<![CDATA[ Creative Bloq ]]>

<![CDATA[ Creative Bloq ]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/3d/3d-art Sat, 10 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 en <![CDATA[ Did a book from 1973 predict the logo designs of some of today's biggest companies? ]]> The best graphic design books can be great sources of inspiration for designers, but the idea is not to directly copy from them, right? Some people are wondering whether a single publication from the 1970s could have directly influenced dozens of contemporary designs.

A classic graphic design reference book has resurfaced on social media, and it's getting attention for the familiarity of some of the symbols it depicts. Some of them look incredibly similar to identities belonging to modern-day companies, from AMD to Google.

Logos book — Trademarks & Symbols, Vol. 2: Symbolical Designs by Yasaburo Kuwayama was published in 1973Van Nostrand Reinhold

The book is Trademarks & Symbols, Vol. 2: Symbolical Designs by the Japanese designer Yasaburo Kuwayama. While Volume 1 had focused on alphabetical and letter-form designs, the second tome centres on symbolical and pictorial designs. It's a directory of real symbols and logos organised according to their form, for example circles, squares, trees, eyes and human figures.

From a just a few pages shared on social media, people have spotted designs that resemble the logos of chip maker AMD, Google Drive, Chase Bank, Natwest, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Portugal's state bank, Renault and more.

@Frozune actually, flipping through this book now after seeing this and it's basically every logo ever.Also found Perplexity, Antigravity, Snowflake, The London Underground and the Jedi Rebellion. https://t.co/KgjnFCpuxtOctober 8, 2026

@Frozune No like actually, holy crap https://t.co/j69fy6r9K3October 8, 2026

@Frozune Ancient designs are fascinating and far richer than imagined. This might be an App Store icon from thousands of years ago.https://t.co/PZnYaXyObH https://t.co/aBseqkZHJhOctober 8, 2026

@Frozune Chase bank https://t.co/SgOevtg7FcOctober 8, 2026

@Frozune Raia Drogasil S.A. - a drugstore company in Brazil https://t.co/Dgg1VLX0fxOctober 8, 2026

@Frozune Eh pero si es el logo de cinepolis https://t.co/7DxydSlyx9October 8, 2026

Have the graphic designers behind modern big brand logos been picking and choosing old designs to recycle? Probably not. Geometric forms are relatively universal, and Yasaburo's book is so extensive that it's logical that modern brands could arrive at similar shapes on their own.

One observer has pointed out that in the book's appendix some designs are listed as being used by multiple companies. Even today, we see brands with similar logos.

When it comes to minimalist geometric symmetry, there are only so many options. Nevertheless, if you're looking for a logo design for your startup, some people reckon the book still has a few gems that could be available for the taking.

@Frozune unused gems hanging out here https://t.co/uFCZe8e4DzOctober 9, 2026

Trade Marks & Symbols was originally published in Tokyo by Kashiwa Shobo and Orion Press and internationally by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. You might have to part with a lot of money to get a copy today. There's a hardcover copy selling on Amazon for over $2,000.

The nearest contemporary equivalent I can think of are Jens Müller's Taschen books Logo Beginnings and Logo Modernism, which I can highly recommend.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/news/did-a-book-from-1973-predict-the-logo-designs-of-some-of-todays-biggest-companies nsKxZHevFeDwx8m7H4Gown Sat, 10 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ The iPhone 18 Pro just ended my affair with the iPhone Air ]]> It's not you, iPhone Air, it's me. Actually, no. It's you. I tried to love you. I defended you for over a year, stuck up for you in the face of ridicule from my Pro-wielding colleagues. But now that the iPhone 18 Pro is in my hand, I'm sorry to tell you, it's over. This is the end of the affair.

I really did think the iPhone Air was for me when Apple announced it last year. As an iPhone mini apologist, I've always favoured design over features, whilst lamenting the trend towards massive, heavy bricks. But all of those compromises that tech nerds have accused the Air of making in its pursuit of ultimate thinness? Yeah, they're valid.

I still love the design of the iPhone Air. From the ultra thin profile to the polished titanium edges, this is the most premium looking and feeling iPhone ever. It's the closest thing we've had to Steve Jobs' dream of a device that's genuinely all-display – the phone is so thin and light that it disappears into the background when looking at the 3,000 nit display.

But yes, it only has one camera lens. And despite Apple's claims that it's somehow worth two (still not sure how that checks out), the limitations are a pain in everyday use. Countless times I've tried to take a 0.5x photo, only to remember the feature doesn't exist on the Air. Same goes for zooming in on anything further than the near distance – the digital zoom just doesn't cut it.

The other major drawback, of course, is battery. Over the course of a year, my iPhone Air's battery health has degraded to 91%, which is much quicker than my iPhone 15 Pro degraded. The result is not-quite-all-day battery life, which has got me into trouble a few times when travelling.

The iPhone 18 Pro might be heavy, but in some ways it's actually smaller than the iPhone Air (Image credit: Apple)

And while I said I love the design of the iPhone Air, I do take issue with one aspect: the width. Why, oh why, is the so-called thinnest, lightest and therefore most portable iPhone too wide to use one-handed? It makes no sense to me that the iPhone Air is taller and wider than the iPhone 18 Pro.

Speaking of which, it's the 18 Pro that's finally turned me off the Air. I've been using the Pro for a week now, and realised just how much I've missed those basic features: a better camera, and better battery life. And despite the heft, I'm actually finding it easier to use one-handed, because it's less wide. It's almost a novelty that my thumb can reach the edge of the screen.

It may not be as 'pretty' as the iPhone Air, but the 18 Pro just feels more solid as a device that fits into my life. I'll miss looking at the Air, but it's time to admit: looks aren't everything.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/design/product-design/the-iphone-18-pro-just-ended-my-affair-with-the-iphone-air rYHHkgECjDJfeBHFYomJn9 Sat, 10 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Why ‘boring’ AI is Hollywood’s best bet ]]> A single box office bomb can lose studios tens, if not hundreds, of millions. Disney’s Strange World reportedly lost $200M, and The Flash set DC back by over $150M. Those are among the worst cases, but failing to turn a profit is a common occurrence in the filmmaking industry, with even conservative estimates suggesting 10% of major productions flop.

Given the high risk, the temptation to use generative AI in filmmaking is entirely understandable. It can bring entire projects to life in a fraction of the time and on a much smaller budget. But at what cost?

The risk of casting AI

AI in hollywood analytics — (Image credit: Egor Dubrovsky)

AI is capable of throwing together a semi-coherent script and generating visuals that pass the eye test without much scrutiny. Yet, we’re nowhere close to the point where AI can write scenes, organize productions, act naturally, and shoot movies without any human assistance.

The industry will continue to rely heavily on the creativity and vision of its writers, performers, directors, designers, and wider production teams for the foreseeable future, and they’ve already made it abundantly clear that they’re unwilling to share a set with AI if it’s given a starring role. Preventing AI from taking creative jobs in the field was one of the primary causes of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, which caused losses in excess of $5 billion.

Audiences share that sentiment, regularly panning the use of generative AI for creative purposes. And not just heavily AI-generated projects, such as Misaligned, starring AI actress Tilly Norwood, but movies that used it sparingly, such as Young Washington.

While the technology is constantly improving, algorithms are infamous for producing inconsistent narratives, repetitive tropes, and uncanny imagery. With that in mind, something as simple as using generative AI in a promotional poster can, and has, caused backlash. The actual film might be perfectly watchable, but like a poor critic score, that label alone is bound to put plenty of people off buying a ticket.

AI’s role in Hollywood

There’s an important distinction, however. Netflix’s The Gentleman received positive reviews from critics and audiences – despite the use of AI.

The difference is, the technology was used exclusively behind the scenes to break down the series’ action-packed script, inform shooting decisions, and help the production run smoothly. Viewers weren’t presented with AI-generated visuals or a storyline shaped by algorithms. Many productions now use AI in this way, assigning it menial, repetitive pre-production tasks such as script breakdowns, shooting schedules, and budget planning that do not influence what ends up on the screen in any way.

That isn’t a change that’s going to result in another costly strike. I worked as a director’s assistant in Hollywood, and I can confidently say the vast majority of the industry’s workforce would be happy handing over these tasks. Film production is a gruelling, high-stress environment, where 12-hour days are the norm and 16-hour days aren’t uncommon. Nobody suffers through that because they love combing through call sheets for clashes or calculating expenses item by item. These tasks are all vitally important to a successful production, yet creatives would much rather spend their time on the creative side of the process.

The benefits of boring automation

AI, on the other hand, is perfectly happy taking on tedious pre-production processes. And, unlike the creative process, it’s far better at it than humans. It can process far greater amounts of information at far greater speeds, and it doesn’t make mistakes due to fatigue or boredom like humans often do.

Pre-production on a Hollywood film typically takes anywhere from three to seven months. A simple scene breakdown would take days. However, using AI, you can produce the same document in minutes, and the industry has already saved over 5.2M hours of manual work by automating these processes.

Automating ‘boring’ pre-production tasks might not save as much as replacing A-listers with AI stars or generating VFX instead of creating it. However, pre-production still accounts for 10-15% of the total budget on average. That alone would have shaved $80M off of Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ $537M production cost. It’s a huge saving for studios, without the risk of losing your audience.

For AI to pay off, however, the aim shouldn’t be to reduce budgets. Studios should view it as an opportunity to focus more money, time, and attention on the things that actually matter to audiences: refining scripts, improving special effects, perfecting performances. Essentially, creating better films. After all, the real issue with AI in Hollywood isn’t the technology itself – automation has been streamlining creative processes for decades, without complaint. The concern is what happens when all those cost cuts and shrinking teams ultimately compromise the quality of the final cut.

Discover more about Filmustage.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/features/why-boring-ai-is-hollywoods-best-bet 6qPr2vSMDAzT7xqmvHp3FD Sat, 10 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ The Carrie remake is getting roasted over its changes to one of the most iconic scenes in horror ]]> Based on Stephen King's debut novel, Brian De Palma's 1976 Carrie remains a timeless classic. I must have seen the film for the first time in the early nineties, at least 15 years after its release, and it didn't feel old or in need of a remake.

Yet since then, we've had a sequel, Carrie 2 in 1999, plus three remakes: a TV movie in 2002, Kimberly Peirce's 2013 movie, and now an eight-part series released on Amazon Prime Video this week. All of them felt a bit unnecessary, but none prompted as much debate as the latest interpretation.

