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  1. Conveying your emotional response to a subject as an artist can really engage viewers. There are a number of brushwork techniques that will help you achieve this, lifting a simple observation to an exciting work of art. How to draw and paint - 100 pro tips and tutorialsThese are things that you can begin using right away in your own paintings. For this article we're using oil paints, but these techniques can be used with a variety of other media as well. A number of factors affect the success of various stroke techniques, including paint viscosity (how buttery or stiff the paint is), the volume of paint on the brush, the angle at which the brush is held, and the pressure used when making a stroke. Let’s have a look at those now... 01. Have some fun 'Painting by the pound' can add energy and emotion to a painting. Use thick gobs of pigment on the brush, then place them on the canvas with a soft touch, keeping the brush nearly parallel to the surface. Lightly drag it across the painting, because too much pressure flattens the stroke. Let the paint stand proud to create texture. 02. Prepare your paint When painting by the pound, the viscosity of the paint is crucial. Paint that’s too stiff or too thin doesn’t work. A consistency that’s similar to mayonnaise is perfect, along with an adequate quantity of paint on the brush. Strive to place 'pieces of paint' on the surface of the painting. 03. Use a knife A palette knife will also help you to achieve a similar effect. Again, use a thick load of buttery pigment on the bottom of the knife and apply it lightly to the surface of the painting. Don’t press or scrape. Hold the blade flat to the canvas and let it skip and jump as it skitters lightly across the surface. 04. Be generous Load paint on the knife using only the bottom of the blade, not the top. Be generous and use enough paint to make a powerful mark. When you place a stroke, be bold and make a dramatic statement, then leave it alone. Too much correcting leads to a muddy effect instead of the lively look we’re after. 05. Create a mood Thinly painted areas with soft edges create a gentle, restful mood. For this you can use large filberts to cover big areas of a painting. Blend one shape or colour into another and work back and forth, wet-into-wet. Use enough medium in the paint to keep it soft and juicy when striving for this effect. 06. Try fingerpainting When you want to soften smaller areas or edges in a painting, using your fingertip offers more control than a brush, especially in small areas. If you’re using toxic pigments, it’s a good idea to wear a rubber glove for this. 07. Try crisp edges Strokes with crisp, well-defined edges contrast nicely with softer areas of a composition. Use brights for these strokes (a short-bristled version of a flat). Press firmly when making the stroke, then leave it alone to avoid blending and to maintain crisp edges. 08. Add a new twist You can use riggers to create two very different effects. The first is that when painting a tree limb, get a thick load of paint on the brush and then drag it lightly over the canvas. By slowly rotating the brush in your fingers and simultaneously jogging left and right, you can create an angular, textured stroke... 09. Be graceful The second is when using a rigger to create a soft, graceful stroke, use thinned-down paint and thoroughly wet the entire length of the bristles. Then, slowly drag the brush over the surface, allowing the bristles to trail along in a smooth line. When the brush runs out of paint, the stroke is finished. 10. Add some sparkle At the finish of a painting, bring it to life by adding little accents or 'clicks and pops'. Plan ahead to deliberately maintain some areas of soft, diffused strokes and subtle hues. Into these areas, place a few tiny strokes of lively hues and brighter values that add a subtle sparkle to the piece. 11. Fool the eye Optical colour-mixing is another great technique, which involves layering dry-brushed strokes of colour lightly over an underpainting that’s a different colour. It’s important to let the brush skip and jump over the underpainting so that both hues remain visible. The eye reads them as a blended colour that isn’t actually present on the canvas. 12. Use the underpainting technique Begin by underpainting several areas of thin paint and then wait while they become either tacky or completely dry. Then mix your colours that look interesting with those underpainted hues and lightly drag a brushload across the surface, allowing it to incompletely cover the underpainting. This is another way to add extra sparkle to your work. 13. Explore different strokes This piece (above) uses several techniques – soft, blurry edges of gently blended colours contrast with thickly textured paint placed with bold strokes. There are little clicks and pops in areas that would otherwise be uninteresting. And it also combines richly saturated hues with relaxed areas of desaturated colour. 14. Combine techniques The example above uses the painting by the pound approach as well as a variety of clicks and pops. Notice that these small accents of colour were placed in spots where they stand out, and also notice that many of the hues used seem foreign to the colour scheme used elsewhere. This works well when used in small amounts. 15. Mix and match techniques Here, optical colour mixing was used in the background, while the face uses a combination of softly blended areas contrasted with crisp-edged strokes. If you look closely you’ll see a few other techniques as well. Why not give some of these brushstroke techniques a try today? This article originally appeared in Paint and Draw issue 9. Buy it here. Related articles: Paint realistic waves Paint like an impressionist How to convey sound in a painting View the full article
  2. Assessing which is the best laptop for photo editing can be a confusing task. It's simpler from the Mac side, but the choice of PCs can be overwhelming. We've gone for a broad selection here, offering up a couple of more powerful models with Intel's beefed-up Iris graphics. If you're into pro editing you'll probably need a laptop with dedicated Nvidia or AMD graphics on board. We've also covered which is the best laptop for photo editing under £1,000 as well as the best laptop for photo editing under £500. Be warned though, at the lower of those price points you're looking at distinctly amateur rather than pro photo editing. If you're after a laptop for professional use, you'll need something with power – and yes, that involves spending more money. 15 essential photo editor appsPutting this buying guide together did raise more than a few questions – such as: what's the minimum spec you need for a decent photo editing laptop? The answer is that you definitely need to be looking for 4GB of memory, as well as at least an Intel Core i3 processor (preferably Core i5 or i7). You want plenty of on-board storage, too. Many laptops now have solid state drives (SSDs) but these tend to have lower capacity than traditional hard drives. Either way, we don't recommend less than 256GB. If you're going to be pro editing your photos, you want a top notch processor as well as 8GB of memory plus some fairly capacious storage. Again, no less than 256GB . Right, let's check out our list of the best photo editing laptops. The 5 best laptops for photo editing Go into any coffee shop and you'll see a MacBook. They're pretty ubiquitous. The 13-inch version with Touch Bar is the one to have, although we're typing this very article on a 13-inch without the Touch Bar and very good it is too. The MacBook is now so thin and relatively light that it will give pretty much any ultraportable laptop a run for its money. Of course, the key difference is the Touch Bar – a thin OLED display at the top of the keyboard that can be used for any number of things, flicking through photos or paying for stuff with Touch ID. The drawback is that the MacBook Pro is an expensive choice. But you do get a tremendous laptop for your money. Be warned that the new MacBook Pros all have USB-C ports (with Thunderbolt 3 support), so you need adaptors for old devices. There is no microSD card slot, either. Read the full review: Apple MacBook Pro with touchbar (2017) This is the best laptop for portability and so is our choice for on-the-go photo editing. It's not one for pro editors, but it is a super machine for everyone else and Dell has just updated it with Intel's latest processors to boot. The 13.3-inch touchscreen display has such a slim bezel (Dell calls it 'Infinity Edge'). The best thing is the size of the chassis; it's extremely compact. There's a Thunderbolt 3 multi-use Type-C port as well as standard USB 3.0 and a micro SD card slot, too. The most expensive versions have QHD+ (3,200 x 1,800 pixel) screens plus Core i7 processors while others have Core i5 and Full HD displays. Put simply, it's a brilliant laptop. Read the full review: Dell XPS 13 This is for those who want something like the XPS 13 above, but need to plump for something a little cheaper. But you don't compromise that much for something that's around £450 less. For one thing, the Zenbook isn't as portable. It also isn't so powerful, with a Core i3 processor, but there is a Core i5 option. So it's not as svelte, but all the essentials are there and you won't have any issues getting your photo editing done on it. Asus is a formidable brand to look at for a photo editing laptop under £500. And if this is a little too expensive, then the Core i5-toting Asus VivoBook is a great choice. Read the full review: Asus Zenbook UX310UA Forget about the ageing MacBook Air, the MacBook is where it's at. There are a few issues, though – the base level processors aren't quite good enough for Pro work and there's a single USB-C port. Aside from the processor, the spec is actually pretty good, but then you should expect that for this kind of money. The screen size will also be an issue for some creatives doing photo work on the move, but it's still a thing of beauty. If you're willing to sacrifice almost anything in favour of portability, this is the laptop for you. Read the full review: Apple MacBook review Although the awesome Surface Book is really rather superb, it's also very expensive. That's why we'd plump for the HP. It's super thin and light, but will perform a full 360 (clue's in the name) and convert to a tablet. You're then able to use it with a stylus to make Windows 10 really sing (and Windows Ink is a big part of that, of course). As with the XPS 13, it comes with a Full HD display by default, but a 4K one is also available as an upgrade – both are excellent for photo editing on the go. Naturally, performance is also on the money. It's a terrific package. Read the full review: HP Spectre x360 Also read: 5 best laptops for Photoshop The best laptops for graphic design The best video editing software View the full article
  3. Stockholm-based design studio Snask is known for being playful, quirky and anything but dull. So it’s a surprise to learn that sometimes the team have ideas that are just too whacky – even for them. Described by Paul Sahre as “like Titanic played backwards” and by Thomas Both as “the designers we all want to be”, we’re pretty excited about seeing Snask in person at Something Good in Bristol, UK, next month. We’ll be reporting on the high points of the event then, and as a Creative Bloq reader you can get 20 per cent off tickets to come along too with the code: CreativeBloq20. In the meantime, we caught up with Snask for a quick interview. Asked whether the team ever have ideas that are too whacky to follow up on, they reply that there are many. “Almost every week we come up with some funky horse shit that no-one would ever keep working on for more than giving it a laugh,” they say. “But sometimes one of those grow and become a real thing. A real horse shit.” Snask is certainly talented when it comes to turning unusual ideas into reality. Some notable works include its own shower beer, its own pink bike and even a rebrand for North Korea. Beyond that, Snask creates branding and design work, stop-motion and live action video for clients including H&M, Samsung, Universal Music Group and Microsoft. The Snask team members all look ridiculously greatSo what is the secret of the team’s success? “We look ridiculously great, like Ryan Gosling,” they tell us. “No, probably the opposite, and since we don’t look amazing we have to try harder, make more jokes and develop our personalities. Get some ambition and drive and hope someone will marry us because of that. "Other than that I think we care about our own agency brand a lot.” Looking back at its early days, the team says there were some mistakes. “Our whole business is based around messing up actually. That’s how we learn things, since we’d rather come up with our own solutions than listen to a conservative industry.” Snask built this interactive paper city for the Swedish Association of Public Housing It is perhaps this independent, pioneering and optimistic spirit that attracts clients and fans to Snask. The studio's work is fun, colourful and full of life, and certainly original. “We don’t believe that much in colour theory,” the team reveals. “Blue is depressing but also used for IT as well as being the colour of the sky and the ocean breeze. Yellow is the sun and a way to say forgive me as well as death in China. Red is anger and hot and danger and also the colour of Norwegian and Virgin airlines. Snask designes the branding, identity and store concept for Norwegian eyewear brand Kaibosh “We love pink, of course. But we love a lot of colour. At the same time we dress quite non-colourfully.” Catch Snask at Something Good in Bristol, UK, on 6-7 October, where you can expect: “Inspiration and rock'n'roll... Perhaps some rap.” Creative Bloq readers can get 20 per cent off tickets with the code: CreativeBloq20. Related articles: 10 rules for running a killer studio How to turn your design studio dream into reality How Hey Studio seduced Apple with geometric shapes View the full article
