While the game is much more than a fresh coat of paint for the 1998 classic, with new controls, richer environments, extra dialogue, voiced cutscenes and fixes for some of the creakier bits of the original, it's also clear that Nintendo has been faithful to the original in many ways. Some of the thinking behind that comes across in a new series of interviews with developers. They reveal the vision for retaining a stylised look to the game's art, and confess that certain changes were considered but ruled out because they interfered with the core structure of the game.

The art style aimed for a "puppet-show" feel

As we noted in our preview, the new Hyrule of the Ocarina of Time remake remains very faithful to the shapes and colours of the N64 original but rebuilds them with sumptuous lighting and far more detail, from the grain in the wood and foliage to the stitching on Link’s tunic.

Despite the Nintendo Switch 2's far superior graphics capabilities compared to the N64, art director Aya Shida emphasises that the goal wasn't merely to make the classic look as realistic as possible. In early in development, the team used phrases like “a puppet-show feel” and “the analog feel of practical effects films” as concepts to aim for.

"We wanted to rebuild Hyrule as a rich, dense world that felt as though it could truly exist, while retaining the feel of the original. At the same time, we wanted its colorful and quirky characters to feel like a natural part of that world. Figuring out how to strike the right balance became one of the main themes of the art development," she says in Nintendo's Ask the Developer series.

"Neither puppet shows nor practical effects films reproduce reality exactly as it is. Even so, both create a convincing sense that the characters truly exist within their respective fantasy worlds," Aya adds.

The team began by drawing sketches of Link, Zelda and the other characters and creating a 3D model of the Great Deku Tree. Although the N64 designs and the new ones look very different due to the exaggerated features in the former, Aya says the aim was to preserve familiarity, which included paying particular consideration to how characters look from a distance "so that players would feel they were still the same characters they remembered, even after 28 years".

A lot of attention also went into the textures of the characters’ clothing. While they're much more detailed, they couldn't be took perfect. For example, the young Link's clothes needed to look handmade to be believable.

"We started by asking what kind of fabric those children might actually weave and wear," Aya reveals. "We looked at materials in museums and even experimented with making our own fabric from thread to get a better sense of what it should be like. For this game, the hardware allowed us to depict that level of detail, but that also meant we needed to do our research until we had a clear idea of what we wanted to create. As a design team, we often talked about imagining the story behind every object in the game as we created it."

Ocarina of Time almost had a big change in its world exploration

While the objective was always to be faithful to the original game's focus on the joy of exploration, The Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma reveals that the Ocarina of Time remake could have ended up with warp points like in Breath of the Wild.

"In the original The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you could get around a bit faster by spamming forward roll, so I think a lot of players spent their time doggedly rolling across Hyrule Field whenever they needed to be somewhere in a hurry. I thought we needed to address this in this new version," he said.

However, developers discovered that adding the warp points to Ocarina of Time eliminated an important part of the game: the moments of discovery.

"Through this development process, we were reminded once again just how important those moments are to the very structure of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. So even though I was the one who proposed adding warp points, they just weren't working for me in the end, so I got the team to take them all back out again," he says.

One gameplay change that did make it into the remake is the addition of a dedicated jump button for Link, whereas he hopped automatically off certain ledges in the original. This will take some getting used to, especially mid-fight, but should be a welcome change for fiddly moments.

The Ocarina of Time remake could influence future Zelda games

Eiji also commented on the reason for remaking Ocarina of Time in the first place as the franchise approached its 40th anniversary. He says that a significant part of the motivation was to ensure that the team working on the Zelda series today truly understands the original game's significance to the series as a whole.

"By learning the game structure and development style behind the original The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and by actually rebuilding it as a full remake, it may trigger new insights that they can carry forward into future development," he suggests.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launches on Nintendo Switch 2 on 5 November, 2026.

You can read the full interviews with developers on the Nintendo website.

This year, I want to focus on six of my favourite IEM deals from HiFiGo – one of the biggest operators in the space. These are all earphones that I've actually tried and tested myself, and that I feel hit the sweet spot of excellent sound quality, build quality and value for money.

My absolute favourite would be the Juzear Light Shuttle, which I reviewed only last month. It is my 'neutral with bass-boost' release of the year, and it's currently down from $190 to $155 over at AliExpress.

All six of these IEMs are featured either on my list of the best budget IEMs currently on the market, or my pick of the best IEM under $500.