Warning: this article may contain spoilers for those who have not watched Carrie on Amazon Prime.

Developed by Mike Flanagan (The Life of Chuck), Amazon Prime's Carrie stars Summer H Howell as the eponymous teenage girl with telekinetic powers.

In contrast to the movies, it sticks closer to the documentary format of the novel. It also recognises the impact of the social changes that could make the story worth retelling: metal detectors in US schools, the additional harm of cyberbullying and online harassment via social media.

But it makes other changes that go far beyond merely updating the story to a different age. Carrie's personality has been changed dramatically, making her more optimistic and likeable.

For some, this reduces the concept of what defines Carrie to a series of setpiece scenes. Over on X, someone's provided a side-by-side comparison of one of the most famous: the prom scene, comparing the 1976 Carrie against Amazon's series. Opinions are not favourable to the latter.

I need people to see these two clips of Carrie (1976) and Carrie (2026) side by side to understand you are being fed slop and calling it a gourmet meal https://t.co/GRCxhSAnKoOctober 8, 2026

"The sound design. The cinematography. The lighting. The editing. The pacing. The score. The performances. How did we regress this badly?" one person asks on seeing the comparison above.

Some point to the inanity of a script that has fleeing characters redundantly explain that the doors are locked and that Carrie's coming for them. Yeah, I think we could gather that.

Others feel that the more sympathetic portrayal of Carrie lightens or even glamourises the scene, making her a heroine in a "crush the bullies" fantasy. The blood looks carefully painted, more like a Halloween costume than a revolting humiliation. Carrie looks like she's "aura farming", one person thinks.

"Carrie is not a 'girlboss moment', it's a mass killing," another person points out. "It ought to convey the horror of a school shooting, hundreds of people trapped in a burning building."

The ending is drastically different too, adding the kind of plot twist that's obligatory in any TV series that's aiming for a second season. I don't want to give too many spoilers away, but it seems to open the possibility of Carrie becoming a kind of X-men/Heroes/The Tomorrow People story.

Flanagan has said that he felt there was more of Carrie's story to tell and that he aims to bring in elements that reflect the larger world that King built through his later books like The Shining, Doctor Sleep and The Institute.

But is the series really telling more of Carrie's story of writing a completely different one that happens to have the same name?

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/news/the-carrie-remake-is-getting-roasted-over-its-version-of-one-of-the-most-iconic-scenes-in-horror 4vTcQ8qrpsLNKvcBYhuxf8 Sat, 10 Oct 2026 07:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Tested: The Mac Studio M5 Max claims its crown as the best of all Apple computers ]]> The latest Mac Studio uses the M5 Max chip, which we’ve already seen in the form of a MacBook Pro. There's an M5 Ultra too, which takes things to another level, but the price gets excessive enough to make the Max version look reasonable. Still, this should be enough computer for anyone, whether you’re chewing through 8K video or trying to break the record for the greatest number of layers and filters in a Photoshop document.

On the outside, it’s the same old Studio we’ve seen for generations, but Apple keeps piling on the improvements and innovations in its silicon, and that’s lead to a machine that’s pulling ahead at the top of many of Creative Bloq’s benchmarking charts, will be a great alternative to the best laptop for animation and is looking hard to catch.

Key specifications

CPU:	Apple M5 Max (18 core)
NPU:	Neural Engine (16 core)
Graphics:	Integrated, 40 cores
Memory:	128GB LPDDR5
Storage:	4TB SSD, SD card slot
Ports:	4x Thunderbolt 5, 2x USB-A, 2x USB-C, 1x HDMI, 1x 10Gb Ethernet, 1x 3.5mm audio
Wireless connectivity:	Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6
Dimensions:	95 x 197 x 197mm
Weight:	2.7kg

Design, build and display

Apple Mac Studio M5 Max 2026 — (Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)

• Small for a desktop Mac
• Lightweight

Opening up any new Apple product is always an exciting experience as they’re just so well packaged. You pull tabs and tear strips away from the box, then follow arrows to fold down the sides and reveal, in the case of the Studio, the aluminium monolith inside.

The M5 Max version of the Studio looks little different to the way it has all the way back to 2022, with all the changes concentrated on the inside. This means you get something that looks like a Mac Mini under a magnifying glass, only without any of the slight annoyances that have crept into the little computer over the years. The power button is at the back but you can reach it without turning the Mac over, there are loads of USB ports including some Type-As, there's an actual light on the front to tell you if it’s on, and a port for everything so there's less need for a dock or adapter. If you’re lucky enough to own an Apple Studio Display, it will sit on the foot like it was designed to go there.

If you’ve bought the M5 Ultra version of the Mac Studio, it’s heavier than either M5 Max edition due to the presence of an enhanced cooling system for the hotter chip, but the M5 Max is barely heavier than many laptops, and for something that’s settled nicely into the Mac Pro’s niche at the top of the product stack, that’s remarkable.

Design score: 4/5

Features

• Thunderbolt 5 aplenty
• Easy to reach ports

As Apple is reusing the same Studio chassis we’ve seen previously, and the M5 Max version even has the same IO as the M4 Max we reviewed previously, there's very little new here. The Wi-Fi has had a bump to version 7, the Bluetooth to version 6, but there's still plain Thunderbolt 5 (which is plenty fast enough) and a boring old HDMI port.

This machine doesn’t use the M6 - we haven’t seen that chip yet - but the M5 Max takes the already excellent M5 and just adds more to it. Apple is claiming 3.9x faster AI performance than the prior generation and 4.3x the peak AI compute performance of an M3 Ultra. You can spec it with up to 512GB of RAM, if you dare, and you’ll find that this has 50% more memory bandwidth. If that’s not enough, you can use Thunderbolt to connect multiple Mac Studios together to load the most demanding frontier-class open-weight models available. A cluster of four Mac Studios, so it’s claimed, can deliver up to 3x faster AI inference than a single system.

Apple is really pushing the AI capabilities, presumably getting in on the local model and agent action before the first crop of Nvidia RTX Spark machines arrives. But you know what else likes huge amounts of RAM and enormous bandwidth, not to mention loads of processing power? Creative work, that’s what. If you want hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes and AV1 decode, or to colour-grade uncompressed 8K footage while processing multiple concurrent video streams, this is the Mac to do it for you.

It’s also worth noting that Apple has moved its in-house creative apps to a subscription model, called Creator Studio. You get Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro and a bit more for a monthly fee rather than a large up-front cost, something that will hopefully rekindle interest in these underappreciated apps.

Feature score: 4/5

Benchmark scores

We test every one of our laptops using the same benchmarking software suite to give you a thorough overview of its suitability for creatives of all disciplines and levels. This includes:

• Geekbench: Tests the CPU for single-core and multi-core power, and the GPU for the system's potential for gaming, image processing, or video editing. Geekbench AI tests the CPU and GPU on a variety of AI-powered and AI-boosted tasks.
• Cinebench: Tests the CPU and GPU's ability to run Cinema 4D and Redshift.
• UL Procyon: Uses UL Solutions' Procyon software suite to test the system's ability for AI image generation in Stable Diffusion, its Microsoft Office performance and its battery life in a looping video test.
• Topaz Video AI: We use Topaz Video AI to test the system's ability to upscale video and convert video to slow-motion.
• PugetBench for Creators: We use the PugetBench for Creators benchmarking suite to test the system's ability to run several key tasks in Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as its performance when encoding/transcoding video.
• ON1 Resize AI: Tests the system's ability to resize 5 photos to 200% in a batch process. We take the total time taken to resize the images and divide by 5.

Performance

• Good at everything
• Even the fan isn't too loud

The M5 Max Studio we’ve got here is the top model, with six Super cores, 12 Performance cores (for a total of 18) and a 40-core GPU. It sits one level below the M5 Ultra, which is two M5 Max chips stuck together and can have up to 36 cores, split between 12 Super and 24 Performance, but which costs a lot more. You don’t get Efficient cores on this level of Mac, and it’s essentially the same chip we saw in the M5 Max version of the MacBook Pro, just given slightly more room to breathe in the Studio chassis. It’s backed up in the model sent to Creative Bloq by 128GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD, which contributes to the cost as well as appealing to the new crop of AI types who want to run their models locally.

And so we see it head to the top of our benchmark charts. In Geekbench 6 it takes the top spot in both the single- and multi-core tests, butting even more of a gap between the M5 and its closest rival, the Snapdragon X2 Elite. In Geekbench 2026 it leads the Core Ultra 9 290HX+ in the Razer Blade 18 by almost 3000 points in multi-core rendering, and it’s the first CPU to break the 200-point barrier in Cinebench 2024’s single-core test, in which we used to say that 100 was a good score.

The GPU does well too, sitting 4.2% behind the GeForce RTX 5070Ti in the latest HP Omen 35L - a full-size desktop card - in Cinebench 2026. It beats the popular 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX laptop CPU in multi-core rendering, and almost doubles the score of the Omen 35L’s CPU, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D beloved of gamers, in the same test.

Speaking of games, if you were thinking of dropping this much money on a Mac and want to use it out of hours, it can get 60FPS out of Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K resolution using the ray-tracing ultra preset, as long as you turn on MetalFX upscaling and AMD FSR frame generation. Drop the res down to 1440p and you can go as high as 89FPS.

In single-precision AI workloads the M5 Max sits between gaming laptops with GeForce chips in our charts, still behind the big desktop PCs. It drops in the Quantized test, however, sitting behind the likes of the Geekom A9 Max, but still ahead of the vanilla M5.

It shines in creative apps though, taking a long lead at the top of the Premiere Pro benchmark chart, beating its portable sibling and the HP Omen 35L. It’s the same in Photoshop, where its results are 6% better than the MacBook Pro with the same CPU.

Performance score: 5/5

Price

In the spec we’ve reviewed here, the Mac Studio costs £6,899/$6,899, but with a lesser spec (M5 Max 16-core, 36GB RAM, 512GB storage) it starts at a more reasonable £2,499/$2,499. That’s still a big chunk of change, even if you are getting a lot of power in a small chassis, and you should definitely look at what a (much larger and noisier) PC with an Nvidia card can do for you in the same price bracket. There's not much else like the Mac Studio, however, and if it has the capabilities you need in a form factor you covet, you’re going to have to open your wallet.

Value score: 4/5

Who is it for?