  4. Get an insight into how to create distinctive characters brimming with personality in the latest issue of ImagineFX – on sale now! Inside issue 153 you will find out how the magazine's stunning cover art was created, thanks to a tutorial from Ramón Nuñez. Thanks to his insightful character art tips, you're sure to pick up a new skill that will help with your own character creation. Buy issue 153 of ImagineFX here Elsewhere, issue 153 of ImagineFX also contains a glimpse into the sketchbook of Chantal Horeis, a look at how illustrator Atey Ghailan creates a sketch workflow, and a core skills tutorial to help you paint with gouache. And that's not all. Take a look below at the main features heading up the latest issue of ImagineFX. You won't want to miss it. Click here to subscribe to ImagineFX Sketch artists share their secrets Sketching pros share their secrets and tricks of the tradeIdle sketching isn't a waste of time. In fact, the pros do it all the time to loosen up and generate ideas. To discover more about the joy of sketching, we talk to pro artists including James Gurney and Terryl Whitlatch about why they scribble away every single day before turning their attention to the job in hand. Develop a distinctive character silhouette Blizzard Entertainment artist Tan Zhi Hui guides you though silhouette secretsA recognisable silhouette is one of the cornerstones of a strong character design. Tan Zhi Hui shows you how to create an outstanding character outline in this Photoshop tutorial. Greg Ruth interview The star-studded world of Greg Ruth includes work for Barack Obama and PrinceGorge yourself on page after page of sublime artwork from Greg Ruth, the American illustrator to the stars. Meet the sculptor who creates clay faerie kingdoms Vicky Stonebridge shares her pottery skillsTake a trip to the land of the faeries with this clay video workshop by Vicky Stonebridge. Here she demonstrates her skills with a potter's wheel and shares tips for firing and glazing a miniature metropolis. Order your copy of ImagineFX issue 153 today. See your artwork in the pages of ImagineFX The next issue could feature your artworkHave you ever wanted to see your artwork in print? Or maybe you want to share your digital art masterpieces with likeminded readers? Well, you're in luck! ImagineFX is always open to readers' submissions. Just send your art, a headshot, and a short biography to fxpose@imaginefx.com. Related articles: 8 inspiring digital art portfolios and why they work 6 best digital art tools of 2017 so far Best drawing apps for iPad View the full article
  5. You know just how powerful your Mac is. It's time to harness that processing power to make incredible videos. CameraBag Cinema is an editing tool designed to make the most of the Mac's capabilities, and you can get this essential tool on sale now for 51% off the full retail price. Could you imagine what it would be like to edit a blockbuster film right on your Mac? Working with CameraBag Cinema can give you a solid simulation of that experience. This stand-alone video editing software is capable of working with 4k footage, with professional features such as colour grading and film emulation. It's packed with tools that will change the way you edit and interact with video, and just might help you go from amateur editor to professional cinematographer. You can get CameraBag Cinema on sale for just $24 (approx £19) rather than $49. It’s a 51% saving off the retail price of a powerful video editor that will help add polish to your projects, so grab this deal today. About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at: deals@creativebloq.com View the full article
  6. Working in the 3D industry, it’s easy to become blinkered to your own studio’s tools, procedures and processes. But there are many different ways of achieving the same result, and new techniques and tools coming onto the market all the time. Check out these top tutorials, all posted on Creative Bloq in 2017, and you may well discover new ways of doing things that save you time, energy and budget. 01. Create a realistic digital portrait in ZBrush and Maya Design a digital double using ZBrush and MayaDeveloping a digital double is one of the most intricate and challenging tasks that a 3D artist can ever face, but with increasing demand for this kind of service within the industry, it’s a good time to delve into the practice to see what’s involved. In this walkthrough, Aybars Turan explains how to create a realistic likeness using ZBrush and Maya, beginning with a base mesh. 02. Simulate explosions in Maya Make an arresting explosion using Maya and FumeFXThere’s nothing that can bring a game, TV show or movie to life better than an impressive explosion. And the good news is that software is becoming increasingly sophisticated in helping 3D artists create them. In this tutorial, Syawish A Rehma shows you how to craft a convincing-looking explosion using Maya’s nParticles and FumeFX. 03. Make realistic plants in Cinema 4D A quick way to add plants to your archvizOne of the biggest problems with archviz is that however well developed, your models can end up looking overly geometric, clinical and bland. A good way to add a touch of humanity is by incorporating some plants and trees into the scenes. Here, 3D World magazine editor Rob Redman reveals how you can make use of Cinema 4D's MoGraph tools to create 3D foliage quickly and easily. 04. Create a meteor shower in 3ds Max Fill the sky with flying rocks using Max and FumeFXYou don’t have to have a doctorate in astrophysics to light up the sky with a photorealistic meteor shower. In this tutorial, Syawish A Rehma explains how to design a realistic 3D meteor shower using 3ds Max and FumeFX. 05. Create ornate tiles in Substance Designer Generate a beautiful tiled pattern using Substance DesignerCreating geometry-based assets like flooring is exactly the kind of thing that CG software excels at. In this tutorial, Chris Hodgson shows you how to combine mask textures using Substance Designer to generate a modifiable ornate tiled floor. 06. Create realistic CG cloth in Maya, Nuke and Redshift Create cloth that still looks believable, close-upStimulating cloth and fabric in 3D is all about achieving a convincing level of detail. In this Maya, Nuke and Redshift tutorial, Jesus Fernandez uses a semi-procedural technique to create the fabric strands, based on a library of models. 07. Groom an irresistibly furry creature in Maya, ZBrush and Redshift Discover how to create this cute little fellaWhen you’re creating a furry creature, you don’t just want it to look good: you want people to want to reach out and stroke it. In this video tutorial, with supporting files, Jesus Fernandez walks you through his process for creating an irresistibly furry creature in 3D using Maya, ZBrush and Redshift. 08. Sculpt realistic anatomy in ZBrush Learn how to sculpt people whose bodies fall outside of the normHumans come in all shapes and sizes, and once you’ve mastered basic anatomy, improving your people-sculpting skills is all about becoming adaptable. ZBrush is a great tool for this because it provides you with the kind of freedom required when shaping forms. Jakub Chechelski demonstrates by walking you through a sculpt of Olympic swimming champ Michael Phelps. 09. Sharpen your hard-surface modelling Learn how to create this drop ship in MaxIn this tutorial, Victoria Passariello create a 3D version of a sci-fi drop ship concept made by designer and illustrator Virnard Magpantay. The aim is to demonstrate that you can create any hard-surface piece using simple tools in 3ds Max, or similar software. 10. Create hair in Cinema 4D Learn how to craft a realistic barnetIn this step-by-step tutorial, digital artist Jason Knight shares four of the things he’s learned over the previous 18 months about creating 3D hair. There’s also an accompanying video so you can see Knight at work creating convincing locks. 11. 5 steps to a faster workflow Discover how to streamline your workflow from someone who learned by necessityAnimation graduate Martin Nabelek has been getting rave reviews for his 3D sci-fi short OFF, which was made with a very tight turnaround. Here he shares his top tips for improving your own 3D workflows. 12. Move between DAZ Studio and Cinema 4D Zip between the two tools easily by following Knight’s adviceIt’s great to see so many 3D programs on the market, but switching between them can prove clunky and tedious in practice. Jason Knight mainly works in Cinema 4D, but often move his characters in and out of DAZ Studio. Here he presents the best four-step process for doing so: the result of countless hours of trial and error. 13. Create stunning tileable textures in Blender Use Dynamic Topology sculpting to generate geometry on the flyWho doesn’t love the free 3D software suite Blender? In this tutorial, Pierrick Picaut shows you how to use its Dynamic Topology system to create stylised wooden and stone tileable textures from sculpted surfaces. 14. Texture an authentically worn K-2SO droid Learn how to make the worn-metal look feel authenticOne of the most acclaimed new characters to appear in Star Wars prequel Rogue One was the sarcastic and sullen K-2SO. In this tutorial by Andrew Entwistle demonstrates how to texture the droid using Substance Painter, making him slightly reflective, yet dull and worn. 15. 5 tips for sculpting in double-quick time Discover how to work at super-speed by following Sae Eua’s exampleWith budgets constantly dropping and client demands rising, 3D artists constantly need to find ways to work faster. In the video masterclass at the top of this tips post, Krystal Sae Eua shows you how to sculpt a model of a Nubian ibex in just one hour. 16. Convert a photo into a VR set Create a 360-degree experience from a photoThere are many applications for AR and VR beyond video games. In this tutorial, Joshua Kinney reveals how to use Photoshop, 3ds Max and Unity to create a 3D photo that’s suitable for viewing through Google VR. 17. Create a pouring water effect in RealFlow and 3ds Max Use RealFlow and Max to make your liquid look spot-onRealFlow is one of the most popular tools for creating flowing liquid effects. In this tutorial, Vikrant J Dalal explains how to simulate the pouring of water using the software in conjunction with 3ds Max. 18. Render a photorealistic sky in Vue xStream Make your skies fluffy with this cloud creation software Used by a number of animation and visual effects studios, Vue xStream has a special section for clouds, with a range of adjustable parameters. This tutorial by Vikrant J Dalal focuses on the key stages and settings you need to know to create a believable cloudy sky. 19. Turn your 2D designs into 3D with Felix Bring 2D and 3D together with Adobe’s toolAlthough not strictly aimed at 3D artists, Adobe’s Felix is still a great tool for compositing 2D and 3D shots. This tutorial by Lance Evans explains how to do so in 10 simple steps. 20. Model Darth Vader in ZBrush Discover how this cool version of Vader was createdCombining both 2D digital painting and 3D sculpting techniques, this walkthrough by Riyahd Cassiem demonstrates how he used ZBrush, KeyShot and Photoshop to build a cool Darth Vader figure. 21. Design and model a fantasy creature in ZBrush and Quixel Improve your creature creation process by following this walkthroughUsing ZBrush and Quixel, this detailed tutorial by Tyler Smith walks you through his pipeline for designing, sculpting and rendering a fantasy creature. 22. Build a custom Maya interface Take charge of Maya by building your own UILike all sophisticated 3D software, Maya offers a quite staggering range of tools, commands and options. For many, this can be bewildering and off-putting, so one solution can be to create your own custom UI. This tutorial by Rob Redman shows you how to do so. 23. Create a low poly wallpaper in Cinema 4D Make this desktop wallpaper using Cinema 4D and PhotoshopCreating the kind of low poly facet-style render popularised by Justin Maller is relatively straightforward in Cinema 4D and Photoshop. This 12-step guide by Simon Middleweek takes you through the process. 24. Use blend shapes to animate characters Discover how to set up some simple blend shapes and use them effectively in your animationsWhen you’re giving your 3D model facial expressions, it can sometimes be more efficient to create a few blend shapes than trying to make weight maps work properly for every situation. This quick step-by-step by Rob Redman shows you how to do it. 25. Create a splash effect in RealFlow Harness the Crown Daemon to build a movie-style splashYou know when, in blockbuster movies, a large object like a comet strikes the ocean, creating one almighty splash? In this tutorial, Rob Redman explains how to create exactly that effect using RealFlow’s versatile Crown Daemon. View the full article