Each asset starts with a brief and a team brainstorm. Forsgren then builds a rough 3D blockout in Blender, refines the functionality, materials and finish, and pushes it into Arrowhead’s Stingray engine to see how it behaves in real time.

That loop helps give Helldivers 2 its battered, believable look. Weapons have to be mechanically plausible, and procedural materials add edge wear, grime and volumetric detail “without ever doing a single second of UVs”. Forsgren has also built a Blender pipeline for the game’s Warbond banners, producing renders at a higher fidelity than the game itself can manage, in the series’ propaganda-poster style.

There’s plenty here for Blender users beyond games, too: the scripts and add-ons Forsgren uses to speed up his work, the custom tools Arrowhead uses to move assets between Blender and the engine, and why the studio lets artists build their own workflows. The takeaway is that the best pipeline helps artists make better decisions, faster, with fewer hand-offs.

For more on Helldivers 2, visit Arrowhead Game Studios.

This is a real life video of a horse standing in a stable. And the horse is clearly black... except, it isn't. Apparently it's white. I absolutely cannot see this however many times I come back to it, but people in the comments have learned how the horse is actually in shadow, clicked off and back onto it, and then can see that it's white.

I'll share it below – can you see the horse as its real colour, or are you stuck in the same camp as me?

With 4,500 upvotes on Reddit, the r/opticalillusions subreddit is taken with this illusion.

"I can no longer see it as a black horse but at first it was as black as midnight. Now it's white and I cant make it go back," one amazed comment reads.

"It's the exact same effect as the White/Gold Blue/Black dress," explains another. "It's an image where the subject is in shadow but the background is in bright sunlight and our brain struggles to differentiate the two lighting conditions."

Other comments share tips on how to achieve the effect if you're struggling.

"Scroll so you can only see the legs," one suggests. "Focus your eyes on the shade that the horse is standing in. You should be able to see that it is white," says someone else.

Has that worked for you? Let us know in the comments. Then check out the original spinning horse illusion that amassed millions of views on our site. And the follow up version that was spotted in real life.

There had to be a catch, and one of the suspicions was that the new Affinity would be unlikely to get regular upgrades or improvements. One year on, Canva seems to be defying those predictions. It added new raw photo editing capabilities last month, with more colour, sharpening and detail adjustments. Today, it's completed things by adding one major element that was still missing for many creatives' workflows: a dedicated Affinity for iPad.

The individual Affinity apps (Affinity Photo 2, Designer 2, Publisher 2) were previously available for iPad before last year's launch of the unified free Affinity for desktop. Users who had bought them could continue using the apps, but they didn't support the new .af file format.

The new single-app Affinity for iPad brings the bulk of the combined desktop software to Apple tablets but designed specifically for a touch-first interface. It also takes advantage of Apple Pencil capabilities like pressure and tilt for sketching or for masking images, as well as Apple Pencil Pro's barrel roll, squeeze and hover features.

The app features Sketch Studio for freehand drawing and sketch-to-vector workflows, and several iPad-first features like a Mask Tool and Sketch to Shapes.

Like on the desktop app, Affinity for iPad uses the same .af file format across sketch, vector, photo and layout processes to make cross-media workflows easier. Non-destructive edits render in real time and there's no need for assets to be exported, converted or remade.

For sketching, there's a brush library with controls to shape each brush, while sketches stay live in the file to build on, rather than trace again. The iPad app also includes Affinity's raw image editing capabilities and the ability to create print-ready multi-page documents.

AI tools, including Generative Expand, upscaling, denoising, and Decompose Layer to split a flat image into editable layers, are available with a subscription via Canva AI Studio.

An increasing range of major software is now available in the form of dedicated iPad apps, from Adobe's main apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere to DaVinci Resolve for video editing and Maxon's ZBrush for 3D sculpting. This means the powerful iPad Pro can now be used to its full potential for creative work, allowing more mobile workflows, either for working remotely or simply allowing creatives to take time away from the desk to work in another place before coming back to pick things up on desktop.

Affinity for iPad is is free for individual users and available to download from the iPad App Store now. If you don't already have one, you'll need to create a free Canva account to use the app. A premium Canva subscription is required for AI tools.