• Creators and developers

Apple is going big on AI, but has also made a Mac that should be able to do the heavy lifting for many different creative disciplines. It will be overkill for many, as the basic M5 and the M6 that’s on the cusp of arriving are good enough for a lot of tasks. But if you find that you could do with a speed boost in your work, then it’s well worth looking at.

Apple Mac Studio (M5 Max) score card
Attributes	Notes	Rating
Design:	Looks the same as every other Mac Studio. And that's OK.	4/5
Features:	Thunderbolt 5, and lots of other ports too.	4/5
Performance:	Just immense.	5/5
Value:	An expensive computer, but one with a lot to offer.	4/5

Buy it if...

Your M1 machine is looking tired
You prefer MacOS to Windows
You can’t get enough raw power

Don't buy it if...

Something cheaper will do the job
You have little interest in AI
You’re waiting to see what M6 can do

Also consider

Apple

MacBook Pro M5 Max

With this laptop, Apple has squeezed the kind of power you’d expect from a desktop Mac Pro in a tower case into a 14-inch chassis, and backed it up with plenty of RAM.

OMEN 35L

The choice of the 9800X3D CPU and GeForce 5070Ti GPU mean this compact-ish desktop has the capability to push pixels around at great speed. Whether it’s video editing, AI applications or the latest games.

Z2 Mini (G1a)

With the G1a, HP has created a potent rival to the Mac Studio, equipping it with its Wolf security software, to make a PC that will appeal to FX pros and AI developers alike.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/reviews/tested-the-mac-studio-m5-max-claims-its-crown-as-the-best-of-all-apple-computers vgDaCKHadiqKZfeizJX8uG Fri, 09 Oct 2026 19:11:59 +0000 Fri, 09 Oct 2026 19:13:29 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Wait, the best multicolour 3D printer for beginners is now even cheaper than it was in Amazon's Prime Day sale earlier this week! ]]> Earlier this week, I highlighted what was a pretty great 3D printer deal running as part of Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days. The AnyCubic Kobra X, a machine we rate as one of the best FDM 3D printers for beginners who think they're going to stick with the hobby, was reduced by $130 to $329. This is a rare case where a Prime Day deal has got even better after the sale finished: there's now another $30 off for a record-low price of $299.

If you're not sure which type of machine is best for you, see our guide to the best 3D printers based on our own reviews, but we rate this mid-range FDM printer very highly, and particularly for beginners who want to avoid buying a printer that they might outgrow too quickly. It provides native multicolour printing and larger print sizes than cheaper options, providing more flexibility to develop your craft.

Browse 3D printer deals at Amazon

We expected Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days on Tuesday and Wednesday to have the best 3D printer prices we'd see until Black Friday. In most cases, it probably did, but here's an exception.

The already great value Anycubic Kobra X is now $30 cheaper than the Prime Day price of $329, making this a record deal.

The Kobra X provides built-in 4-colour printing, which can be expanded to print up to 19 colours if you add extra ACE 2 Pro units (you can include one from the start with the Kobra X Combo, currently reduced from $569.99 to $449.99).

With mixed-material printing abilities, AI monitoring, auto-levelling and a 260 × 260 × 260mm build volume. It's well suited for hobbyists who want to make cosplay props or for creators who want to make decorative prints and ornaments, allowing you to jump straight into multicolour 3D printing without spending Bambu Lab money. View Deal

The best multicolour 3D printer for beginners?

The Kobra X isn't the cheapest 3D printer for beginners, but we think it could be a better long-term investment for newcomers who think they're going to want to stick with the craft and possibly even develop professionally. It's simple enough for a newcomer to get started with it but also versatile enough that most users won't outgrow it quickly.

Auto levelling, app control and AI monitoring make it easy to use, while the native 4-colour printing – expandable to 19 – mixed-material capabilities and large build volume mean you can grow into the hobby without having to upgrade your machine a year or so down the line.

If it's your first time looking for a 3D printer, be aware that there are two main families of device: resin and FDM printers.

For most beginners, and for 3D printer users in general, FDM is the way to go. It's easier and safer to handle, has lower running costs, less clean up, and you can get larger print sizes for your money. The exception would be if you really need the extra detail that resin 3D printing can provide for small things like tabletop gaming miniatures or small, detailed jewellery (for that, I'd recommend the Anycubic Photon Mono M7 Pro, currently reduced from $669 to $449 at Amazon).

You can see more deals below.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/deals/wait-the-best-multicolour-3d-printer-for-beginners-is-now-even-cheaper-than-it-was-in-amazons-prime-day-sale-earlier-this-week Q6ZURJP9kVagWUeZLGenTg Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:00:00 +0000 Fri, 09 Oct 2026 15:05:51 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Adidas sues White Fox in battle of the stripes ]]> Over the years, Adidas has become one of the most iconic athletic brands, so it's understandable that it would want to protect that status. Now it's taking on Australian clothing boutique White Fox in a heated legal dispute over who gets to own their stripes.

While Adidas uses several iconic logo designs, its three-stripes have become synonymous with the brand. The athletics company claims that White Fox's four-stripe design is "deceptively similar" to its own, calling for a legal resolution.

Adidas vs White Fox shorts — (Image credit: Adidas/White Fox)

White Fox's four-stripe clothing designs have appeared throughout its advertising, which Adidas claims shows an "intention to trade off our reputation". Adidas has trademarked the iconic three stripes in Australia since 1957, and the athletic giant alleges White Fox's designs are "substantially identical with or otherwise deceptively similar."

White Fox's legal team has defended the move, claiming that other Australian brands like Cotton On and Sportscraft sell items with "similar decorative stripes". But Adidas has countered the defence, claiming that White Fox's advertisements feature "genuine" Adidas items, which could form "an association in the minds of consumers."

Adidas is seeking legal damages for the alleged infringement, including profits earned from the products, along with interest and legal costs. For more design disputes, take a look at why New Balance sued this rival athletics brand over a shoe logo or check out the latest Washington Commanders logo controversy.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/news/adidas-sues-white-fox-in-battle-of-the-stripes A77cNWeArKLLZj3HaBJw96 Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Cricut Joy 2 vs Cricut Joy: which compact cutting machine should you buy? ]]> The original Cricut Joy was nice and neat; it's still one of the best Cricut machines, and I've had one for years. But I always thought of it as the machine for fun projects, not for my main work as a quilter. The Joy 2 is different. It's more powerful, quicker and more agile, and it now slots into my workflow when my Cricut Maker 5 is busy or just too big for the job.

It's also still a joy, if you'll forgive me. Everyone I know now gets a card I make personally, which is handy when you forget a birthday and can't get to the shop in time (that's happened more than once).

Below, I test and compare the older Joy and the new Joy 2 to see if the updated model is better, especially as right now the original cutter is on sale. I'll start with a basic comparison and then dig a little deeper into how they are to use.

Cricut Joy 2 vs Cricut Joy: quick comparison

The original Cricut Joy is small, simple, and good for cards, labels, and decals, with Smart Materials and foil transfer on board. No Print Then Cut, no scoring, and you have to open the front section every time you use it.

By comparison, the new Joy 2 follows the same small, compact craft-machine idea, but in a lighter, flatter body that's ready to go straight out of the box. Print Then Cut means full-colour stickers, and the bundle includes a scoring tool. This newbie is fully automatic, too, making it incredibly easy to use.

Cricut

Joy

The original Joy is compact, simple, and great for cards, labels, and decals, but it lacks Print Then Cut and scoring and is bulkier overall. But it's always on sale now.

Pros

Compact and simple
Works with Smart Materials and foil transfer
Good for cards, labels and decals

Cons

No Print Then Cut
No scoring
Bulkier in use

Cricut

Joy 2

The new Joy 2 is lighter, flatter, and quicker to set up, and it includes Print Then Cut and a scoring tool, though its cutting area is small and it requires an inkjet printer.

Pros

Print Then Cut for stickers and printables
Scoring tool in the bundle
Light, flat and quick to set up

Cons

Still a small cutting area
Print Then Cut needs an inkjet printer

Craft machines on a wooden table — (Image credit: Future)

Cricut Joy 2 vs Cricut Joy: price

The Joy 2 starts at $99 / £99.99; for comparison, the original Joy started at $179, so the new model already looks like a bargain. That's for the machine alone, and most people will end up buying a bundle. The Essentials Bundle includes a fine point blade, a scoring tool, a dual-tip pen, a LightGrip mat, a card mat, a portable trimmer, a weeding tool, a scraper and a spatula, so there's plenty to get started with, and you don't need to buy extras before your first project.

These days, the original Joy is much cheaper and often on sale as Cricut promotes its new machine, so expect to pay closer to £50-£69 for this older model. If you are buying a Joy 2, look for bundle deals on the Cricut store for a good deal.

Cricut Joy 2 vs Cricut Joy: design

When the older Joy is in use, you have to open the front section, and it measures 23cm deep. The Joy 2 is 15cm deep and ready to go because nothing folds out. It's slightly wider at 24cm vs 22cm, but much flatter at about 7cm tall vs about 11cm, and it weighs around 1kg vs the original's 1.7kg. It's noticeably easier to pick up.

I used to store my Joy in the cupboard because it was taking up space on my desk. The Joy 2 can just stay out, or you can slide it into a desk drawer. The plug also comes with adaptors for each country, and they're easy to swap, so it travels well (and I've seen people unpack this at airport security, so it's a gadget some crafters can't live without).

Cricut Joy 2 vs Cricut Joy: what's new?

Print Then Cut is the big addition. You print your images on an inkjet printer, upload them to Cricut Design Space, and the Joy 2 cuts them out with high accuracy. The original Joy couldn't do this, so stickers and other full-colour printable projects are new territory.

Scoring is the other one. The Joy 2 comes with a scoring tool, which opens up a lot more projects, especially folded cards. It also comes with a card-making mat, and I've found it ideal for cards. I use it for labels too, cut from card or vinyl.

For quilting, it's been great. I cut cardboard templates on the Joy 2, then use them to cut quilt patterns, and it's a quick, easy way to fit it into a job without bringing out the larger Cricut Maker 5, which I always save for larger projects because of its size.

It's also easier to use than the original Joy. Everything with Cricut is easy, but at first I found it odd to leave the little cutter to decide what to cut and how. It's sensor-driven, so you set up the project in the Cricut app, press your material against the rollers, and the Joy 2 does the rest. If you use the mat, you put it in at the "load and go" stage, and it gets on with it. If you're new to digital crafting, this machine gets you cutting quickly with no hassle.