  7. A new 13-track album from the late king of pop Michael Jackson is set to drop later this month. And who better to design the album art than UK illustrator and king of posters Matt Taylor? According to Sony Music, Michael Jackson: Scream will be a collection of the singer's “all-time most electrifying and danceable tracks including Ghosts, Torture, Thriller, and Dirty Diana." No pressure for Taylor, then. Negative space The final artwork is hauntingly stunning – which is appropriate, given the September 29 release is just in time for Halloween. MJ’s eyes grip your attention, staring out of a partially obscured full moon that uses negative space to cleverly build layers of eerie texture and meaning. Some shapes cut recognisable silhouettes – the descending crows, for example – while others suggest otherworldy creatures lurking in the shadows. Inline text introduces the artist with the title, Scream, painted in blood red and breaking the limited colour palette. Scream posters reportedly first appeared in Germany. Jackson's official Twitter account, @michaeljackson, tweeted out a 15-second-long video on Monday that featured black cats, full moons and other imagery commonly associated with Halloween. Watch it below. View the full article
  8. Generate, the award-winning conference for web designers and developers, is back in London again in less than two weeks' time. The fifth annual conference for web designers and frontend developers, which is held at The Royal Institution from September 20-22, is net magazine and Creative Bloq's flagship web event. Featuring 17 fantastic speakers, it covers web animations, performance, UX strategy, adaptive interfaces, accessibility, design and content sprints, and much more. Tickets are still available, with prices starting from just £295 for a one-day conference pass. If you're struggling to convince your boss to give you a day out of the studio, make sure you present the following reasons why Generate London 2017 is an unmissable event. 01. You'll learn cutting-edge techniques Generate will explore the key techniques in web design and frontend development today. There will be a mix of practical and inspirational talks from the brightest minds in the web industry, with take-aways that can be put into action straight away when you return to the office. 02. It has the best speakers Generate features some of the leading figures in web design and development. Steve Fisher, Ally Long, Anton & Irene, Aaron Gustafson and Seb Lee Delisle, plus 11 other amazing speakers, will share exclusive tips and advice on how to supercharge your web skills. You can see the full line-up here. 03. You won't miss a thing Ever found yourself torn between two equally appealing conference sessions happening at the same time? That's not a problem at Generate London, as it's a single-track programme, which means no difficult decisions over who to see, and no more FOMO (fear of missing out). Just sit back, relax and enjoy the same experience as everybody else. 04. You'll make contacts, contacts, contacts There are fantastic opportunities to network and forge new contacts at Generate. Join one of the workshops at lunch, get chatting during session breaks or let your hair down at the after party. Generate is a great place to meet fellow-minded creatives and chew the fat over the latest industry news. Up your skills and get ahead of the game; book your Generate ticket today! 05. You can watch it again Videos and slide decks of all sessions will be available to attendees after the event, so you can watch the talks again and dig deeper. You can then share them with the rest of your team. In fact, it's openly encouraged! We know there's lots to take in during the conference, so we want you to be able to revisit the information. 06. You'll enjoy a whole day of workshops Generate will be preceded by a day of workshops. Choose from four in-depth sessions on topics including user experience strategy with Jaime Levy and building scalable responsive components with Zell Liew. You can also see a design sprint masterclass with Steve Fisher and learn about work/life balance with Anton & Irene. See you there! Related articles: PixelPyros creator Seb Lee-Delisle shares why he loves open source Adaptive Web Design author shares his accessibility quest Interview: Anton & Irene View the full article
  9. You're reading Top Cheap WordPress Hosting Providers, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! One of the most important aspects of website success is having a solid hosting/server provider because a slow or non-functional website is inefficient for every business. If you use WordPress, it is important to understand that not all companies are ready to host your website. That’s why we recommend specialized hosting for WordPress websites. In […] View the full article
  10. A new variant of the banking trojan Dridex is part of a sophisticated phishing attack targeting users of the cloud-based accounting firm Xero. View the full article
  11. Microsoft is opting to stand pat and not fix a content security bypass vulnerability in its Edge browser, something researchers warn could potentially lead to the disclosure of confidential information. View the full article
  12. Ross Tran steps out of his Californian apartment. The sun shines in the sky above and a car idles on the road below. Holding a couple of large canvases, he climbs over a balcony, shimmies down a tree and speaks to camera: “Welcome to another episode of Ross Draws. It’s my graduation episode!” He runs to the waiting car. Animated sparks fly. He throws his artwork through the open window, jumps into the driver’s seat and speeds away. The hand-written personalised number plate taped to the back of his Chevy reads: COLOR DODGE. In just 20 seconds, we see why the 23-year-old artist’s videos have earned nearly two million views on his YouTube channel: the quick cuts, the playful tone, the breathless, almost hyperactive presenting style; whistle-stop tours of his art school, apartment and various locations around California; interviews with the smiley, unbelievably healthy-looking friends and teachers who populate those places... And, of course, the thing that underpins the channel’s success, Tran's art – bright, stylised, painterly, with tutorials explaining how to paint his work. What you’d never know by watching these videos is that the channel “came from a dark place.” “A piece from my Astro Series. It’s a collection of portraits involving some kind of white garment and shapes as the influence.”Personality is key Tran is a recent graduate of Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design. He won his first concept artist job at the nearby West Studio when he was just 17. A couple of years later, he worked as lead character designer on his first feature film – creating Echo for the 2014 animated movie Earth to Echo. He now counts among his clients Disney, Samsung and Microsoft, and has since worked on the upcoming Halo Franchise and several more films. How did he win so many big jobs at such a young age? “You have to personalise your portfolio so it represents what you really want to do,” he says. “For instance, if you love character design and want to get hired for it, make your portfolio and online presence character-based. I’ve seen a lot of people put too many types of work in their portfolio. It makes them look disposable. The last thing you want to be is a robot. Show the world who you are and what you want to do.” “This was one of the few pieces I did in my year off art to pursue acting. I just loved to paint and felt the need to express myself artistically.”He says some people may be familiar with his earlier work, but most of this success has come through Ross Draws, the YouTube channel that he started at the end of 2011. “I actually grew up really shy,” he says, an image very different from the boisterous character he presents in his videos. “I had a lot of insecurities growing up. I think Ross Draws represents a side of myself that depicts transformation and self-growth. I consider myself an introvert, but one who’s learning extroverted skills.” “This was from the third episode on my YouTube channel, drawing Nidalee from League. She’s one of my favourite characters and I had to draw her!”Even after earning a place at the prestigious ArtCenter College of Design, Tran says he felt something was missing in his life. He was passionate about art, but also loved making people laugh. So he took a year off and pursued an acting career. Tran juggled art school and auditions. He took extra classes in improv and scene study. The nearest he got to a big break was an audition for a pilot on the Fox network. “My work has recently taken a more stylised, graphic approach, while still pertaining to my painterly roots.”The small part called for a designer who freaks out a lot. “My perfect role!” Tran says. The producers of hit shows Psych and Scrubs were in the audition room and he made them laugh. They gave the part – which the script labelled “Asian Best Friend” – to a white person. “I’m not sure the pilot even got picked up,” he says. “But it was a great experience. I also auditioned for a lot of commercials.” “I always got tons of requests to draw my dog and found a perfect opportunity – to celebrate one year on YouTube.”How to draw and paint - 95 pro tips and tutorialsBranching out on YouTube “I grew up watching The PowerPuff Girls and wanted to do my take on it. I was bringing my love of graphics in the piece.”A friend suggested he start a YouTube channel combining the two things: art and making people laugh. “I hesitated, thinking it wasn’t really my thing. Prior to the channel, I felt like I had no purpose. I was waking up and feeling really unmotivated to do anything. Uninspired, unwilling, defeated. “Acting helped me to commit. Because, in acting, you have to commit 110 per cent or else no one will believe you, not even you. You can’t be in your head. Going on those auditions and to classes helped me to commit to the moment and just do it, no thinking. It’s a practice I’ve also taken into my art. If you have an idea, don’t be afraid to voice it.” “This piece is quite special to me. People often mention that this was one of the first episodes/pieces they saw when they discovered me.”When Tran reinvented himself as Ross Draws, it shook up his personal life and kickstarted his career. But the success of the YouTube channel brought new problems. “My schedule is different every week, every day,” he says. “Sometimes I feel I overload myself. I’m definitely what they call a night owl. I go to sleep anywhere from 2 to 5am. As my channel grows, so do my opportunities – conventions, signings, gigs – and it’s been harder to have a set schedule. It’s still currently a learning curve. But most of my week consists of editing my videos and painting.” Growing up, Tran was into TV shows like Pokemon, Sailor Moon and Power Rangers – you can see those influences in his art and on his channel. He has a few key rules when making videos. Our attention span is getting shorter and shorter, he says, so he keeps footage under the six-minute mark. It’s also important to be yourself, connect with your audience and collaborate with other people. He’s made videos with artists he looks up to, like Dan LuVisi and Anthony Jones, but also collaborations with non-artists, such as Jimmy Wong and Yoshi Sudarso, who plays the Blue Ranger on the new Power Rangers show. “This was another one that sat in my folder for about two years. I never knew how to finish it, but one day I opened it up and let the story breathe.”The YouTube channel brought Tran new confidence, which was mirrored in his art. When he started at ArtCenter College of Design, he knew he was a capable painter but felt his work was too heavily influenced by his favourite artists. Then he painted a piece called Journey – a landmark in which he found his own voice and techniques. Tran works with Premiere and After Effects for his videos, Photoshop and Lightroom for painting. Using all Adobe software helps him easily switch between apps. One website recently labelled him the “Master of Color Dodge.” The blend mode creates extra depth and makes colours really pop off the screen, an almost glowing effect that’s present in much of Tran's work. “This has been sitting in my WIP folder for about three years. A lot of my pieces sit there until I can see the piece turn into something unique to me.”It's not cheating Tran hadn’t always used such techniques. “At a young age, I thought that using certain methods as cheating, only to realise now that it doesn’t matter. You can learn from anything, any method, anywhere. Have an open mind and you can absorb information easier and faster.” After graduating college, Tran left the apartment that features in many of his YouTube videos. He now rents a house with friends, a place just outside Los Angeles. “We call it The Grind House,” he says. The Grind House? “It’s where we’re going to grind on our stuff for a year and decide what to do from there. There’s not much of an art scene in my area, but I love the motivational energy that the house has.” “This piece was commissioned for the deviantART+Blizzard Campaign ‘21 Days of Overwatch’. It’s probably my best seller at my first convention, Anime Expo.”