Readers of a certain vintage will remember the illuminated Apple logo. The light-up fruit used to adorn every Apple laptop, and was a (somewhat distracting) mainstay of cafes, trains and DJ performances. In 2015, Apple unceremoniously killed the illuminated logo, replacing it with a mirrored version. But as of last week, it's back – and it seems people are happy about it.

Now, the cynical among you might think the reason for the addition is to make the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display stand out as new in public. There's always something to differentiate a new Apple product from the previous generation, even if it's simply new colours. But from a distance, this new MacBook Pro looks almost identical to non PROLED models. How are we supposed to quietly show it off in a cafe? With the 'new' illuminated logo, of course!

But the less cynical among you might see this as yet another sign that under new CEO John Ternus, Apple is rediscovering its sense of fun. From the brand's wild new TikTok presence to the colourful (and cheap) MacBook Neo, Apple seems to be stepping outside of its space grey prison and embracing a sense of friendliness we haven't seen for years. And it's going down well.

We'll be sharing our comprehensive thoughts on the new MacBook Pro once we've got out hands on it in the coming days. In the meantime, take a look at my first impressions from LA, and why that touchscreen might make more sense than you think.

Now, let's do a thought experiment. If you're old enough, picture the digital work you made 20 years ago. That might be a website design, assets for a CD-ROM, a vector illustration… whatever.

Ask yourself: could you locate and open those files today? If you’re anything like me, the honest answer is “mostly no”.

It's ironic, really. Because digital work has no tangible physical presence, we tend to think of it as eternal. In truth, though, it's kind of the opposite.

Why your files are in danger

This March, I visited memory card manufacturer Lexar’s facilities in Shenzhen, China. And one moment there has stuck with me ever since.

In a press conference, the company's representative explained that the flash memory used in consumer memory cards and SSDs can start losing data within a year if you leave them in a drawer and don't power them up.

Lexar told me it’s developing a dedicated device to address this issue, but it's early days. In contrast, a print just sits there, being a print.

Meanwhile, if you're putting your work online, there's more bad news. A Pew Research Center study found that 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 were no longer accessible a decade later. Platforms are no safer. Back in 2019, MySpace admitted that a server migration had wiped photos, videos and music uploaded between 2003 and 2015: an estimated 50 million songs from 14 million artists.

Its advice to users was to keep their own backups. But wherever you back stuff up, basically, you're running the same risk. As the sudden closure of Sora highlighted, venture capitalists don't really care about protecting your stuff as much as you do.

There's also the problem of actually opening files in years to come. Built something in Flash in 2012? I doubt you'll be able to salvage it now, after Adobe shuttered the format in 2020, and that's just one example among many.

How to keep them safe

So what can we do? There are few basic rules we all should be following if we want to be able to access our work in 2030, 2040 and further ahead. The first is to follow the 3-2-1 rule. Keep three copies of anything important, on two different types of storage, with one stored offsite or in the cloud. It's not a foolproof method, but it does reduce the odds of losing stuff exponentially.

Secondly, every few months or so, power up your SSDs and memory cards, so firmware can do its job. Thirdly, export your final files to open formats like TIFF, PNG, SVG or PDF/A, which are more likely to be readable in decades to come.

Fourthly, treat platforms as shop windows, not storerooms. And finally, print your work. As long as you can avoid floods or fires, paper-based storage has a better track record than digital.

Is this seems a bit of a faff, I'd have to agree. But consider this. If future historians end up knowing more about 1926 than 2026, it won’t be for lack of material. It’ll be because we couldn't be bothered to look after it – and what will future generations think of us then?

I've honestly got no idea if smart glasses – some of which can now project information, images and videos straight at your eyeballs – will end up taking off in future, and replacing the smartphone. But if they do, then it occurs to me that this will be big news for billboards.

You might assume that if more digital tech catches on, physical advertising would be one of the casualties. After all, why look at a poster when your glasses can show you something tailored? But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am the opposite will happen.

Consider this: nobody is going to wear smart glasses to look at their feet. The whole attraction is that you get the benefits of a phone while keeping your eyes on the world around you. And in most towns and cities – even in this smartphone era – that world is already plastered with outdoor advertising.

And if smart glasses can truly take advantage of augmented reality – tech that overlays digital content onto real-world, physical things – then those billboards will suddenly be a lot more exciting to look at.

Make billboards great again

For over a century, billboards have been essentially a one-way medium. QR codes promised to fix that, but how many of us have actually stopped in the street, taken out our phones and waggled them at a pixelated square? Once or twice, maybe. But on a regular basis? Hardly.