Cricut says it works with 75+ materials, up from 50+ on the original, and you can use Smart Materials without a mat. Design Space now includes AI tools that make it easier to create highly personalised cards and projects.

Cricut Joy 2 vs Cricut Joy: common features

Both machines are compact and beginner-friendly, work with Smart Materials and foil transfer, and have the same cutting width: 4.5 inches (11.4cm). That's why neither suits big projects. With Smart Materials, you can cut lengths of up to 48 inches (about 122cm) without a mat, which suits long banners and decals.

The software is the same, but when you log in to Design Space, select the Joy 2 from the drop-down menu so you only see compatible projects.

Cricut Joy 2 vs Cricut Joy: which should you buy?

If it's your first compact Cricut, buy the Joy 2. It's well-priced for the tech and use cases, takes up much less room, is easier to use, and adds Print Then Cut and scoring. With all this on offer, I wouldn't buy the original new.

If you already own a Joy, it depends on what you make. For simple cards and vinyl labels, the original is still a really good machine (and if that's all you need, it's on sale so at a reasonable price).

But overall, it's hard not to opt for the new Joy 2. If you want stickers, are short on desk space, or are a crafter like me who wants a small machine to support the big one, the Joy 2 is worth the upgrade.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/advice/cricut-joy-2-vs-cricut-joy-which-compact-cutting-machine-should-you-buy v3K4wQ7jWzwDLoapSzfMSo Fri, 09 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ The Other Mommy's crying billboard gets creepier over time ]]> Earlier this year, the trailer for Rob Savage's Other Mommy caught the attention of horror fans for its delightfully eerie trailer. With the film now hitting movie theatres, the campaign has stepped things up a notch with a brand new immersive billboard.

Recently, billboard ads have stepped up, ditching static design and quite literally thinking outside the box. Unnerving and eye-catching in equal measure, the new Other Mommy billboard proves that breaking convention can have a huge impact.

First look at an eerie crying billboard for ‘OTHER MOMMY’, starring Jessica Chastain.The film follows a young girl who is threatened by a sinister demon that looks exactly like her mother. https://t.co/4g0jwHVQE6October 8, 2026

The new billboard seems pretty unassuming at first. Featuring a picture of lead actress Jessica Chastain alongside the film's bold logo, it could easily be seen as just another static design. But give it time, and slowly it begins to come to life.

As people pass by, a single tear begins to drip from her eye, turning her creepy, waxen-faced smile into a far more foreboding image. The design shines in time-lapse, where you can see the slow yet eerie progression of the billboard.

A crying billboard for a horror movie is marketing genius," one X user wrote, adding "nightmares free of charge." Another chimed in, "That billboard is creepy as hell. Horror fans are eating good!" while another added, "That’s the coolest thing ever omg."

For more creepy design inspiration, check out the Other Mommy poster or take a look at the terrifying new You Can See Everything poster.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/design/advertising/the-other-mommys-crying-billboard-gets-creepier-over-time vYiPxBCGdsEgjLhHiswfKG Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ “This began as a portrait study from reference before evolving into freeform exploration. I pushed the image even further with fantastical elements” ]]> Alex Huneycutt is a concept artist who specialises in story-driven characters, environments, comics and illustration. He taught himself to use Procreate through online courses and YouTube videos before moving into professional work.

Continuing our regular series of artist showcases, he briefly introduces three examples of his work below. If you're inspired, see our guides to the best drawing tablets and the best laptops for drawing and digital art.

Goblin Chirurgeon Reimagined

Digital art — (Image credit: Alex Huneycutt )

“A reimagining of Magic The Gathering's Goblin Chirurgeon Card, this piece transforms the original goblin with a hacksaw into a dark surgical session.”

Dragon Tamer

“This was created for a book with my mentor Kenny Vo based on the prompt Land of Legends. Exploring the girl’s story resulted in the tattoo ritual depicted here.”

Ethereal Goddess

“This began as a portrait study from reference before evolving into freeform exploration. I pushed the image even further with fantastical elements.”

You can see more of Marc's work on his ArtStation profile

Today's best drawing tablet deals

Inspired to work on your own digital art? See below for deals on drawing tablets that we've reviewed.

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This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.

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]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/inspiration/this-began-as-a-portrait-study-from-reference-before-evolving-into-freeform-exploration-i-pushed-the-image-even-further-with-fantastical-elements LCkgZ2b3JZ67hbvdYoMcrh Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Amazon's 'About You' section is quietly roasting users, and people love it ]]> Amid mounting privacy concerns, the big tech companies have been trying to increase the semblance of transparency around how they profile us while reframing it as something that helps us as much as them. An unusually explicit example is the new About You section on Amazon.

Little known until a few days ago, this feature buried in customers' account settings reveals some of the information the online retail giant thinks it's gleaned from your activity. This can vary from mundane records about preferences to surprisingly specific and descriptive observations about customers' habits, interests, lifestyles and buttocks.

Post by @fangirlinmegan

View on Threads

Amazon introduced About You in May, but the recent Threads post above is largely responsible for bringing it to public attention in recent days. The section lists assumptions that Amazon's AI has formed based on customers' purchasing history, reviews, wishlists and conversations with Alexa (the OP above later concluded that the comment on her physique may have been deduced from her purchase of some “butt scrunch leggings”).

According to Amazon, the assumptions listed can influence the ads and product recommendations that it shows the user. You can edit or remove details that are wrong or that you don't want to be used for recommendations, and you can also import data from other AI bots to help Amazon build up a more detailed profile for you, should you be inclined to do that.

Discovery of the feature has triggered a wave of other Amazon users to check their About You sections and post screenshots of them to social media. In some cases, people have been Amazon's profiling to be eerily accurate, while others have found assumptions that were wildly off the mark.

The accuracy of the Amazon “about you” info is cracking me up 😬😅 https://t.co/1AbI8dF6nROctober 7, 2026

I really enjoy the ai “about you” on Amazon. Some are funny, but it did nail it. I DO love gold jewelry, clean dog teeth, and possibly embroidery. https://t.co/GrwuLL398qOctober 7, 2026

@GameOverStation Dear lord... https://t.co/0B0WftlY0eOctober 8, 2026

I bought ONE part that fits my Pacifica that also fits a Jeep and suddenly I'm a jeep owner to Amazon 😿 Most depressing part of my new "About You" section. https://t.co/jwdsSVy0uCOctober 7, 2026

We know by now that most tech companies profile us. What's surprised people is that Amazon's now letting us read the notes without having to make a freedom of information request. Google and Meta allow users to edit their ad preferences, but they use fairly broad categories. Amazon's go much more granular. It thinks it knows whether you "engage in serious coffee brewing", whether you care for a cat and whether you have "tall books".

While some people are saying they find this algorithmic profiling sinister, most seem to be amused. Perhaps we've become desensitised to data collection amid the normalisation of AI, or maybe Amazon's made a smart move, gaining trust by revealing some of the logic behind its algorithms.

But is Amazon showing us what it knows about us, or just what it wants us to know it knows? The company doesn't claim that the About You page represents all the data associated with an account, but rather a way to view and edit details used to personalise shopping recommendations. It's potentially only a carefully curated view of a small subset of the data it has on us.

How to see Amazon's About You

You can find About You on Amazon in your account settings via the website or the app.

Go to your name at top right and select 'Account' and then look for 'About You' under 'Ordering and shopping preferences'. In the app, go to Account > Shopping preferences > About you.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/news/amazons-about-you-section-is-quietly-roasting-users-and-people-love-it Xc4eBMSkYDz84XM533zQfn Fri, 09 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0000 Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:51:13 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ While we wait for GTA 6, the demo that inspired the original Grand Theft Auto's vehicle physics is now playable online ]]> As people pore over the incredible graphic fidelity of GTA VI, it's promoting others to observe just how much Grand Theft Auto has evolved over 29 years.

The original game was also considered groundbreaking back in 1997 with its varied NPCs and emergent gameplay. It was also a departure in that it was game where you didn't necessarily need to do anything: you could enjoy just driving around and looking at things.

Patrick Kerr, who was a programmer at DMA Design before it became Rockstar North, has now recreated his 2D physics simulation that became the basis for the game's vehicle system, and you can play with it online.

Kerr says the simulation began as a basic wireframe demo written in GFA BASIC on an Atari ST. It was later ported to C for the game. He's now recreated it in JavaScript with sleeker visual presentation.

Car (1) is the default mode, but you can also select Ship (2) or Brick (3) by pressing the respective number keys. Press B to toggle the side collision barriers and G to turn vertical gravity on or off for Ship and Brick modes. Z toggles the camera's dead zone, and X toggles the speed-based zoom just like in GTA.

For developers interested, Kerr's explained how the system works in a post on his website. You can play the demo at Motion Lab.

UK pre-orders at Amazon | PlayStation store| Xbox Store | PS5 standard edition at VeryView Deal

PlayStation

Dualsense Wireless Controller – Grand Theft Auto VI White Limited Edition

Atlantic Records

Grand Theft Auto Vi: the Album

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/news/while-we-wait-for-gta-6-the-demo-that-inspired-the-original-grand-theft-autos-vehicle-physics-is-now-playable-online H5bbwaPnssPFbZ4iwntgU9 Fri, 09 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:51:13 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Phantom Blade Zero's dark wuxia world feels like a playable kung fu movie ]]> It's no surprise that the big AAA games emerging from China have also taken inspiration from the country's previous successful cultural exports, from mythology to martial arts. In Phantom Blade Zero's case, it's not just about leaning into martial arts through its combat but as a philosophy and aesthetic, so much so that the developer S-Game is coining its action RPG as 'kungfupunk'.

It's something that's apparent from the moment I press the button that begins my demo, where even the tutorial feels so flashy and cinematic that you could easily imagine being a QTE in one of Sony's first-party blockbusters, except the difference is you're still in control of these actions yourself.

While I'm not able to go into the details of the opening sequences and how they relate to the story of your protagonist Soul, a skilled assassin who has just 66 days to live, while also framed for the murder of his master, I came away feeling like I had experienced a playable kung fu movie, reliving the iconic martial arts duels of classic wuxia films like Once Upon A Time In China or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but where instead of just hitting a button prompt, I was in fluid control of my actions.