“Motivational energy” is a perfect term. It’s in everything Tran says and does. You can still see his influences in his work. There’s a bit of Jaime Jones in there, some Craig Mullins and Claire Wending. But despite his youth, he has found a style, voice and motivational energy of his own – and, perhaps most importantly, a platform on which to share it. That’s the one piece of advice he’s keen to get across: do it your own way, on your own terms. “My videos are funded by my amazing supporters on Patreon. I’m blessed to have fans who love what I do and who want the exclusive content that comes with each episode. Patreon is definitely a career option for artists.” Tran's endorsement of Patreon comes with a caveat, however: only launch when you’re ready. “I held off on making my page until I knew I had quality content for the people who supported me. “There’s always a whimsical element to my work, either in the colours or the composition.”“If you do what you love, numbers and finance shouldn’t matter,” Tran adds. “I have friends who absolutely love their studio jobs and want to be surrounded by people. I also had friends who quit those jobs, made a Patreon and earned less, but loved what they do. “I think it’s about finding your own instrument and how to operate at your fullest potential. In today’s industry – and society – we too often compare ourselves to others, which fuels our inner self-critic. We’re all on our own journey at our own pace. We all have different inspirations, a different drive that propels us forward.” This article was originally published in ImagineFX magazine issue 140. Related articles: 10 sci-fi and fantasy art painting tips How to create a vivid fairy queen Tips for developing exciting book cover character art View the full article
  13. You're reading Winners and Trends from the Apple Design Awards 2017, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Apple recently released it’s winners of the 2017 Design Awards. The annual event showcases some of the most outstanding design and innovation in the digital space. The awards are in their 20th year and “recognize excellence in design, innovation and technology in apps and games across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV.” The […] View the full article
  14. Anthony Burrill is known for producing bold, minimalist designs that combine striking typography, clean colours and pro printing techniques to beautiful effect. Shunning the term ‘style’ to describe his often stripped-back designs because of the word's link to fleeting fashions, Burrill explains that he has a solid approach to his work that's here to stay. 20 fonts every graphic designer should own“It is singular and has developed from a set of values that I try to communicate through everything I do,” the graphic artist, print maker and designer tells us. “I’m a naturally optimistic person, so my work reflects this positive approach.” Burrill has worked for huge international clients including Apple, Google, Hermés, The New York Times and London Underground and his work is held in the permanent collections of London’s V&A museum and New York’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Next month, the British designer will speak at Something Good, a new two-day design festival in Bristol, UK, that focuses on the creative process. He'll also be running a letterpress workshop – and Creative Bloq readers can get 20 per cent off both Friday's ticket and workshop tickets with the code: CreativeBloq20. How to communicate effectively Burrill uses letterpress printing techniques for many of his designsFor a creative with such a distinctive approach to his work now, Burrill didn’t get off to the surest of starts. “My work at college was unconnected to the real world. I was looking for something, trying to find out what I was trying to say,” he recalls. However, this early difficulty seems to have ignited his love of simplistic design, as he explains. “I found it frustrating that people didn’t connect with my work, so I made attempts to create work that was easier to understand." "I learnt that by being simple and straightforward with your message you can communicate effectively with a broad range of people.” Enough is enough! was made for homeless charity Shelter to mark its 50th anniversary, using traditional letterpress techniques This commitment to simple and straightforward communication runs throughout his work, with short, uncomplicated phrases featured often. Message like ‘Work hard & be nice to people’; ‘Enough is enough’ (for homeless charity Shelter); ‘Make time your own’ (for Hermes); and even the title of his book – Make it Now! – grab attention with the directness of their phrasing as well as the attractive way they’re presented. The 'Work hard & be nice to people' print appears in Burrill's book Make it Now! Simplicity continues to feature in Burrill’s approach to colour and texture, too. “I like purity in colour, my palette is simple; bright yellow, red, black and occasionally blue,” he says. A stripped-back approach “I like to work with interesting materials that add a tactile feel to the work I produce. I choose materials that have a texture and colour that works well with accents of pure pigment." “I prefer to print with a maximum of two colours, I think it keeps the message simple when there is the minimum of visual noise, that includes colour.” Burrill's two-colour palette was used in wall paintings, screen print posters and animations for Hermès men’s collection launch in LA Burill says, though, that finding this definite approach led to a period of uncertainty after college. “After graduation I spent a few years working out what I was going to do. I didn’t know how my work would fit in and it didn’t feel like there were the right jobs out there for me,” he says. “I tried to market myself as an illustrator, but that didn’t work. It was only when I started to make work that focused entirely on words and typography that things began to take off.” Burrill largely works with sans serif and display typefaces Take off it has. Burrill has created designs for huge clients, co-created interesting typefaces and produced prints and more for his own shop. He now gets to choose the commercial projects he takes on and the clients he wants to work with. Choosing clients “I’m in the situation now where the work I make is almost all developed from a personal brief,” he explains, adding that he relishes vague creative briefs. “I prefer to work with a client to develop a project from scratch, rather than being given a prescriptive brief.” Burrill will lead a letterpress workshop and deliver a talk at Something Good Get 20% off Something Good tickets Hear more of Burrill’s story, how he developed his visual language and how his personal values inform the way he lives and works at Something Good in Bristol, UK, on 6-7 October. Creative Bloq readers can get 20 per cent off both Friday's ticket and workshop tickets with the code: CreativeBloq20. Related articles: 55 best free fonts for designers 10 top tips for kerning type 5 gems of type wisdom from Erik Spiekermann View the full article
  15. Character design can be a tricky illustration beast to tackle. You may know how to draw dynamic characters, but designing your own character from scratch involves a lot of creative thinking. Although many of the classic characters familiar to us all through cartoons, movies and advertising look simple, that simplicity usually belies the many hours of work that have gone into their development. From Mickey Mouse's famous three-fingered hands – drawn to save production time when he was first developed for animations in the 1920s – to the elegant simplicity of Homer Simpson, character design has always been about keeping it simple. Get Adobe Creative CloudBut aside from clean lines and easily readable features, what else are you going to need to know about character design? There's knowing what to exaggerate and what to play down, what to add to give a hint of background and depth, and what to do to develop personality. Getting started can be the trickiest part in any character design project, but once you've got some ideas these tips will help you breath life into your creation. 01. Decide who your character design is aimed at Deciding who the character is aimed at should be one of the first steps in your design processThink about your audience. Character designs aimed at young children, for example, are typically designed around basic shapes and bright colours. If you're working for a client, the character's target audience is usually predetermined, as Aussie artist Nathan Jurevicius explains. "Commissioned character designs are usually more restrictive but no less creative. Clients have specific needs but also want me to do my 'thing'. Usually, I'll break down the core features and personality." "For example, if the eyes are important then I'll focus the whole design around the face, making this the key feature that stands out." 02. Decide where your character will appear Where will the character design be seen and in what medium? This will have a direct bearing on how you go about your character design. For example, if it's for a mobile-phone screen, there's no point designing it to have a lot of intricate details and features. Nathan Jurevicius says that regardless of the format: "The process of thinking up concepts always starts the same: paper, pencil, green tea... lots of thumbnails, written ideas, scratches and sketches over sketches." 03. Research other designs It can be helpful to try and deconstruct why certain character designs work and why some don't. There's no shortage of research material to be found, with illustrated characters appearing everywhere: on TV commercials, cereal boxes, shop signs, stickers on fruit, animations on mobile phones, and more. Study these character designs and think about what makes some successful and what in particular you like about them. 04. Make your character distinctive Matt Groening used yellow to make The Simpsons characters stand out from the crowdWhether you're creating a monkey, robot or monster, you can guarantee there are going to be a hundred other similar creations out there. Your character design needs to be strong and interesting in a visual sense to get people's attention. When devising The Simpsons, Matt Groening knew he had to offer the viewers something different. He reckoned that when viewers were flicking through TV channels and came across the show, the characters' unusually bright yellow skin colour would grab their attention. 05. Use line qualities and styles to describe your character The drawn lines of which your character design is composed can go some way to describing it. Thick, even, soft and round lines may suggest an approachable, cute character, whereas sharp, scratchy and uneven lines might point to an uneasy and erratic character. Sune Ehlers characters are bold and seem to dance on the page, which echoes his approach to drawing them. He explains: "Drawing a doodle is about decisive pen-manoeuvring. A strong line for me comes from strength and rhythm." 