In future, I reckon, you'll be able to point smart glasses at a billboard and get it to do all sorts of useful things, probably by talking to an AI bot embedded in your specs.

With a movie billboard, for instance, you might want to play the trailer or find out which cinema it's playing at nearby, and when. You might even want turn-by-turn directions to the multiplex to appear in front of your very eyes.

This might sound like Black Mirror-style sci-fi, but it's worth remembering how many old Black Mirror episodes have essentially come true already. And it certainly seems to be the way the ad industry is thinking.

In fact, you can already see a version of this idea in east London. Electric Garden, on Shoreditch High Street, bills itself as “the billboard you can walk into”. It’s a 21,000 sq ft open-air site that sits behind a row of giant digital screens, so brands can run a campaign on the screens and then build a physical world behind them for people to explore.

Its launch campaign, for Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, turned the site into a neon-lit, Seoul-inspired alleyway, complete with convenience stores, plastic stools and code-breaking missions. As co-founder Alex Ezen puts it: “A screen can capture attention, but a physical experience gives people a reason to stop, take part and share it.”

Smart glasses could deliver something similar without anyone needing to build an alleyway. That will make the brief for designers all the harder, of course, but personally, that’s the kind of challenge I’d relish.

The world's third-largest hamburger fast-food chain has unveiled a turn-based, pixel-art adventure in which its red-haired mascot leads a party of fast-food heroes to save a kingdom in peril. It's called WendyQuest: Legend of the Four Corner Stones. No, this is not a South Park parody. This is a real, playable game.

The branded element isn't just about bigging up Wendy's either: it also takes potshots at rivals. In the game, for example, your enemies include Frydusa, a carton of snake-like French fries, and a gang called the Golden Archers. As a dig at McDonald’s, it's not subtle.

81monkeys, an indie studio in Port Moody, British Columbia, is making the game, and it’s heading to Steam. You might expect something so obviously corporate to either get trounced on social media or get ignored and sink without a trace. At the time of writing, though, gamers mostly seem to be asking… why it looks so good.

There's more. Last summer, Pepsi asked on social media whether it should make a video game. It was buried in replies pointing out that it already had. One came from Kotaro Uchikoshi, now a celebrated visual-novel director (yes, that's a thing now), who'd worked on 1999’s Pepsiman and was offering to reconnect the company with the original team.

Branded games are clearly back on the menu. The question is… why? Well, first it's worth noting that we've been here before.

Branded game have a long tradition

Domino’s Avoid the Noid in 1989 is widely cited as the first fast-food tie-in game. McDonald’s followed with Global Gladiators, which is considered one of the best platformers of its era. Then there was Cool Spot, starring the red dot from 7 Up’s American logo, which you could play on the SNES and Mega Drive in 1993 and, branding tie-in aside, is a genuinely brilliant 2D platform game.

The original Pepsiman, though, remains the king of the branded games. Released only in Japan (which always helps cult status), it showed a superhero sprinting through cities to deliver Pepsi cans. And it remains much-loved: these days, copies go for hundreds of dollars on sites like eBay.

Then came Burger King's 2006 experiment. The chain sold three branded Xbox games for $3.99, including the infamous stealth title Sneak King, as long as you bought a value meal (sold separately). BK ended up shifting more than 3.2 million copies in total.

KFC was late to the party, only joining the fun in 2019 with I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator. The parody dating sim got flayed by critics, but players loved it, giving it a 91% positive rating on Steam.

From a branding perspective, what's interesting is that these weren’t just adverts with gameplay bolted on. They were proper games that people actually liked, even if reviewers were somewhat sniffy. So why are they coming back now? It's difficult to say, but I think a few factors are in play.

Reasons for the return of ad-gaming

First, the original branded games' child audience is now an adult audience with money, and nostalgia is a powerful force. Second, it’s far easier to distribute games today. While Burger King once had to manufacture physical copies and distribute them to restaurants, now Wendy’s just needs a Steam page.

Thirdly, traditional advertising is struggling to break through ad blockers, ad-free subscriptions and a general lack of interest. In contrast, people actually like a branded game. They might even actively seek it out.

Finally, there's the backlash against AI. Wendy's Steam page proudly declares its game “100% fresh and 100% human-made” for a reason. As we all drown in AI slop, handcrafted, indie-style pixel art becomes a visual statement of brand values.