Mechanically, Phantom Blade Zero may share similarities with other action RPGs or Soulslikes, including colour-coded attacks to indicate whether you should dodge or parry, but what really sells the martial arts fantasy is just how fluid and dynamic the combat animations feel.

It's something you can tell when just holding L1 to block, which in another game would just be quite rigid as your character holds their weapon or shield to guard, but here it looks like Soul is attacking by clashing his blade against his opponent's, precisely how it looks in a wuxia fight.

That authenticity is down to how S-Game has not only mocapped the game's action with real martial artists but even employs wires just like those used in wuxia films that allow actors to perform larger-than-life acrobatics. Even Hong Kong action film veterans including action choreographer and film director Kenji Tanigaki and martial arts legend Donnie Yen are involved, though even in this considerably chunky hands-on time I didn't manage to run into the latter's in-game character.

Yet while these very cinematic animations and visuals realised in Unreal Engine 5 is the main draw, S-Game also elegantly incorporates hand-drawn aesthetics into other parts of the game, perhaps in reference to the original 2D Rainblood: Town of Death, which Phantom Blade Zero is technically a AAA reimagining of.

There's the game map for the Wulin, which is presented in the style of a Chinese ink painting, with more elements added the more of its semi-open world that you explore. While this style means it's actually more of an artistic representation than a more no-frills top-down map, it actually still felt very accurate as I was able to make out spaces and landmarks of areas I had already been to, from its treacherous rocky mountain paths to an outpost held by another faction calling themselves The Mandate.

While this outpost also happens to be located in a bamboo forest that's become a common trope amongst wuxia films, Phantom Blade Zero doesn't just stick to tradition, its kungfupunk aesthetic being a way to differentiate itself with taking subversive influences from more contemporary or even Western ideas, from cyberpunk to modern pop and rock music.

One such example is when I reach a tower where the architecture outside looks quite traditional yet inside also contains a furnace with steel pipes, while it also has another unusual design where it's decorated with red threads, symbolic in Chinese for fate, or marriage, though in this case it's meant to serve a more ominous connotation.

The most kungfupunk example however surely belongs to a fight I got to attempt at a later point in the game, a lion dance grandmaster that's even soundtracked to real percussions, except the lion's head is also designed with metal spikes while it's also able to breathe fire. But while it all looks spectacular, it's definitely not a game that's just dazzling you with cinematic set pieces that require simple QTE prompts.

After all, when I finally reach the Hunter of the Order at a great waterfall for a showdown that the whole chapter had been building up before, it would have been too anticlimactic if I had just wiped the floor with him on the first try.

To some extent, I felt that it might have been tougher than I expected, though it does a very generous thing of at least checkpointing between the phases of a boss fight (difficulty options to make things a little easier, or indeed tougher, are also available). But if Phantom Blade Zero manages to achieve the fine balance of making you look and play like a kung fu master in the same way that Onimusha: Way of the Sword makes you look and play like a samurai master, this could end up being very special.

Phantom Blade Zero is coming to PS5 and PC on 29 October.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/features/phantom-blade-zero-is-an-unreal-engine-5-game-that-feels-like-a-playable-kung-fu-movie N2wTxCCiw5DSmnmZRhzb4k Fri, 09 Oct 2026 01:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ KeyShot 2026 review: fast, easy 3D rendering and with AI tools you might actually use ]]> Having used the best rendering software for over two decades, one of my favourites is KeyShot Studio. Despite not being my go-to choice for rendering most architectural scenes, if I'm ever rendering smaller scenes or individual products, then I know there's hardly anything better on the market.

Now at version 2026, KeyShot is stronger than ever with a slew of new features to improve the user experience and elevate its capabilities. These include more realistic AI output through AI Shots with the ability to now edit and upscale, an upgraded Move Tool + Custom Pivot, and an all-new gallery feature.

It wouldn't be a software upgrade without some mention of AI, would it? In fact, KeyShot has been using AI for many years, specifically to deliver progressive denoising. But as for AI features, the primary one is AI Shots, which was introduced partway through the 2025 software cycle. KeyShot has determined this is the way to go, devoting a significant amount of development time to improving it.

If you're looking for help on where to start, then you could follow my KeyShot and Photoshop advice for perfect renders every time as well as find out how to create cinematic cameras in KeyShot. To complement KeyShot, you will also need one of the best 3D software packages.

KeyShot 2026: plans and pricing

• KeyShot Professional for $108.25 per month (billed annually)⁣
• KeyShot Business provides seat management features

Most Creative Bloq readers will need a KeyShot Professional subscription. This provides the complete 3D visualisation toolkit for individual designers, freelancers, and small studios. This costs $108.25 per month, although it's billed annually at $1,299.

If you do happen to be a larger team requiring centralised seat management, then you'll have to upgrade to KeyShot Business. For the privilege, this costs $133.25 per month, which equates to $1,599 billed annually.

Value score: 4/5

(Image credit: 3D model produced by KeyShot)

KeyShot 2026: features

KeyShot 2026: New Features
AI Shots	Custom Pivot + Move Tool
Gallery	Easier Keyframe Animations
Faster animation support

• AI Shots brings generative AI into the heart of the rendering workflow
• A new Gallery window makes it easier to find and organise renderings

The single biggest feature improvement in 2026 is AI Shots. This is KeyShot's generative AI workflow, and it was introduced in KeyShot 2025.2. With it you can either generate images from a CAD model or edit an existing image. Either way, it means artists can utilise generative AI in a dedicated 3D rendering tool rather than relying on alternative tools that were not designed with 3D in mind.

The AI Shots tool is particularly useful for artists wanting to create multiple images with small variations. They can do that easily using the generate multiple images feature when entering the prompt. KeyShot has also improved the overall AI model so it now works with much shorter prompts compared to version 2025.

One of the best improvements of AI Shots is the upscaling feature that enables artists to double or quadruple the resolution of both traditional 3D renderings and AI Shots in a "fraction of the time". This proves more effective than generating an AI shot at a lower resolution and then upscaling.

Beyond AI shots, KeyShot includes a more powerful Custom Pivot + Move Tool. With it users can "give parts or groups multiple custom pivots in addition to origin and centre. These custom pivots can be named for organisational purposes and are stored in your scene."

The move tool gizmo has now also been synchronised between realtime and geometry views, which makes it much more straight forward to work in both views at the same time. It was previously a little confusing, and even though this is only a user experience improvement, it's still a meaningful one.

The final feature to mention is called Gallery, and I love it. It's a new window, and it lets you quickly and easily find your render output once your renderings are complete. It's much more than just a viewer, though. With it you can search, sort, and organise all your rendered output.

Features score: 4.5/5

KeyShot 2026: user interface and experience

• Creating product visualisations in KeyShot is an absolute breeze
• The new AI shots feature provides a generative tool for customising the results

KeyShot is a wonderful piece of visualisation software that takes hardly any time at all to get your head around. Materials, lighting, camera, and environment tools are clearly laid out and easily accessible through various panels and menus. I had no issues finding settings quickly, and with results instantly displayed in the real-time view, it's easy to tweak settings until you get a result you're happy with.

I love how easy it is to cycle through lighting setups and see immediately whether your model catches the reflections nicely or not. With plenty of lighting and material options in the local and cloud libraries artists can quickly translate their 3D model into a beautiful photorealistic visual. Beyond setting up the scene it's also effortless to add post-effects including denoising, sharpening, and bloom, amongst many others.

AI Shots offers a basic interface for adjusting your output using a short prompt. Before doing so, though, you'll have to download near 20GB of AI data, so make sure you've got the necessary storage space before deciding whether KeyShot along with its AI tool is the right visualisation product for you.

I tested AI Shots on my MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM. This is less than the recommended 32GB RAM, but with RAM prices showing no signs of slowing down, I think my laptop is a fair representation of what a lot of users will have access to.

During my tests I found that all elements of the tool, including image generation, upscaling, and element replacement, worked without a hitch. It never crashed, and the progress bar kept moving in the right direction. My only issue with it is that it is quite slow, with some prompts taking upwards of five minutes to process. I found it to be a helpful tool, but it was subject to misinterpreting some of my prompts and couldn't therefore be relied upon for perfect recreation of prompts.

User Experience score: 4.5/5

KeyShot 2026: who is it for?

• KeyShot is designed almost exclusively for product visualisation

KeyShot was built with product visualisation in mind. It offers a simple workflow for 3D artists who regularly find themselves visualising products or product designers who want an in-house solution for creating their own images. KeyShot will work for other types of scenes, but if you're working in film, games, or architecture, then you'll need a dedicated rendering engine such as V-Ray or Cycles (Blender).

KeyShot 2026 score card
Attributes	Notes	Rating
Value:	A significant outlay for freelancers and small scale product designers.	4/5
Features:	Significant improvements with every release, including more realistic AI output in version 2026.	4.5/5
User Experience:	Simple and straight forward to use, although you'll feel it creak if you push it beyond product visualisation.	4.5/5

Buy it if...

You create visualisations from CAD
You need to do this quickly and accurately
You want a simple rendering solution for small to medium 3D scenes

Don't buy it if...

You work in film, games, or architecture
You're regularly rendering large scenes
You need a rendering engine plugin for your favourite 3D software

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/3d/keyshot-2026-review-fast-easy-3d-rendering-and-with-ai-tools-you-might-actually-use ssJoybUU6dVrTdNrFZWLAg Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:03:41 +0000 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:04:47 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Someone just rebuilt Adobe Creative Cloud with AI – then gave it away for free ]]> The world of Photoshop alternatives has become a lot more interesting in the last few years, and not just because of the plethora of worthy candidates that have emerged. The likes of Canva and Affinity continue to give Adobe a run for its money, but Adobe itself has also pushed some users away, thanks to its AI terms and cancellation policies.

And it's the latter that apparently inspired a solo developer to recreate several of Adobe's most popular tools, including Photoshop, Premiere and Illustrator. These were rebuilt using Claude and Rust.

The seven AI-generated tools — (Image credit: Artcraft)

Writing on Hacker News, software developer Brandon Thomas said he was inspired to create the clones after he "got bit by the dark pattern "cancellation fee" one too many times."

"I'm not just some casual vibe coder. I'm a 15-year industry veteran who has written everything from six-nines payment rails that move billions of dollars of transaction volume a day to advanced robotics and optics automation," Thomas announced on Reddit. "I've used Rust extensively for about a decade, and I know how to build and maintain large-scale Rust projects."