06. Use exaggerated characteristics Exaggerating the defining features of your character design will help it appear larger than life. Exaggerated features will also help viewers to identify the character's key qualities. Exaggeration is key in cartoon caricatures and helps emphasise certain personality traits. If your character is strong, don't just give it normal-sized bulging arms, soup them up so that they're five times as big as they should be. 07. Choose colours carefully Colours can help communicate a character's personality. Typically, dark colours such as black, purples and greys depict baddies with malevolent intentions. Light colours such as white, blues, pinks and yellows express innocence, good and purity. Comic-book reds, yellows and blues might go some way to giving hero qualities to a character design. 08. Add accessories Piggle, a vinyl toy design by TADO, interacts with its accessoriesProps and clothing can help to emphasise character traits and their background. For example, scruffy clothes can be used for poor characters, and lots of diamonds and bling for tasteless rich ones. Accessories can also be more literal extensions of your character's personality, such as a parrot on a pirate's shoulder or a maggot in a ghoul's skull. 09. 2D or 3D? Depending on what you have planned for your character design, you might need to work out what it will look like from all angles. A seemingly flat character can take on a whole new persona when seen from the side if, for example, it has a massive beer belly. If your character is going to exist within a 3D world, as an animation or even as a toy, working out its height, weight and physical shape is all important. 30 inspiring examples of 3D art10. Give your character personality Interesting looks alone do not necessarily make for a good character design; its personality is key as well. A character's personality can be revealed through comic strips and animations, where we see how it reacts to certain situations. The personality of your character doesn't have to be particularly agreeable, but it does need to be interesting (unless your characters is purposely dull). Personality can also be expressed simply in how the character has been drawn. Next page: 10 more top character design tips... 11. Focus on facial expression Facial expression is key to a character's personality, as Tex Avery's Droopy demonstratesExpressions showing a character's range of emotions and depicting its ups and downs will further flesh out your character. Depending on its personality, a figure's emotions might be muted and wry or explosive and wildly exaggerated. Classic examples of this can be found in the work of the legendary Tex Avery: the eyes of his Wild Wolf character often pop out of its head when it's excited. Another example of how expressions communicate motions is deadpan Droopy, who barely registers any sort of emotion at all. 12. Give your character goals and dreams The driving force behind a character's personality is what it wants to achieve. This missing 'something' – be it riches, a girlfriend or solving a mystery – can help to create the dramatic thrust behind the stories and adventures your character gets up to. Often the incompleteness or flaws in a character design are what make it interesting. 13. Build up a back story If you're planning for your character design to exist within comics and animations then developing its back story is important. Where it comes from, how it came to exist and any life-changing events it has experienced are going to help back up the solidity of, and subsequent belief in, your character. Sometimes the telling of a character's back story can be more interesting than the character's present adventures (or not, in the case of the Star Wars prequels). 14. Experiment! Don't be afraid to experiment and ignore all the rules and tips about planning and crafting the look of your character design. Going against what is supposed to be the right way of doing something could create unexpected and exciting results. 15. Make your character design flexible Having decent materials to work with is useful, but not essential, for the early planning of your character design. A lot of amazing characters were successfully designed years ago when no-one had personal computers and Photoshop was just a dream. The drawings of your character should still work when rendered on paper with a simple pen or, as Sune Ehlers puts it: "The character should still be able to work with a stick dipped in mud and drawn on asphalt." 95 top Photoshop tutorials16. Swap mouse for pen Ian of I Like Drawing generates some of his character designs away from both the computer and the sketchbook, allowing outside elements to influence his work. "I really like characters that interact with their surroundings," he says. "The environment normally suggests an idea and then I let my strange mind do the rest. I prefer drawing in the real world with a pen instead of on the computer, because it feels good and odd things happen." 17. Get feedback from others Show people your creations and ask them what they think. Don't just ask whether they like them or not. Instead, see if they can pick up the personalities and traits of your characters. Find who you think is the suitable or ideal audience for your work and get feedback specifically from them about it. 18. Hone, plan and polish your design Creator of Scary Girl Nathan Jurevicius does a lot of preparatory work as part of his character design processInstead of just drawing or doodling without too much pre-planning, Nathan Jurevicius prefers to take a different approach. "I take a long time creating finished looking roughs and also thinking about how the character could be expanded beyond a 2D artwork, what the character will do in a specific world, and how it speaks and acts," he says. 19. Create the right environment for your character In the same way that you create a history for your character, you need to create an environment for it to help further cement believability in your creation. The world in which the character lives and interacts should in some way make sense to who the character is and what it gets up to. 20. Fine-tune your figure Question each element of your creation, especially things such as its facial features. The slightest alteration can have a great effect on how your character is perceived. Illustrator Neil McFarland advises: "Think about the meaning of the word 'character'. You're supposed to breath life into these things, make them appealing and give them the magic that will allow people to imagine what they're like to meet and how they might move. "I think it's strange how creating characters for the sake of it has become a distinct branch of graphic design." This article was originally published in Computer Arts magazine. Subscribe here. Liked this? Read these! 100 amazing Illustrator tutorials How to improve your character drawing 5 key trends in character design View the full article
  16. Regardless of what you want to call them – voice assistants, voice services, voice UIs, one thing is clear: the artificial intelligence behind voice technology is already advanced enough to make it the most efficient way to perform many common tasks. The user experience is improving at an impressive rate. In fact, the machines behind voice services such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana are growing smarter by the day. They can understand different utterances, variations in syntax and different accents – and thanks to cloud computing they can access vast amounts of data in the blink of an eye. In order to train the next generation of voice designers, tech school CareerFoundry has built a comprehensive Voice User Interface Design course in collaboration with Amazon Alexa, and in the process, discovered these eight important things that you need to consider when designing for voice... 01. Users don’t talk the way they type Users have developed a specific way of instructing devicesIf we want to find a good sushi restaurant in Berlin, we might type ‘best sushi Berlin’ or ‘top sushi restaurant Berlin.’ In contrast, in speech with a friend, we might say something like, ‘Do you know any good sushi restaurants in Berlin?’ or ‘What’s your favourite sushi restaurant in Berlin?’ When using a voice service, we tend to be aware that we’re talking to an artificially intelligent machine – so we don’t necessarily say, ‘Alexa, what’s your favourite sushi restaurant?’ but rather, ‘Alexa, find me a good sushi restaurant in Berlin’ or ‘Alexa, where should I eat sushi?’ There’s a new pattern of commands emerging, where the voice service assumes the persona of a helpful assistant. We speak to them with natural speech, but not as we would to a friend. Over time, this may change. Who knows, maybe Alexa will respond, ‘Say please', to ensure we don’t lose sight of our good manners. Otherwise, we might end up in a future where we talk to our partners with the same directness as we do our devices. 02. Personalisation is paramount Voice interfaces that remember preferences add to the ease of useAlready in voice-operated devices there’s a clear tendency towards personalisation. This is all part of creating a quick, efficient experience. A great way to do this is for a device to remember your preferences so you don’t have to input information every time you use it. For example, if you use the Deutsche Bahn Alexa skill to check your train times to work, rather than naming your departure and arrival station each day, the device remembers your route to work. Similarly, you might not want to order from Amazon and have to tell it your address and postcode through speech (‘8TK’ ‘80K?’). However, once you’ve ordered online once, Amazon will remember your delivery address and simply ask you to confirm it when you’re placing repeat orders via voice. 03. We need new conventions for showing system status Cortana has different animations to indicate what it's doing When you’re waiting for a webpage to load, not receiving feedback is incredibly frustrating. Mainly because you don’t know if it’s crashed or if it’s just taking its time. Status feedback is an important part of good user experience – if a site has to search through a large database to find what you need, it’s important to keep the user informed on where it’s up to. When you’re talking to a voice service, you’ll also want reassurance that it’s switched on and listening or performing a given action. However, you don’t necessarily want it to talk over you and disrupt your flow. This is where other indicators like lights or sound effects, which don’t disrupt your speech, can serve a valuable purpose. Have you ever had the experience of being on the phone and suddenly wondering if the person on the other end is still there? Thankfully we often use subtle audible clues to let the other person know we’re still on the line when they’re in the middle of a long anecdote. Similarly, voice services can find subtle ways of letting us know they’re switched on and at our service. Amazon Alexa devices reassure their owners that they’re listening with flashing lights and non-disruptive sound effects. Maybe in future we’ll be so used to them being failsafe that we won’t need any reassurance. 04. Adapting for flat navigation is key Users need to be able to direct voice assistants easilyWhen designing the UX of website, the site navigation is crucial. What are the most common actions a user performs? What options should be available on the homepage? How many click-throughs does it take a user to perform a simple task? When users interact with the web using voice, they’re likely to bypass many intermediary stages and go straight to the information they need. For example, a user who wants to order from Amazon will not say, 'Alexa, go to Amazon.com, then go to my account, then view my history, then find coffee, then place the order again.' They’ll simply go straight to the final step: ‘Alexa, re-order coffee.’ 05. Talking should come naturally The aim is to make the voice interaction as intuitive as possibleUsers don’t want to memorise hundreds of commands to perform specific tasks. The whole point of voice services is to leverage our most natural communication style and applying this to computers, not to create something new that takes time to learn. Graphical interfaces have a few codes we have come to understand. For example, if you can’t find what you’re looking for, it’s probably hiding in the hamburger menu. With voice, we may end up with a few established conventions, but in general the aim is to make voice interactions so intuitive that anyone could pick up a device and start using it. This will be an exciting task for designers and programmers: understanding the natural cues in conversations and teaching computers to understand us and seamlessly provide an answer or perform a task. The database of utterances that machines can understand is growing daily, and it’s very possible that we’ll reach a point where machines are better at deciphering our drunken slurs than our friends are. 06. Accessibility has different implications for voice Voice interaction designers need to be aware of speech or hearing impedimentsAs any UI designer will tell you, one of the most important things to worry about is accessibility. Fonts, colours, and graphics are not just aesthetic matters, it’s also about making sure everyone can access the content – for example, is the contrast making your content illegible for people with visual impairments? The designer's guide to digital accessibilityConsiderations around accessibility are important in voice interactions, but they take a different form. Voice interactions rely on two things working successfully: the device understanding the person talking, and the person understanding the device. This means designers should plan for speech impediments (not just regional accents), hearing impairments, and any other factors that could influence the communication, such as cognitive disorders. 