Will they succeed?

None of this, of course, guarantees that these games will succeed. For every Global Gladiators there’s a Sneak King, a game remembered more as a curio than for its gameplay. The brands that get this right treat players as players, not targets for ads.

So will WendyQuest join Pepsiman in the hall of fame, or end up in the bargain bin of history? I have no clue. But if a burger chain can get me excited about a turn-based RPG, its marketing team must be doing something right. And Pepsi, if you’re reading: Uchikoshi’s offer is still on the table.

His work has seen him become a 2x ADG and Gold Cannes Lion award winner, shaped by his radically practical approach to production design amidst the rise of AI. As part of our 5 Questions series, I caught up with Christopher to discuss pet peeves, imposter syndrome and "learning by fire".

It's no secret that Apple and Samsung are among the brands that fight the most online, so the recent stab at Apple shouldn't exactly come as a surprise. While Apple purists may defend the Duo's screen-cracking debacle, Samsung fans are sitting smugly, knowing the Z Fold has nailed foldable design – but is it enough for Apple fans to convert?

We want to hear your opinion. Is the iPhone Duo here to take over, or has Samsung's legacy secured its place as the foldable phone king? Are you team Apple, team Samsung, or is there another rival brand that deserves the crown? Have your say in the comments below.

For more tech news, check out the iPhone Duo complaints that have emerged since its launch or take a look at Apple Music's splashy new logo.

Our reviewer, who’s tested many of the best 3D printers over the last decade, found it easy to use, beautifully built and capable of some of the smoothest results he’s had from an FDM machine.

Even at full price, it’s cheaper than the Creality K2 Pro. Now Amazon has dropped it from $424.97 to $401.28, a small yet significant saving.

Our favourite feature is the Canvas system, which lets you load up to four reels of filament. Our reviewer found it all very quick and easy to load. If your spool has an RFID chip, you just hold it up to the side of the unit and the printer sets everything automatically. When you open a multicolour file, a setup window lets you choose which spool goes where.

The Centauri Carbon 2 uses a CoreXY design for printing speeds of up to 500mm per second, with a respectable 256 x 256 x 256mm build volume. Our reviewer printed a one-piece fidget toy with moving parts, which came out silky smooth.

The main drawback is size: with the spools on the side and a waste chute at the back, you’ll need plenty of space around it. Otherwise, this a great value, especially at this discounted price. Read our full Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 review for more details.

To get going, you'll need one of the best iPads for drawing that has Procreate installed (don't worry- it's free), plus a reliable stylus, and that's pretty much it.

Start with an existing digital sketch of your chosen container, be it a potion bottle, can of soda, bubble bath, or even a coffee, and let your imagination fill in the rest as you plan out the path of motion following Phoebe's instructions.

Let us know if you have any questions, and check out our guide to Disney's 12 Principles of Animation if you need some inspiration.

For more on the basics of drawing, see our how-to-draw tutorial series. You might also like our guide on how to choose the best animation style.

One of Cricut's best ambassadors, Kate Smith, showed a group of us how to create a terrorsome tote bag using glow-in-the-dark HTV vinyl, as well as spooky bunting using just two materials, card and string. You'll need one of the best Cricut machines for both of these projects, and I used the Cricut Joy 2 for the bunting, and my larger Cricut Maker 4 for the tote bag project.

Take a look at my video tutorial below, and let me know in the comments if you have any questions. Keep an eye on Cricut's online store as we head into peak retail season for some top Black Friday deals on machines, tools, and materials.

You will need:

• A Cricut machine
• A device with access to Cricut Design Space (phone, tablet, or laptop)
• A light grip mat
• Cardstock (colour of your choice)
• Nice string for bunting
• A blank tote bag
• Glow-in-the-dark iron-on vinyl
• A heat press or iron

Once you've gathered your materials, switch on your Cricut machine, boot up Cricut Design Space on your phone, tablet, or laptop and then you're ready to get making.

VIDEO: Halloween crafting with Cricut

This was my first time using glow-in-the-dark iron-on vinyl, and I'm absolutely obsessed with it. I'll definitely be buying some more. Watching it glow underneath the heat press as it glided along felt magical.

The best rebrands have the power to breathe new life into a brand, and Purple Garden's serenely beautiful new identity is no different. Born of spontaneity and experimentation, this unique rebrand is proof that the unconventional can result in something truly divine.