I've created Open Source 100% Rust clean-room replacements for 7 of Adobe's apps: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro. Free, no subscription, and you own the source code
from r/SaaS

"Software is over," he added in a comment on Hacker News.

Is it? Really? It looks to me like Thomas used software to create a clone of some software. And while copying Adobe might sound exciting in a stick-it-to-the-man sort of way, I'm not sure it's a positive omen for the future of software or creativity. Is using AI to create a carbon copy of something as exciting as, say, creating something new?

And it's hard to imagine professional creatives feeling confident enough to place their files, and their livelihoods, in the hands of AI-generated software.

As one Redditor puts it, "There is a pretty fricking huge difference between an unproven software that vaguely looks like Photoshop and probably can do some of the things that Photoshop can do and a dependable, robust productivity software that you can count on working right and being maintained long-term."

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/design/design-software/someone-just-rebuilt-adobe-creative-cloud-with-ai-then-gave-it-away-for-free eDqUWjbmE5xSpEptmi9B4N Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:19:44 +0000 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:43:09 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ The You Can See Everything poster will haunt my nightmares forever ]]> The teaser trailer for Nathan Fielder's documentary You Can See Everything recently caused a stir for its strange depiction of notorious Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes. Now the unblinking eeriness has been distilled into a poster, and they've doubled down on the weird.

More in line with the best horror film posters, the new You Can See Everything poster has all the makings of a spine-chilling scare fest, with suffocating visuals and minimalist design. Bold and frighteningly captivating, I find it impossible to look away, despite how much I want to.

The poster stars the documentary's subject, Elizabeth Holmes, in a claustrophobia-inducing close-up. Spotlighting only half her face, the design forces our gaze to Holmes' almost inhumanly bright blue eye, which appears almost strained in its wideness. Her half-concealed smile only adds to the poster's quasi-uncanny feel, creating palpable discomfort.

In the background, the blurred image of a straight-faced Fielder adds extra tension, while minimalist sans serif font bears the film's title. Slightly cut off on the sides, the title reinforces the subtly suffocating effect, making for a wildly disconcerting design.

"The reflection in the eye is doing more acting than most lead performances this year," one X user wrote in response to the strange poster. "You could tell me this was a horror movie and I'd believe you," another added.

For more poster design, take a look at the new Clayface poster that gets creepier the more you look at it, or check out why horror movie poster design has a problem.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/entertainment/movies-tv-shows/the-you-can-see-everything-poster-will-haunt-my-nightmares-forever jogVn9Q9jktfaHXktu8BZ Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival review: visually inventive, risky and authentic, but has its limitations ]]>

Details

Screens from a horror game — (Image credit: Saber Interactive)

Publisher Saber Interactive

Developer Boss Team Games

Release date 8 October

Format PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC

Platform Unreal Engine 5

Content warning: this article discusses graphic violence, disturbing imagery, and mature themes in an 18+ game.

I expected a game about pleasure and pain to lean towards the pain. Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival leans the other way, and not only because it gets under the skin of the themes and imagery of Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart (and the first two films). It hides those very adult ideas inside something accessible and familiar, a bit BioShock in its core mechanics, and a bit Condemned in its brutal melee combat and love of leather-bound mannequins, so somewhere around the second hour I stopped noticing the dildos (everywhere) and body parts strewn across the scenery and started enjoying how the systems work.

It's a trick, and a clever one. By the time I realised what I'd been wading through, what I'd just seen as our hero's girlfriend was opened up, torn apart and remade vein by muscle in graphic detail, I was already hooked.

Love in the time of Cenobites

Revival's story is original but inspired by Barker's original book. Set 20 years after the first film in the town of Clairport, north of Detroit. Sunny opens the Genesis Configuration, summons the Cenobites and meets her sticky end. To paraphrase Patrick Stewart, her lover Aidan Lynch sees everything, because they were Netflix and chilling at the time. He makes a deal with the Hell Priest (Pinhead, to most of us), enters the Labyrinth to free her soul, and sets about rebuilding her body.

It's a neat and very games-y setup that challenges Aidan to gather the hearts of three people marked by the box: Charlotte Strauss, an ex-dominatrix known as the Sister of Mercy, and Colin Marlowe, leader of the Scarlet Church, a cult of Leviathan worshippers who want to make Cenobites on Earth. It's a love story of obsession and bad bargains, and feels right at home beside Barker's novella.

So yes, it's very Hellraiser: unapologetically sexual, risqué, bloody and grotesque. Machete swings dissect bodies; past torsos lie on tables, hang like ghoulish wall art, and a late-game ability lets you tear enemies apart with Hellchains that hook and lash in from every direction. It's horrific, often inventively so, the kind of spectacle that demands to be seen and then you kind of want to unsee it, and then look again. So, yep, very Clive Barker (the included digital art book reveals how it was made).

Welcome to the Labyrinth

The game's 'real' world is bold, garish and caricatured, violent and more than a little perverse, but it never lets me forget I'm playing a video game. Then you step through a teasing, glowing crack in a wall into Leviathan's domain, and Unreal Engine 5 drops the cartoon for stark photorealism. That divergence never stopped jolting me and makes the Cenobites' world so much more terrifying: this is the space that looks real, and the real is the space that feels like a game.

The Labyrinth itself is the kind of pain and pleasure Clive Barker would be proud of: puzzling, disorienting and, when the Chatterer (fans know him as the Child) is on my heels, properly terrifying. I found racing down narrow Brutalist concrete canyons, dodging spinning spiked traps and ducking sprouting chains among the best horror I've played this year. Here Aidan is vulnerable and afraid. These escape-meets-walking-sim sections add texture, make you think, and, when you're being hunted, make you feel something genuine.

Outside and back in the sex club, cult mansion and cemetery, Revival dresses up as a light immersive sim, and combat flows freely. A shotgun blast ignites a barrel, fire leaps from one enemy to the next, another steps on a carefully placed bear trap, and the group is dealt with until only body parts remain. The Genesis Configuration piles on top of that. Banishing an enemy with a finisher sends their soul back to the Labyrinth and earns Suffering, a currency you spend on the box's powers. Telekinesis lets you grab sawblades and steel pins from the environment and hurl them at leather-clad cultists, and pyrokinesis lets you pull fire from lamps and shoot it. A revolver, pistol, SMG, assault rifle and a mix of breakable melee knives and bats fill out the earthly arsenal, with upgrades, plus ammo and health you craft from scavenged junk.

It's solid and often a lot of fun, but it stops well short of reinvention. This isn't BioShock, Dishonored or Prey, and it never pretends to be. The Genesis Configuration, for example, never goes as deep as BioShock's Plasmids, though it could really have been developed further and even layered on obsession and pain debuffs and buffs. But no, it's a two-power cube that can occasionally be manipulated as a puzzle to open narrative-dependent gates.

What saves Hellraiser Revival is its structure. The game weaves in and out of Aiden's real world and the Labyrinth, merging the two elegantly in later stages, and the hunt for the three Marked Ones means lots of exploration, Resident Evil-style puzzling and maps that double back on themselves. They're elegantly rendered too, with ornate but grim paintings, statues and reflective surfaces to dwell upon.

It isn't flawless. Combat is at its best when it stays in immersive-sim mode, because boss fights can drag, and controlling Aidan under pressure can feel stiff and unresponsive. When the game asks for subtlety, it fumbles.

Never lets me settle

What lifts Hellraiser Revival is its refusal to sit still. A boss is teased in a stealth section that had me scurrying around a collapsing nightclub while the wraithlike Sister of Mercy hunted me, and then it never happened again. One Labyrinth sequence has you pushing and pulling the environment itself to line up stairs and paths. There's an actual cabin in the woods full of zombies – a fraught survival challenge. And a moment where you have to keep columns erect to hide from Leviathan's Gaze, the beam that exposes people to the darkest parts of their own psyche, is perfectly, gloriously Hellraiser and just on-the-nose enough to be appreciated.

These ideas arrive, get used once, and the game moves on, and that generosity is why the Hellraiser Revival never feels like a retread, even when its bones are familiar.

But those bones are familiar. Scrape away the meaty, fleshy shock value and impressively stylised Labyrinth and underneath is a streamlined immersive sim with very little original in what you do, even if what you experience in its world is refreshingly horrific. And what a world it supports. The Labyrinth is brilliant design, and the Cenobites are horrific and oddly seductive – each scene they're in just feels right. The game embraces its source with total commitment and isn't afraid to get filthy about it, too.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/entertainment/gaming/clive-barkers-hellraiser-revival-review-borrows-from-bioshock-for-a-horror-thats-more-pleasure-than-pain w6SkC6WTeowPzi2VHZa2ZK Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ This indie game about AI doesn't use gen-AI but features a lot of content from real people and creators ]]> It's becoming second-nature for people to interrogate whether a new game or even fan project is being made with AI, and when your game involves AI as its subject matter, it perhaps runs more risk of people, rightly or wrongly, jumping to conclusions.

It's partly why the indie devs behind Limerence, a branching narrative thriller about an AI partner decided to explicitly declare on their Steam page that no gen AI has been used in the game's development, including a big bright badge reminiscent of Nintendo's Seal of Quality.

Limerence game — (Image credit: Salix Games)

"We found that through Polygon Treehouse, indie dev friends of ours, and they had started this campaign of putting that badge on," Salix Games CEO Jessica Saunders tells me. "We didn't have it originally, and then we were having people messaging me going, 'I just heard about your game, but this has generative AI, so I can't support it.' And I'm like, 'No, it doesn't.' So, we're having to make a big deal out of that."

Yet while AI is being primarily pushed by tech companies, including Epic, which already plans to incorporate Gemini and Claude into Unreal Engine 6, one can see the appeal to create things faster when there are less resources.

Salix Games in particular has felt the pinch of budgets, following its 2019 debut, Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey, an adventure game with Arthurian characters in Victorian London, which hadn't been financially successful, while the industry post-COVID with layoffs and closures still a daily occurrence, means funding for larger projects has been next-to-non-existent.

But rather than opting for AI shortcuts, Saunders has taken a different approach when considering how to better adapt and survive the current turbulence: "It's like, what could we do for the minimum budget that maximises the skill sets that we have?"