07. It's difficult to curate answers but avoid bias We’re used to finding hundreds of results when we search on Google, however, when we’re interacting via voice we often just want the device to intelligently pick the best answer for us, rather than reeling off a long list of search results. This could get complicated quickly. For example, imagine asking your voice service to tell you what the best headphones on the market are. The information is quite subjective and could easily lend itself to commercial bias. Search engines will also have a huge role to play in determining which content is picked up by voice services, and this will no doubt result in some debates and accusations. 08. Privacy and fraud present a problem We may need a way for our devices to adapt what they offer depending on who's talkingFrom your children talking to Amazon Alexa and re-ordering tons of chocolate, to people overhearing your confidential information – there are lots of considerations around privacy and security when it comes to voice interfaces. An obvious solution is password-locking devices, but again, with voice it probably won’t take much effort for the kids to learn it. In the future, it’s likely that shared devices will recognise users by their voice and personalise their experience accordingly. In the meantime, we’ll have to think carefully and recognise that there are some use cases where voice just isn’t appropriate. Embracing voice interactions Alexa is even on smart watchesAs voice interaction evolves and machines become smarter and smarter, there will no doubt be loads of considerations that we haven’t even thought of today. Voice is potentially the next huge paradigm shift in technology, and with machine learning moving at the rate it is today it’s highly possible that over the next few years machines will become better than humans at deciphering human speech. If you’re working in technology, you’d be silly to ignore voice. There are lots of exciting initiatives out there, and Amazon, Cisco, IBM and Slack are just some of the big companies investing heavily in voice startups. If you’re keen to learn more about designing for voice, check out CareerFoundry’s 8-week Voice User Interface Design with Amazon Alexa online course. Related articles: Léonie Watson on making accessibility integral to web design process 8 minimal UI designs and why they work Why you should be excited about zero UI View the full article
  17. The launch of iOS 11 is right around the corner, making right now the perfect time to master the art of app development so your projects can climb the App Store ranks. Get your start with the Complete iOS 11 Developer Bundle, on sale for a price you can pick! The Complete iOS 11 Developer Bundle is here to give you a preview of what iOS 11 will bring to iPhones around the world and how you can take advantage of it as a developer. This bundle includes four levels of course packages, each building upon the knowledge gained from the last. Work through the fundamentals all the way up to the tips and tricks that experts count on. By the time you're finished, you'll be building your own apps from scratch and launching them in the App Store. The Complete iOS 11 Developer Bundle usually retails for $596 but you can get it on sale now for a price you can pick! Beat the average to unlock it all, get on the leaderboard, or just pay what you want. No matter what, you're going to get a bundle that you won't want to miss! About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at: deals@creativebloq.com View the full article
  18. CSS Custom Properties, commonly known as CSS variables, have been steadily making their way into browsers for some time now. With the release of Microsoft Edge 15 back in March, they are now supported by all major modern browsers. This means that for projects that aren't burdened by having to support legacy browsers such as Internet Explorer, CSS variables can be considered – for all intents and purposes – safe to use. A guide to writing better CSSMany developers already use variables with preprocessors such as Sass or Less as a means of reducing code repetition. Native CSS variables work in largely the same way, but don't require any additional build step, cascade like a regular CSS property, and most importantly, are available at runtime. These benefits give native CSS variables an edge over their preprocessor siblings, and opens the door for developers to do a lot of interesting things with a lot less code. In this tutorial, we'll be exploring how we can use CSS variables to implement website theming into a mock web app called NoteApp. This will involve writing CSS and JavaScript to allow the user to change the colour scheme and toggle the amount of columns shown. We'll then leverage the Web Storage API to make sure any changes are saved for future sessions. Get the tutorial files First things first, download the project files from Web Designer's FileSilo. To do this, go to FileSilo, select Free Stuff and Free Content next to the tutorial. Note: First time users will have to register to use FileSilo. 01. Set up the workspace In the '/website-template' directory you'll find the static NoteApp webpage in which we'll be implementing website theming using CSS variables and the Web Storage API. Open the directory in your preferred text editor. 02. Set up our CSS variables In 'main.css', you'll find much of the project's CSS. At the top, create a block targeting the 'root' pseudo-class. Within it define variables like in the snippet below. This root block contains global variables that will cascade down through our stylesheet like any regular CSS property. 03. Replace colours with variables Go through the stylesheet, either manually or using find/replace, and swap any static colour hex codes with their corresponding variable from the root block. To do this, use the var function and pass the variable's name. This tells the browser to reference that variable's value. For example: 04. Locate inline SVG for icons Open 'index.html' and one of the first things you notice is a large SVG element. This contains the paths for all the page's icons, each wrapped in a symbol element, and given a unique ID. These symbols are then referenced where needed with the 'use' element, allowing for the reuse of icons without any duplication of SVG code. 05. Add CSS variables to the SVG One benefit of using inline SVG instead of a .SVG file is that CSS can access its internal structure. This means so can our CSS variables (Except Edge, at the time of writing). In 'index.html', replace the SVG's style block with the snippet below. Now each of the SVG's colours are linked to the values of our CSS variables. 06. Create a columns variable We can also use CSS variables for properties other than colour. Create a new variable in the root block, call it 'columns', and give it a value of 3. This should match the default value of the 'Columns' UI component on the page. When functional, this component will toggle the number of columns. 07. Implement a columns toggle Using our new columns variable and the calc() function, we'll now calculate how wide each note component should be in order to create the correct number of columns. For example, if columns is set to 4, each note should have a width of 25%. 08. Add JS classes and data attributes When applying JS behaviour to a DOM element, hook into it via a class with a JS prefix. This decouples the functional aspects of an element from CSS ones. Let's add a 'js-update-variable' class to all colour and radio inputs as well as a 'data-attribute' referencing the corresponding variable to update. 09. Add JS to update CSS variables Open 'main.js' and add the snippet below. This loops through all our 'js-update-variable' inputs and adds logic, so on change, the variable referenced in its data-variable attribute is updated with the inputs value. The colour swatches and column toggle should now be working! 10. Attach a JS class to the Save button It makes sense to only save the user's colour scheme when they click the save button, as that allows them to experiment with themes as much as they'd like without automatically overriding the current one. To start, add '.js-save-colours' to the 'Save' button to function as our JS hook. 11. Create colours array Back in 'main.js', declare a new variable called 'colours' and assign to it a new array containing all the colour variables we want to be saved once the save button has been clicked. 12. Build Save button event listener Below the colours array, create a click event listener for the 'js-save-colours' class which we previously added to the Save button. Inside it create a new variable called 'htmlStyles' and assign it the computed properties of the root HTML element. We will use this to access our CSS variables. 13. Record CSS colour variables Next, within the event listener, create a new variable called 'coloursToSave' and assign it an empty object. Next, create a FOR loop using the 'colours' array from step 11. Within it, we'll add a complete key/value record of the variables mentioned in the 'colours' array to the 'coloursToSave' object. 14. Send coloursToSave to localStorage Now we have all the colour variables saved in 'coloursToSave', we'll send it to a component of the Web Storage API called localStorage. This is essentially an object that persists across sessions. We can store other objects within it using its 'setItem()' method. Let's send it our 'coloursToSave' object. 15. Add a JS class to Columns In addition to colours, we also want to make sure that our chosen columns number also persists across sessions. The first step towards this would be to add 'js-update-columns' to all radio inputs within the columns component. 16. Send columns to localStorage For each 'js-update-columns', we'll next assign event listeners to watch for changes. On detection, we'll then send the current value of the 'columns' variable to localStorage, again using its 'setItem()' method. Unlike with colours, we don't need to stringify this value as it's not an object. 17. Handle new sessions If the user returns after previously choosing a colour and column preference, we need to build logic so this saved data is turned back into CSS variables. The first step is to define a 'DOMContentLoaded' event listener, and then an 'if' statement to check for any saved data in localStorage using its 'getItem()' method. 18. Amending colour variables In the colours 'if' statement, create a new variable called 'savedColours' and assign it the value of a parsed colours object from localStorage. Using a FOR IN loop with 'savedColours', grab each colour key/value pair and append it to the root HTML element as a CSS variable. 19. Gather column variables data Before we can amend the columns variable, we have to first grab references to the saved data in localStorage and also the radio inputs within the 'Columns' component. The latter is so we can updates its state to make sure the correct number is pre-selected. 20. Amend variable and state Finally, we'll update the columns CSS variable with its saved localStorage counterpart and set the checked attribute of the relevant radio input within the 'Columns' component to true. The 'columns - 1' is to compensate for the fact that the columns NodeList is zero-based. 21. Test the finished product The finished product: everything on the mock NoteApp page should now workThat's it! Everything on the mock NoteApp page should now work. You can create your own colour scheme by clicking the swatches and then commit it to localStorage via the Save button. If you wish to toggle the amount of columns shown, click the appropriate number in the columns component. This article originally appeared in Web Designer magazine issue 264. Buy it here. Read more: What is Sass? How to get started with Sass 7 tips to manage colour better on the web View the full article
