust the parameters After we finish modelling our object, it's time to proceed to the FumeFX plugin. So first of all we will create a FumeFX Object Source, where we will add our object. Go to the Create panel, then Helpers > FumeFX > Object Src. Click this button and drag it to the viewport. Now go to the Modify panel and make some changes in the parameters as per the screenshot here. First add all the Geospheres into the Objects section, using the Pick Object button, then change the Object Src Type to Solid. Set the Smoke: 7.5, then go to the Velocity section and set Normal: 8.0. Keep the other parameters as they are. 03. Create FumeFx container Make sure that your container covers all the Geospheres We have decided to use FumeFX for this effect, as this plugin is very simple but still has many options and parameters available to us, but we are only going to learn as much as is required for this particular tutorial. So let's start with the FumeFX Container. To create this Container go to Create > Geometry > FumeFX > FumeFX. Click on the FumeFX button and drag it into the viewport, then go to the Modify panel and set the Size and Spacing as shown. Set the Width: 500, Length: 350, Height: 250 and Spacing: 0.6. Now set the Position of FumeFX to X: 00, Y: 00, Z: 00. The Container should cover all the Geospheres, so make sure this is the case. 04. Modify FumeFx container Start by modifying the parameters for the Obj/Src section After we've set the FumeFX Container it's now time to modify the parameters. So, select the Container and go to the Modify panel. Now click on the Open FumeFX UI button, and here you can see a new window has appeared. There are six sections in this FumeFX user interface and we will modify them one by one. So let's start with the Obj/Src section. In this section you just have to add the FumeFX Object Source that we had generated earlier. So go to the Obj/Src section and click on the Pick Object button, then select the FumeFX Object Source. 05. General section parameters Adjust the parameters in the General section as seen here After we finish the setup of the Obj/ Src section, let's now tackle the General section. We already have the general parameters, Spacing: 0.6, Width: 500, Length: 350, Height: 250. Now move ahead to Output Range, set the Start Frame: -35, End Frame: 100, then go to Paths, where we set the FXD Files (Cache Files) path. Click the button next to Default Path and set the path as per your folder structure. Now move ahead to Playback Range and set the Play From: -35 and Play To: 100. These are the simple modifications we need to make in the General Section. 06. Simulation section Leave the Simulation running overnight as it's going to take a while Next we need to modify the Simulation parameters. Go to the Sim section and the first parameter we are going to change is Time Scale. Initially we will create the smoke, but after certain frames we need static smoke, as it should look and behave like a cloud. So we will animate this parameter. From frame -35 to -1 Time Scale will be 1.0 and on frame 0 Time Scale will be 0.01, so animate it accordingly. Gravity: 2.5, Vorticity: 1.0, X Turbulence: 0.5. Now go to Turbulence Noise and set the Scale: 1.0, Frames: 10.0 and Details: 5.0. Now go to Fuel and set the Burn Rate: 10 and Expansion: 0.5. Keep the other parameters as they are, and hit the Simulation button. It will take around 8-10 hours to finish. 07. Rendering settings Don't forget to turn on the Cast Shadows and Receive Shadows options After the simulation has finished, make sure that everything is as per your requirement. Next we need to make some simple modifications in the Rendering section. First we'll set the colour of the smoke. Go to the Rendering section and then Smoke Parameters. Set the smoke colour as white and Ambient Color R: 0, G: 27, B: 47, set the Opacity: 1.5. Then turn on the Cast Shadows and Receive Shadows options, because when we add the light we should see the smoke shadow. 08. Illumination section Let there be light Now it's time to add light to the scene. Go to Create>Lights> Standard>Target Spot. Click on Omni Light and create two lights in the viewport. Now set the light position, Omni01, X: -790, Y: -230, Z: 280 and Omni02, X: -650, Y: -140.0, Z: 280.0. Now select the Omni01 light and go to the Modify panel, then turn on the shadow and make it Ray Traced Shadows, then set the Multiplier: 0.4 and Color R: 138, G: 98, B: 59. Now go to Shadow Parameters and turn on the Atmosphere Shadows. Make the same changes on Omni02, only set the Multiplier: 0.15 and Color R: 119, G: 194, B: 254. After we've finished these settings, go back to FumeFX Container and then go to the Illumination section. Add these lights into the Light section by clicking on the Pick Light button. Now go to Multiple Scattering and set the Maximum Depth: 8 and Falloff: 3.5. 09. Render and post-process Once you've rendered your cloudscape, take it to your favourite compositing software for the final touches Now it's finally time to render. Go to Render Setup and set the Output Range, Output Resolution and Output Path settings. After finishing the setup just hit the Render button. It will likely take around five hours to finish rendering. After the rendering is complete import all the renders into Adobe After Effects or any compositing software that is convenient for you, and make some changes to colour or brightness. Then make the final output, and you'll get your clouds. This article was originally published in issue 236 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 236 here or subscribe to 3D World here. Related articles: Create a meteor shower in 3ds Max Big VFX on a budget Master large-scale environments in 3ds Max View the full article