Part of this involved partnering with another studio called Game in a Frame, run by Vincent Joyau, a former colleague of Saunders when she worked at Splash Damage. "He'd been building up his own set of tools for his game, so I asked if I could use them, and he goes, 'I'll do one better, I will use my tools with you and we'll work together to create this new game because we both need to start thinking smaller production-wise if we're going to survive in this industry.'"

Joyau's custom tools created in Unity hasn't just been important for handling Limerence's heavy branching dialogue but also for modelling the game's sole onscreen character, Kai, a 3D AI avatar, who also exists within a fake AI app that's been created with its own fully customisable character creator, outfits, and hairstyles.

This AI partner is only part of the bigger picture of Limerence, which explores how digital dependency can impact our real-world relationships, as the game explores how 30-something woman Claire's life and real-world relationships are impacted by her new-found obsession with a seemingly perfect partner.

This is all presented by the player essentially interacting with Claire's phone, with Saunders citing inspiration from indie games that have played with the premise of snooping on someone's phone, notably A Normal Lost Phone, which then naturally includes other apps that can be accessed, from social media posts, photos, or streamed music.

"It's interesting because these found phone games also use real actors, building up their own photo galleries, but our team lacked production experience, so we've had to pull in a lot of favours from a lot of people," Saunders explains. "We basically said, "Can we have access to your Tik Tok, your Instagram, your small business, and let us use your material, either as a donation or a small fee."

To her surprise, many people were happy to help. They include a friend who loves taking photos of lots of food from restaurants, and a couple of friends who are essentially 'playing' the lead couple in the game, with photos spanning years that show a consistent relationship history that the narrative is able to create a fictional life around.

"We expanded on that too," Saunders says. "We ended up hiring a couple of models through an agency and held a low-budget fake wedding shoot in London which was great fun just to get some of those extra background photos. Honestly, things like Adobe Stock and Unsplash have been great for filling in blanks. That's really allowed us to create a very voyeuristic experience of looking into a real person's phone and just opening up a gallery and seeing things you shouldn't really see."

With stretched resources, mostly going into recording the voice performances, with only Kai's lines being recorded in a sound booth so that the exceptionally clean audio adds to his artificiliaty, it would have been easy for the peripheral aspects of the game to be created with AI, be it arty social media posts or songs playing off a fake streaming app. But Limerence's approach to world-building shows you can make something more lived-in and authentic that also respects and credits artists - you just have to ask.

"The thing is I'm not actually very anti-AI, I think AI as a data tool is marvelous, and it can be very helpful for certain industries," Saunders concludes. "But when it comes to things like making video games, film, TV, and art, I don't see its purpose at the moment because it's just stealing."

Limerence is releasing on PC on 29 October, while Gen's Story, a free demo separate to the final game, is available now on Steam.

Inspired? See our guides to the best game development software and the best laptops for game development.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/3d/video-game-design/this-indie-game-about-ai-doesnt-use-gen-ai-but-features-a-lot-of-content-from-real-people-and-creators vKFy7yMpajg62pf2vw4VT9 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 14:23:49 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Fanta's AI slop Halloween advert is a real horror show ]]> We wrote recently about the terrifying practical effects in the Resident Evil movie. But it seems that some moviegoers who went to see Zach Cregger's adaptation of the iconic game were subjected to an even greater horror before the film began.

In the case of the Fanta Halloween ad, the fright was unwelcome and the practical effects conspicuously absent. Yep, the Coca-Cola Company is still trying to do AI ads.

Developed by AI studio GRAiL, Fanta’s Haunted Universe is intended to serve as a platform that will help the brand "claim Halloween". If Christmas belongs to Coke, Halloween should belong to Fanta, the company thinks.

The universe has several "original" character designs, including a cyborg Frankenstein and a werewolf DJ, while Ghostface from Scream makes a guest appearance in the ad above. The idea is to make this an annual occasion, with the universe and story to develop in future years.

That won't be what some readers wanted to hear. Many people strongly oppose the use of AI imagery on ethical grounds. On social media, the reactions to the video above are no less severe than they were with the AI Coca-Cola Christmas adverts. Almost all of the comments are negative, and there are many from people vowing to never buy Fanta again.

I was at the cinema this evening and during the ads before the film there was a Hallowe’en ad from Fanta. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes, but it was certified AI slop. I couldn’t record, of course, but I’ve found it online. I’m sure the Coca-Cola Company of all companies could afford a real ad. Down with AI slop.October 1, 2026

Interestingly Fanta is the “headline sponsor” of Thorpe Park Fright Nights, which I’m attending in a few weeks. That event has been marred by its use of AI slop, examples of which have gone viral. Why is this crap inescapable?October 1, 2026

"I went to check if people were talking about this as soon as I left the theatre. Crazy they don't see how bad it looks and how it cheapens their brand," one person writes on X.

"I was watching a Tubi movie when this ad popped up and I cannot express to you how much more effort, creativity, and overall watchability went into that Tubi movie than this ad," someone else thinks.

"Makes you think what are they putting in their food to lower the production cost?" another person writes.

People who are strongly opposed to AI might be a lot louder on social media than the many more people who don't really care either way. But now the AI Coke trucks have been joined by Fanta ones, it's starting to feel like Coca-Cola's goading its critics.

"Look, we can do trucks with the right number of wheels now," it seems to be boasting, while serving up a mess of badly edited jump cuts in which the product itself looks like a toxic swill that no human should put into their body. Unlike Marmite or the new Jaguar. Coke and Fanta have traditionally been branded as universal in their appeal. So why is the world's biggest soft drinks brand now so unworried about upsetting a large portion of its customer base?

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/ai/fantas-ai-slop-halloween-advert-is-a-real-horror-show GSKigXjYt5Z8ZUtDEveqZ8 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 07:00:00 +0000 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 14:23:49 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ The daleks in the new animated Doctor Who look kind of familiar ]]> The future of the main Doctor Who series remains up in the air amid a competitive tender to take over production following Russell T Davies’ exit. In the meantime, the BBC has ordered an animated Doctor Who series to fill the timey wimey void.

What took them so long? I hear you ask. Possibly a fear of the kind of comments the news has inevitably sparked on social media. Many Whovians aren't impressed by the first artwork from Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew. And there's one criticism that hard to unsee.

Doctor Who animation — Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew is expected to start screening in late 2027 or early 2028 (Image credit: BBC)

There have been animated Doctor Who shorts before, and the BBC has used animation to remake lost episodes' Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew is more ambitious. Announced by BBC Children's and Education and created for the kids' channel CBeebies, it will have an initial run of 52 eleven-minute episodes.

The series will follow a young blue-haired Doctor and his friends Hannah, Beastie and Toast-IE. Villains will include the daleks. Blue Zoo Animation Studio is producing and Dominic Minns, who directed CBeebies' Mojo Swoptops and Supertato, is series director.

"Bursting with imagination, humour and adventure, Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew brings the excitement of the Whoniverse to a new generation of fans. Through action-packed, preschool-friendly stories, the series celebrates curiosity, courage and kindness, encouraging young viewers to explore new ideas, solve problems and embrace the unexpected.," the BBC says.

The series is bound to take some liberties with Doctor Who lore (if there are any left to take). But as a lifetime Doctor Who fan myself, it makes me sad that a lot of the criticism of the animation on social media is a bit ridiculous, particularly since we have only a single piece of artwork to judge it on so far.

Most of the disparagement appears to come from middle-aged men who have mistaken themselves as the target audience for the pre-school friendly cartoon.Some are worried that the series might have a strong female character (shudder).

One perplexing comment on X even suggests the artwork above uses 'bisexual lighting', because cosmic-looking purple gradients are something new in science fiction (I always suspected that the Dumbbell Nebula swung both ways, to be honest).

@bbcdoctorwho why the Dalek have a minion eye😭😭 https://t.co/qroeXi9NzDOctober 6, 2026

There is one recurring observation that I can't argue with though. The daleks do look like one-eyed minions. Whether the resemblance is intentional or not, it was my first thought when I saw the art work.

The toddler-friendly daleks redesign is actually quite clever. It leans into the silliness of their existing design with their sink plunger arms and takes it further, adding more utensils to the mix. Giving them real eyes and making the grille more mouth-like is a logical step to make them appeal to smaller kids, but it's almost inevitable that they'll continually remind us of Gru's henchmen.

@bbcdoctorwho I wasn't aware that this would also be a Red Dwarf crossover. https://t.co/CQnWSgjc9SOctober 6, 2026

Another detail that's raised eyebrows is the character called Toast-IE. Could he be Talkie Toaster from Red Dwarf?

That's actually a crossover I would watch, but the reference is presumably unintended. That makes it feel like the character could have been suggested by AI as an appropriate comedy companion for a sci-fi series. Surely, K9 could have done the job?

In the meantime, check out how they made the animation for last year's Lux episode in the main Doctor Who series.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/entertainment/movies-tv-shows/the-daleks-in-the-new-animated-doctor-who-do-kind-of-look-of-familiar ns8QMnQRiCpLWBNitfF6Ni Thu, 08 Oct 2026 06:00:00 +0000 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 13:36:44 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Love huge 3D prints? Get 50% off the Anycubic Kobra 3 Max ]]> If you want a big multicolour printer without paying a pile of money, the Anycubic Kobra 3 Max Combo is worth a look. The four-colour bundle has dropped from $1,149 to $574 at Anycubic's US store, saving you 50%. It pairs the Kobra 3 Max, with its 420 x 420 x 500mm build volume, with the ACE Pro filament unit for multicolour printing. Top speed is 600mm/s, though Anycubic recommends 300mm/s for everyday use. The eight-colour version is $803. This is clearance stock, so don't expect it to hang around.

Anycubic bills the Kobra 3 Max Combo as the largest consumer-grade multicolour 3D printer, which is its own claim. On build volume, at least, it holds up against the obvious rivals. For more Prime Day 3D printer deals, see our live blog.

Kobra 3 Max Combo: was $1149 now $574
This printer has a huge build volume for larger projects. It is on clearance, so not a true Prime-adjacent deal, but brings the price down very nicely.

Anycubic's specs:

420*420*500mm print volume

ACE pro Flawless 8-colour printing

Precise auto-leveling & anti-skip

Filament box with drying capability

Printing Speed Up to 600mm/s

Anycubic Slicer Next & Anycubic App Upgrad3View Deal

Not for you? See the other deals we've found below – and see our guide to the best 3D printers.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/3d/3d-printing/love-huge-3d-prints-get-50-percent-off-the-anycubic-kobra-3-max NwZY4nGgeBCzEkcN5KdUhN Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:09:48 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ The new Microsoft Surface Ultra is literally built for multi-disciplinary creatives ]]> Microsoft has put a price on the Surface Laptop Ultra, and confirmed launch dates. Pre-orders are open now from $2,599, with shipments expected to begin on 16 October.