  19. Want to know how to create a realistic 3D architectural fly-through but aren't sure where to focus your efforts within the pipeline? If you know the basics of 3D modelling and texturing, this tutorial is for you. Although we will use XSI as a frontend, the steps should be fairly software agnostic. More detail is given on setting up global illumination in Redshift, so most of this will be applicable to a Maya frontend too. 29 free 3D models01. Define your aims Consider your audience carefully before starting a projectThe first questions we ask any client at Fluid Pictures is who the project is for. You need to have a really good idea of who the audience is so you can be clear about how you want it to look. In this case, the project is to be shown to a TV executive and played off a laptop, and the idea is that it looks like it could have been shot on a smartphone. 02. Find references Taking pictures of your own home could help you visualise what you're aiming forOnce you have a concept in mind, go forth to the internet and find as many images as you can as reference. It is so much easier if you have something to hand to provide you with ideas, or to show you exactly what something looks like in indoor lighting. 03. Model simple geometry Start creating your room with basic geometryGet a primitive cube and start to model the base geometry of the architecture. In this case, it is a traditional two room ground floor North London house. Decide where the windows should be and make sure you’ve got all the major bits of architecture in place. If you’re having internal lighting (I’m not in this case), then get stand ins for those, too. 04. Start lighting Decide on how many light sources your scene will have and where they are Add a white diffuse material to your walls and set up your lighting. My scene doesn’t have any additional interior lighting as it is supposed to look ‘off your phone’ real and not ‘shot like a movie’ real. I start with a HDR sky dome and a small area light for the sun to achieve sharp sun shadows. 05. Set up global illumination Redshift's Brute-Force GI Engine makes lighting scenes much quicker You’re not going to get anywhere without being able to the bounce light in the room. In the past, you either had to simulate each area of light falling into the room, or turn on global illumination and sit back for a long wait. Now you can switch on Redshift Brute-Force GI Engine and get good results in a fraction of the time. 06. Model furniture Get some basic furniture but don't worry about detail and texture at this stage You need some furniture, so head to your web-based CG model shop, or make them by hand. Just create the major components that you know you’re going to need. Don’t go mad with detail and texturing just yet, but if you do build anything properly, make sure there are no problem polygons flickering away. 07. Set up camera moves Think about how you want your viewer to see the sceneI want to be walking round the room, so set up a simple camera pan and fly-through at head height with a bit of automatic camera shake. Once again, get references; I walk about the room with a phone camera to get an idea of what a hand-held camera looks like. Don’t guess if you don’t have to. 08. Add detail to the architecture Extra details like the texture of a fireplace add realism to your scene Once you’re happy with the way your camera is moving, you can start adding detail and textures to the architecture where you’re going to see it. Use those references to tell you where to add those unexpected bits of detail that make it real. 09. Add more detail to the scene Add as much details as you can to the rest of the scene Kiss your weekend goodbye and keep adding detail. Use your reference to see what should be lying under the table. Texture the spine of every book, add rounded edges to everything. You might not see it, but you’ll know the detail is there. Keep going till you run out of time, money or willpower. 10. Check references and relight Continual checks with your references will help get accurate lighting So all is looking good. Check your reference again and make sure the colour balance looks convincing. Think about exposure. If you are shooting on a phone, it will vary the exposure as it looks into the light. Do you want to simulate that here, or in the grade afterwards? Render some low-res tests. 11. Decide on a global illumination method Keep testing until you're happy with illumination levels Redshift’s default GI is a brute force method that (fortunately) only has a couple of main parameters. If your render is noisy, as it likely will be – crank up the number of samples until it becomes smooth. However, this can take a very long time if you have big smooth white walls. Your best bet to avoid waiting ages is to invest in a noise reduction plug-in such as Neat Video. The other GI option is number of GI bounces. You may be tempted to think that ‘more is better’, but be warned that a lot of GI bounces can flatten out your image and lose contrast as energy is bounced through the scene. My advice is to make yourself comfortable and keep testing. The other main GI method is Irradiance point clouds and caching. Switch your primary and secondary GI to this, and the results will look a lot smoother with no grain. This method is great for large smooth areas of colour – a lot of the calculations are pre-processed so it can be faster for grain-free results. The issue with irradiance point clouds is potential blotches in your render and you can sometimes see artefacts on fast-moving camera shots. And yes, you’ll have to render it out to realise you have issues, and then slink back to Brute Force and its longer render times. 12. Start compositing Redshift enables you to experiment with various effectsThe aim of this project is to see what could be achieved in a single pass. But with Redshift, you are able to split up the render into its various components, so you can render out passes and then composite, adding subtle grades and effects as you do so, although at the moment, you can’t create custom AOVs. 13. Adjust grading Adjusting the colour grading is the final step in creating your room sceneYour final render should be a thing of beautiful reality, and the last thing to do is adjust the grade and add any effects. You should have thought long and hard about your digital cinematography so changes should be minor, but this is where you can push that big filmic grade, or in our case start to desaturate and get a low-tech look. I don’t feel the need to add grain, video streaks or the appearance of a rolling shutter as I am replicating a phone camera. Just a few tweaks on the levels and you’re done. This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 224. Buy it here. Related articles: How to create realistic CG cloth in Redshift 17 tips for modelling a complex city scene Make realistic plants in Cinema 4D View the full article
  20. Julia Khusainova, experience designer at Airbnb, will give a presentation about designing the pivot at Generate London next week, where she will share her process for developing new products from ideation, testing and validation, development, to release and beyond. Airbnb's mission is all about making people feel at home – whether that's during a stay with one of its hosts or on its website. That means communicating effectively with a global user base, and building a design language that can scale with the company as it continues on its meteoric trajectory. We chatted to vice president of design Alex Schleifer, about how the design team is helping Airbnb fulfil its mission. How has the role of design changed at Airbnb since the company launched? Alex Schleifer: Design has always been important at Airbnb – it was founded by designers and the first guests were coming to a design conference in San Francisco. Some of the biggest changes have come from scaling and adapting to the momentum. Our design team has evolved. We have researchers, writers and even engineers that all are today part of the design organisation at Airbnb. We've built better tools and processes. We have designers embedded in all our product groups. It's constantly evolving but at its core it hasn't changed all that much – there's a deep passion for design. At Generate London, Julia Khusainova - experience designer at Airbnb - will walk through her process for developing new products How is the design team structured? AS: Design is a multidisciplinary group that includes experience design and research, content strategy, localisation and design operations. These teams impact everything a user will interact with – this includes internal users like our customer agents. It's a real advantage to have so many disciplines within the same team, as you're constantly exposed to many different facets of the work. What are the core principles your design teams work by? AS: Airbnb has a clear mission that drives all of our decisions: To help build a world where everyone on earth can feel like they belong anywhere. When applied to product design, the key principles this translates to are designing for trust and designing for everyone. These really apply to everything we do and impact the progress we make towards our mission most substantially. In April 2016, Airbnb introduced an updated app designed to match people to the homes, neighbourhoods and experiences that will help them live like a localHow do you apply those two principles in practice? AS: Building trust is really about creating an environment where trust can manifest itself between what are often two strangers. There are very explicit ways to do this, like reviews or verifying profiles, but also subtle ways, like how much we emphasise real people and real homes. As for designing for everyone: We're building a product for a truly diverse and global community. There's something unique about our global reach – when a host and guest meet they're often from different parts of the world. That means every decision we make needs to be done with a global lens. Our community is also incredibly diverse, and making sure everyone feels like they belong on Airbnb is in part the responsibility of our user experience design. What's the role of research in this? AS: We have a strong research team that does substantial global studies and is constantly meeting with our community all around the world. Without local knowledge we can't develop a truly global product. The research team helps develop and iterate on features by capturing real user feedback, but it also takes on larger, long-term research projects that guide the overall product strategy. The work of researchers is critical to every decision we make on the product. The same goes for data science. Our community is so large and diverse it's incredibly important to have a team that helps us understand behaviours on our platform. In most cases, data scientists will work closely with researchers to help us learn more about our users. All of our designers are motivated to learn more about data and how to read it. There's a healthy balance between art and science that makes working here really rewarding. Data and research really help us fine-tune our intuition. Research and data science play a key role in developing Airbnb's productsHow do you manage the design of Airbnb products? AS: We set out to build a design language system (DLS) with some specific goals: create a common language that is understood across disciplines, establish an iconic visual language, and define components that make designing and building software easier. It's all in the name of creating a beautiful, cohesive, usable app or website. For this to happen we need everyone involved, not just designers. It's been great to see engineers really engage with the project. Something at this scale is never easy and there are many ways to define what a component is, how atomic you should be in your definitions, what's called what. These are the conversations that improve the system and since its launch six months ago it's only become a bigger part of the conversation at Airbnb. What was your process in putting the DLS together? AS: We started with a small team that essentially built a manifest of all the patterns, flows and elements that existed in our products. It was important to quickly build a scaffold of sorts for the system; a set of common components with common names. This showed us we could take something that had been developed over years by many different people and organise it into a very reasonable set of patterns. We did visual and brand work alongside this to get a sense of what we wanted our future products to feel like. We knew we wanted to let the photography shine, to bring in typographic qualities that support a range of languages, and so on. Then the work really started. We began building some of the components and getting deeper into the UI. This involved many more teams and conversations around specific philosophies in design and engineering. How is the DLS used now? AS: It has already changed the way we build. It's now owned by everyone that works on our product, which means it's growing and changing every day. The way we look at