Some great web design tools have appeared over the last month, including a new virtual reality web browser, some useful learning resources and an app that puts your logo designs through their paces. Read on to find out more. 01. Calibre Get detailed performance reports and recommendations for improving your site Calibre is a testing suite that gives you comprehensive data on your site’s performance. You can set up automated, scheduled testing and get a timeline of performance history, and the testing simulates the real-world conditions under which users will be browsing your site – such as different CPUs and browsers. It makes it easy to identify bottlenecks, and recommends solutions to page speed problems. 02. Logo Lab Discover potential problems with your logo design in the early stages of development Put this tool to work on your logo ideas to see how well they adhere to the principles of good logo design, such as scalability, visual balance and how it's perceived at low resolution or at a glance. The app shows you how your colour scheme looks to someone who’s colour blind, and how your logo looks inside different shaped containers and among other common logos. It's a quick way to see how your logo performs in lots of different situations, giving you the chance to iron out any problems before it's too late. 03. Werner's Nomenclature of Colours Get old-fashioned colour inspiration from this colour handbook In the 18th century mineralogist Abraham Werner devised a scheme for classifying colours, and the guidebook based on this scheme is reproduced online at this site. The colour guide was produced with the natural world in mind, and each colour swatch is accompanied by examples of where the colour appears in animals and plants. It's a useful source for colour scheme inspiration, particularly if natural themes are relevant to your project. Scroll to the bottom and click 'Download data' to get a spreadsheet containing the hex values for each colour. There is also the option to buy posters and prints created with colours from the guidebook, which are great gifts for any designer. 04. Modular JavaScript A series of five JavaScript books that you can read for free Modular JavaScript is a series of books that are free to read and created through an open process in which anyone can contribute content and offer fixes via the GitHub page. The stated goal is to "improve our collective understanding of writing robust, well-tested, modular JavaScript code". There are five books in the series which are available to purchase in digital and print formats, and available to read for free in HTML format. You have to allow the site to send a tweet in order to access the free version. 05. Shipstreams Learn problem-solving tactics by watching livestreams of people coding On this site you can pick up coding techniques by watching livestreams of programmers as they work. Coders stream their desktop as they do their thing, and also a webcam feed of their furrowed brow as they build software and solve problems. If you have the patience, it could be an interesting way to get an insight into other people's processes. 06. Luna Display Use your iPad as a second screen with this dongle that promises better quality and reliability than software alternatives Luna Display is a dongle that turns your iPad into a wireless second display for your Mac. To set up, you plug the Luna into your Mac and the iPad connects via the wifi network and is automatically recognised as a second display. If you've heard of Duet Display, which is an app that achieves something similar without any hardware, you may be wondering how the two compare. According to the creator of Luna Display, there are performance differences: Duet has a limited resolution, and Luna is more reliable and has a lower latency. So if you’ve tried Duet and want more, Luna could be worth a go. 07. Ferret Ferret makes it easier to write web scrapers Ferret helps you to extract data from the web by making it easier to write scrapers. You might need data for machine learning or UI testing purposes, and if you're writing a lot of web scrapers to get it, Ferret can make things easier by abstracting away much of the complexity so you can just express what you need. If you're working on a data-driven project, it may well help you to cut some corners in obtaining the data you need. 08. LinkSplit LinkSplit makes A/B testing easy by diverting traffic to two different test sites This is a tool with one simple yet highly useful function – it helps you with A/B testing by creating a URL that splits the traffic evenly between two or more destinations. There's no sign up process – just enter your destination URLs and then share the single test URL with your audience. Then you can monitor the results with your analytics platform. 09. You Don't Need WordPress Make a simple site using Google Docs as a CMS This system provides a way for you to bring the power and convenience of Google Docs to your blogging workflow. Write your blog in Google Docs and YDNW makes it into a hosted site for you for free, and things like colours, shapes and tables will be carried over. Of course this won’t be suitable for all purposes, but for a relatively simple site, it's a great option. 10. Firefox Reality Mozilla's new browser designed specially for your virtual reality device Firefox Reality is a new web browser designed specifically for browsing with a virtual reality device, and it's available now from the app stores for Viveport, Oculus and Google Daydream. The two stand-out features are the ability to search the web using your voice, and the provision of a feed of VR games and environments. The feed is the first thing you see when the browser starts, so you can dive right into things without having to search around. Firefox Reality is based on the new Quantum engine for mobile devices, so has all of the performance benefits that come with that. Read more: The 6 pillars of great UX Hot new CSS rules to try now 10 best new web design tools for September 2018 View the full article