The Microsoft Surface Ultra is coming for the MacBook Pro with its power, performance and portability. It's aimed at creators running intensive workflows, apparently it can run heavy code, render a film in Da Vinci at the same time as running a AAA title game. The Microsoft showcase told a story of one creator creating a scene in Blender, passing it to Unreal Engine and then into Photoshop. The process took hours rather than the usual days but, of course, we haven't tested it yet. This may be heading to the top of our best laptop for 3D modelling guide.

Microsoft surface laptop — (Image credit: Microsoft)

The important feature for creatives is how the Ultra uses memory. Its RTX Spark chip lets the processor and graphics share a single pool of up to 128GB, rather than splitting resources between the two. In practice, that could mean complex 3D scenes and long video timelines that would overwhelm the graphics memory of a typical laptop. We'll need to put it through our testing to see how it plays out in a heavy Blender scene or Premiere Pro timeline.

Nvidia says the platform can run large AI models directly on the machine, up to 120 billion parameters. For artists experimenting with AI tools, that means more of that work happens on your own laptop instead of through cloud services. Microsoft quotes up to 1 petaflop of AI performance.

What you can expect:

A 15-inch PixelSense Ultra touchscreen, which Microsoft says has the brightest peak HDR of any laptop.
A chassis under 18mm thin and weight of under 4.5lbs.
2.5x the thermal capacity of existing Surface Laptops, with the machine retaining 99% of its power on battery. That's a big deal if you edit or render away from a desk.
The most ports ever on a Surface Laptop, including the world's first built-in magnetic USB-C charger.

This is being pitched as a revolutionary laptop ecosystem, which draws on many huge players in creative tech to provide everything a creative needs. What do you think of the offer – and the price point?

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/tech/laptops/the-new-microsoft-surface-ultra-is-literally-built-for-multi-disciplinary-creatives SYDE8tfVnbbnpWwp4Mn9sH Wed, 07 Oct 2026 19:38:16 +0000 Thu, 08 Oct 2026 11:39:49 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Mics, cameras, discounts: these DJI Prime Day deals are a must for creatives ]]> Admittedly, I'm very new to DJI products, and as a photographer and social media manager, I'm almost ashamed it took me this long to appreciate how AMAZING this brand is. The best part? DJI has Prime Day deals on some of its top kit, like the Osmo Pocket 4 Creator Combo now 20% off over at Amazon.

You might recognise DJI more for its drone range, but actually, it makes exceptional (and affordable) products for content creators and vloggers alike. Its gimbal cameras have stolen the spotlight recently, and I'm in the process of testing the Osmo Pocket 4P as we speak.

The first thing the company sent me for consideration was the DJI Mic Mini 2S, a wearable and super-compact mic set with a mobile USB-C receiver and charging case. This has immensely improved my audio when recording voiceovers for Creative Bloq's growing social platforms, and our TikTok videos are looking pretty sharp, if I do say so – thanks to the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P gimbal camera.

You can watch me unbox this camera in about 20 seconds in the video below.

@creativebloqofficial
♬ original sound - Creative Bloq

*If you can't see the video above, please refresh the page.

DJI Prime Day deals

DJI

Osmo Pocket 4 Standard Combo

DJI

Osmo Pocket 4 Traveler Bundle

DJI

Osmo Pocket 4 Creator Combo

DJI

Osmo Pocket 3 Vlogging Camera

DJI

Osmo Pocket 3 Live Stream Bundle

DJI

Osmo Pocket 3 Bundle

DJI

Osmo Pocket 4 Fill Light Combo

DJI

Osmo Nano Vlog Combo (128gb), 4k Wearable Camera

DJI

Mic Mini (2 Tx + 1 Rx + Charging Case), Ultralight, Detail-Rich Audio

DJI

Osmo Mobile 8 Gimbal Stabilizer

DJI

Osmo Action 4 Essential Combo

DJI

Dji Osmo 360 Essential Combo, 360 Action Camera

DJI

Power 140W Gan Charging Combo

DJI

Flip Fly More Combo With RC 2 Screen Remote Controller,

DJI

Dji Power 2000 Portable Power Station, 2048wh Lfp Battery

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/photography/cameras-accessories/mics-cameras-discounts-these-dji-prime-day-deals-are-a-must-for-creatives MnoxYinw7g36ctcZxai6iA Wed, 07 Oct 2026 18:00:00 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ This modern day iPod could be a dream come true for nostalgic MP3 player fans ]]> Haven't you heard? The iPod is back! Well, sort of – sales of second-hand and refurbished models are through the roof, as younger generations seek to disconnect from the black hole in their pocket. But while Apple is showing no signs of bringing back its classic MP3 player, there are plenty of third party iPod alternatives out there.

And now, one of the most striking examples yet has entered the fold. The New Matter Sudo, with its aluminium body and click wheel, is such a dead ringer for the iPod Classic that it's a wonder John Ternus isn't banging down the door with a cease-and-desist letter.

But Sudo isn't simply an old iPod Classic wearing a fresh coat of paint. For starters, it can stream music as well as play your own files (although at this point it's unclear which streaming services are actually supported). There's a microSD slot supporting cards up to a frankly ludicrous 1TB. You also get a 3.5mm headphone jack – remember those?

The nostalgia is baked into the controls, too. There's a proper tactile click wheel for flicking through your music, sitting beneath a 2.73-inch touchscreen. It's all powered by Sudo OS and squeezed into an aluminium body measuring just 103.5 x 58.6 x 8.5mm. In other words, it's the size of an iPod, not the IMAX display—sorry, iPhone—in your pocket.

iPod 5th generation — The iPod has been enjoying a revival of late (Image credit: Future)

And now for the catch. You can't actually buy it yet. A $50 deposit will get you a place on the list for the first batch, due to drop at the end of 2027. The total expected (and that word is doing a lot of heavy lifting) price is $249. And as we know from disasters like the Humane AI pin, investing in a product before it actually exists is risky business.

Still, if it all comes together, this could be the most compelling contemporary iPod we've seen – one that'll certainly look chic next to your favourite dumb phone.

]]> https://www.creativebloq.com/design/product-design/this-modern-day-ipod-could-be-a-dream-come-true-for-nostalgic-mp3-player-fans nyBDcAD8aevJRcts2VYZck Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:18:42 +0000 Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:19:39 +0000 false false false <![CDATA[ Get audiophile sound at rock-bottom prices, with the best IEM deals for Prime Day ]]> Think of yourself an audiophile? Need high-quality sound for your creative work? Well these days some of the best in-ear monitors (IEMs) cost a lot less than you might think. And with Prime Day upon us, several of our favourites are currently even cheaper.

So you don't miss out, I've rounded up the best IEM deals on Amazon in the US and UK, from a warm, beautifully balanced audiophile favourite to a gaming-friendly set with a swappable USB-C cable, a dual-tuning bargain and a pair of wireless earbuds with noise cancellation.

Browse office chair Prime Day deals at Amazon

The discounts here aren't huge, but these IEMs were already outstanding value, so even a few dollars or pounds off makes them more tempting. Best of all, every set has been tested by our audio experts, so you can be sure you're getting genuine quality rather than just a flashy spec sheet.

Check out the offers below. And if you haven't already, be sure to sign up for Amazon Prime for the best savings.

The best IEM deals

Prime Day IEM deals: USA

Ears KE4: was $199 now $159
Our reviewer rated the KE4 eight out of 10, singling out its rich, beautifully presented midrange, relaxed treble and all-day comfort. Its isobaric pair of dynamic drivers adds a satisfying thud to the low end, making it a great choice if you want warmth and detail with plenty of bass.View Deal

Truthear's Pure pairs warm, gripping bass with a supremely balanced midrange and smooth treble. Its tuning rivals sets costing several times more, and it comes with a cool carry bag and a range of ear tips usually found with pricier IEMs.View Deal

Defiant Gamefidelity Edition: was $109.99 now $87.99
Our reviewer gave this exciting V-shaped IEM nine out of 10, praising its punchy bass, airy treble and brilliant modular cable, which swaps between 3.5mm and USB-C. With a built-in mic too, it's as good for gaming on PC, PS5 or Switch as it is for music.View Deal

Space Travel 2: was $29.99 now $26.99
These wireless earbuds punch way above their weight, with a 13mm beryllium-plated driver. They also boast Bluetooth 6.0, active noise cancellation and a 55ms low-latency game mode. Battery life stretches to 31 hours with the case.View Deal

Prime Day IEM deals: UK

Pure: was £89.99 now £80.99
If you want one IEM that does everything well, this is it. A single dynamic driver and three balanced armatures deliver a mature, warm-neutral sound with a rich midrange, while its angular 3D-printed shells look striking. These in-ear monitors belong in every audiophile's collection.View Deal

OoopusX Op.22: was £34.49 now £31.49
It's like getting two IEMs for the price of one: a dial switches between a clean, near-neutral tuning and a bombastic bass boost of around 7dB. Our reviewer found the upper mids a little edgy, but as an affordable way to discover what you like, it's superb value.View Deal

Space Travel 2: was £29.99 now £26.99
What a bargain: for under £27, you get true wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation, an oversized driver with a beryllium-plated dome and a game mode with just 55ms of latency. The companion app adds one-button EQ presets and custom touch controls.View Deal

So which should you choose? If you want the most refined sound for your money, the Truthear Pure is the one to beat in both the US and UK, with a warm, natural tuning that's easy to love. In the US, the Kiwi Ears KE4 is worth the extra if you want gorgeous mids with a hefty dose of bass, while gamers should look to the Juzear Defiant Gamefidelity Edition, with its exciting sound, mic and swappable USB-C cable.

UK buyers on a tight budget should check out the OoopusX Op.22, which gives you two very different sound profiles for little more than £30. And on both sides of the Atlantic, if you'd rather ditch the wires entirely, the Moondrop Space Travel 2 offers impressive sound and noise cancellation for less than a takeaway.

Whichever you go for, try a few different ear tips to get a good seal: it makes a bigger difference than you'd think.

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