it, we'll never be done. A design system needs to evolve at the pace of the company – or preferably even be slightly ahead, so it can support new projects. Airbnb's design language system is made up of common components that translate across disciplinesHow important is storytelling? AS: It's incredibly important to us. We actually use storyboarding for a lot of our projects. We are big fans of companies like Pixar and often use professional illustrators to communicate a concept. We also create a lot of content ourselves: short films, animation and music that get integrated into the app or communication. There's a huge variety of incredible talent at Airbnb and we're lucky to have a community that brings so many amazing stories with it. How often do you bring in outside contractors? AS: We will work with the best talent the project requires. This means we've worked with many incredible people over the years. We will usually find people that have specific skills, like illustrators, musicians, data designers and so on. What's your workspace like? AS: Most of the design team is based out of San Francisco in an incredibly varied and creative space. We work in what are essentially neighbourhoods built around large 'project rooms' that are modular spaces with displays, whiteboards, pinboards and tall tables. Everyone is free to pick up and work in the many open spaces distributed around the office. People are also free to change spaces by decorating them. The design team is distributed, but we have a few key spaces that are shared. There's a crit room that really is our main home, as well as the common studio, which is set up with a variety of creative analogue and digital tools. How do you communicate with your team? AS: We're growing very rapidly so reducing the communication overhead is important. Distinct product teams have their own cadence. There is one all-hands every two weeks where the entire team gathers for updates from various parts of the organisation. Individual disciplines also have stand-ups weekly, where most (if not all) of the week's work gets an update. I try to personally meet with different people from the team as much as possible, but it's become harder as it has grown to over 100. I will walk the office and try to chat to whoever I meet about what they're working on. It's one of my favourite things to do. The office layout centres around large project rooms, surrounded by plenty of free workspaces Do you use any particular tools? AS: I'm a big fan of Slack and its integrations. It's really easy to share files and feedback. Our team uses it pretty much constantly. I always have it open on my desktop – I like being available if anyone on the team needs to talk to me. We're also building internal tools for asset management, file sharing and prototyping that we'll share in the coming months. In general, we try not to burden people with too much software, as each team has their own needs. Tell us about the role of atomic design at Airbnb... AS: Any company that builds software at the rate we do ends up using some sort of atomic process. There's no way to scale if you don't become somewhat capable at building systems. We've got a lot better at componentising everything and building tools as well as processes. Tools are a huge part of this. We have a team dedicated to building and integrating tools for our designers; everything from asset integration into Sketch to prototyping environments. Having access to everything quickly is crucial, whether it's an icon or a piece of research. As the company has grown, what have you learned about implementing design thinking in a large organisation? AS: I think it's about creating simple frameworks and giving people the right environment. We're lucky because design thinking has been part of Airbnb since day one, which makes things somewhat easier. The other thing is to make sure you don't consider 'design thinking' as something that exclusively resides within the discipline of design. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 287. Airbnb will be represented by product designer Julia Khusainova at Generate London on 22 September, a two-day/one-track conference with 16 presentations covering prototyping, adaptive interfaces, web animations, user research, performance, accessibility, UX strategy, and lots more. Get your ticket today. Related articles: 11 great UI designs 10 essential tools for freelance UX designers How Jaime Levy became a UX strategy guru View the full article
  21. Black Friday 2017 [LINK] is steaming ever closer: are you ready for the biggest shopping day of the year? If you’re in the market for a creative bargain but don’t have time to permanently monitor Amazon for the best discounts, fear not. We’ll be bringing you all the best Amazon Black Friday deals for designers, illustrators and artists – right here. Whether you’re a studio owner, freelancer or work in-house, we’re on hand to help you make huge savings on everything from hardware (including workstations, laptops, graphics tablets, cameras and more) to software, studio kit, design books, lifestyle items and more. So bookmark this page and make sure you check back regularly – not just once Black Friday 2017 has kicked off on 24 November, but in the run up to Thanksgiving as well. We’ll be scooping up all the best early bargains for designers and creatives. A word of warning, though. The online retailer doesn’t divulge how much stock it has, so if you see an Amazon Black Friday deal you like, it's good advice to purchase the item while you can. (We're not advocating snapping up every deal you see, of course. We're just saying don't expect quality deals to last long.) How can I get the best Amazon Black Friday deals? Aside from checking in regularly to this page, if you’re serious about bagging a bargain this Black Friday, an Amazon Prime subscription is recommended. Last year, Amazon gave subscribers early access to some of its blink-and-you-miss-them Lighting Deals – which you tend to find on the Today's Deals page. These usually centre around items where stock is low and don’t last for long. Start your FREE 30-day Amazon Prime trial today: UK Start your FREE 30-day Amazon Prime trial today: US Amazon also aimed some of its 2016 Black Friday deals exclusively at Prime users. And subscribers benefitted from additional discounts on prices that were already reduced, too. For those who don't already have one, an Amazon prime subscription will set you back £79/$99 per year. For that, you'll get access to Amazon Prime Video (like Netflix), Amazon Prime Music (like Spotify), special offers throughout the year, faster delivery and unlimited photo storage in the cloud – among other benefits. The best Amazon Black Friday deals Amazon gave the Wacom Intuos Pro Small graphics tablet a 30 per cent discount in August The million dollar question: what are the best Amazon Black Friday deals that designers and illustrators can expect in 2017? According to our sister site TechRadar, you can “almost certainly guarantee” that Amazon's own line of products – including the Echo and Echo Dot speakers, Fire stick, Fire tablets and Kindle e-Readers will get a discount too. Based on last year's results, we’d also hope to see some cracking offers in the following areas... Phone Black Friday dealsSave £120 on the Samsung Galaxy S8+ One deal already up on Amazon gives you the chance to pick up the Samsung Galaxy S8+ smartphone for just £626.99. It launched in April 2017 for £779 in the UK – which is what you’ll get it for at most leading retailers – but Amazon has knocked £120 off the price (and we'd hope to see more offers like this over Black Friday). TechRadar gave the Samsung Galaxy S8+ 4.5 our of 5 stars in its review, which you can read here. Camera Black Friday dealsSave £220 on the Nikon D7100 Digital SLR Camera Body Need a new camera for your studio? Amazon is already offering the Nikon D7100 Digital SLR Camera Body for just £629.99 – down from £849.99. It boasts a 24.1 MP DX format CMOS sensor, 3.2 inch LCD and dual SD memory card slots. TechRadar reviewed the camera and awarded it four out of five stars. Graphics tablets Black Friday dealsAmazon recently offered some tasty discounts on select Wacom and Bamboo gear for its #ShopTheFuture event. We’d hope to see more of these repeated over Black Friday 2017. Computing and accessories Black Friday dealsLast year saw a plethora of computing deals, including an HP Slimline 410-135na Desktop machine for £329.99, and – reports TechRadar – £200 off the ASUS Flip UX360UA 13.3-inch Touchscreen Zenbook Notebook. We'd hope to see workstations, laptops, monitors and a host of computing accessories discounted over Black Friday. View the full article
  22. https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/6/16259810/huawei-apple-global-smartphone-sales … View the full article
  23. Animating just got quicker and easier with CrazyTalk Animator 3.2’s new PSD export function. With this tool, character designers can effortlessly move assets back and forth between Photoshop and CTA3. By doing so, you can adjust the look of your characters, experiment with image effects, and pose them with the help of specialist frameworks. Animate Photoshop character instantly Your character drawings can quickly become animationsWith the launch of CrazyTalk Animator 3.2, character designers and Photoshop users will find their work process become five times faster than if they didn’t use the software. This is because they’ll have access to the software’s new PSD character modification and PSD graphic design tools. Creating a professional animation can be a long and difficult task. Even with the help of digital tools, designers and animators can find the whole process a chore that takes longer than it needs to. CrazyTalk Animator 3.2 makes animation faster and easier than ever. CrazyTalk Animator is a 2D animation software that’s already won over a legion of fans in the creative community thanks to its simple animation tools that deliver amazing results. These tools include a motion library for humans and other creatures, templates that can turn any image into a 2D character, plus a range of props and scene elements that can be controlled just how you want. The best complementary tool for Photoshop With the ability to access PSD character modification, animators, video creators and graphic designers will be able to make use of visual enhancements such as textures, colours, and make-up editing. This opens up the possibility of creating truly unique looking character designs, complete with individual touches that you couldn’t deploy before. Exporting to Photoshop allows for custom editingWith the capability to launch Photoshop and synchronise updates, CTA3 can send props or characters to Photoshop in layers for further custom editing. You can easily design clothes, alter colour shading, or apply filter effects to your animatable assets. By using CTA3’s powerful pose and expression tools, designers can easily transform a single character to a full series of actors, each with different styles and gesturesMeanwhile the PSD export function will allow creatives to easily export PSD files from CrazyTalk Animator 3.2 to external tools such as Photoshop and other compatible tools. This will allow for better character modification options, as well as providing the opportunity to recreate a character pose and refine their overall look. Customise your characters with different clothes and accessoriesWhen used together, these tools mean that an animator, video creator or graphic designer can work five times faster than if they didn’t use CrazyTalk Animator 3.2. Use framework tools to bring life to your imagesThese tools provide lots of opportunities across all sectors of graphic design and animation. Along with the other features on offer with CrazyTalk Animator, these additions will instantly bring an image, logo or prop to life. Users can apply effects themselves to get the perfect animation, or choose from a selection of motion templates to whip up movement in a matter of seconds. Topped off with a powerful 2D bone editor rig that creates a realistic sense of movement and weight, plus facial puppets and audio lip-syncing tools, the hassle of creating an animation has gone out of the window thanks to CrazyTalk Animator 3.2. You can even try the tools before you buy, or upgrade in a matter of clicks on the CrazyTalk Animator homepage. Check out more about CrazyTalk Animator here, or learn more about CrazyTalk Animator 3.2. View the full article
  24. Researchers find six previously unknown memory corruption and unlock-bypass vulnerabilities in major chipset vendors' firmware code. View the full article
  25. Google fixed 81 vulnerabilities, including 13 critical remote code execution bugs, in the September edition of its Android Security Bulletin on Tuesday. View the full article
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