With Mother Design’s Wild Card initiative in mind, the team worked with a Purple Garden holistic practitioner to encourage experimentation with unfamiliar disciplines. Creating instinctively with paper and charcoal, the designers sought to bypass conscious thought, with the resulting forms, textures and feelings becoming a creative foundation for the identity.

"Transferring something as intangible as psychic power into a brand identity was a chunky challenge that we wanted to get right," explains Jo Tulej, creative director at Mother Design. "It had to begin with the audience. Purple Garden is aimed at people who have had spiritual readings and practices, and the business objective was to cement the brand’s place as the leader in the category. Therefore, we had to create something visual and verbal that would feel familiar and resonate with these ‘seasoned seekers’, but in a fresh way, that would communicate Purple Garden’s elevated offering.

In order for us to tap into that, we knew we had to experience it ourselves to understand and make something that felt authentic. Some of the Mother Design team had experience with spirituality; others didn’t, so we enlisted the help of a holistic practitioner from the platform to guide us through a chakra reading and automatic drawing and writing workshop. A brand audit with a twist, you might say!"

"The word séance comes from the words sitting or session. We were inspired by Hilma af Klint and The Five, a group of women who would come together and enter trance states to bypass conscious thought and draw and write freely. They believed they were connecting with a higher consciousness and receiving messages which translated into the marks they were making. Af Klint is a pioneer of Western abstract art, and her work predates the likes of Kandinsky and Mondrian.

We wanted to immerse ourselves in spirituality and see if that could be baked into a design process in order to create great work. The chakra reading and automatic drawing/writing took place as a group workshop in which the whole team participated. We then came back a few days later and sat alongside the drawings and writing and discussed what we were seeing and noticing. To have had this experience with an advisor from Purple Garden was an invaluable way to gain insight as well as an invigorating creative process," Jo continues.

Life and vitality breathe throughout the design, manifesting in the wordmark's combination of elegant serifs and curved junctures that appear to grow outwards. Paired with a digital-first, crystal-like glyph, the design positions Purple Garden as a source for "grounded guidance", while Literatura Present and ABC Social typefaces balance feelings of whimsy with practical legibility.

Spiritual energy emanates from the brand's diverse imagery, capturing images of "charged objects" to represent services like dream analysis and psychic readings. With "solarised glows and flame-like ripples", each image represents the energy exchange between practitioner and customer. Naturally, the colour scheme features a variety of rich purples associated with intuition and higher consciousness.

"This year we’ve been so lucky to rebrand not one but two psychic services platforms (Keen and Purple Garden)," Jo says. "What has surprised me is how different the two product/brands now feel, and how divergently we’ve been able to explore and push their identities. Again, this all comes down to getting under the skin of the audiences and aims of the business in order to sharpen the creative ideas and design expression.

For the Purple Garden process specifically, I was struck by how the initial séance experiment gave us a totally different way of starting a branding project. It was slow, unclear and required a lot of trust and to a certain extent, vulnerability, from our team. By protecting this time, and removing a traditional ‘KPI’ from the output, I believe it gave our client a much richer, robust output, sensitive to the category and its audience.

So often in the branding process we have less time that we’d like, and the more intangible ideas can get pushed to the side, but at Mother Design we always try to protect this ‘wild card’ time and encourage our brilliant team to experiment."

"One challenge we faced was how to create a world that feels of the spiritual category and familiar to its fans, but also fresh and exciting, avoiding the clichés whilst drawing on symbolism that would feel universal. So we did use the category (and namesake) purple, of course, but built out a much earthier, richer palette of 7 hues to stand out against the category’s usual flatter tone. We also used pictures of nature, but they appear transformed through these solarised glows, so they have a new, magical quality to them.

Similarly, in messaging we had to find the right balance of engaging customers to take action without falling into the category tropes of urgency and pressure, ie. Book fast. Get answers. Act now. Instead, we created a voice based around a duality: Active Contemplation, that can meet you where you are and either guide you forward or slow down for more reflective moments," Jo explains.

"There’s a ton of detail and craft that went into everything, for example, creating a wordmark with ligatures that feel as though they’re sprouting, and the organic, interconnecting letter placement. The team spent a long time experimenting with lots of different processes and tools till they found a visual style for the charged objects that felt right for depicting spiritual experiences. I’m really proud of all those details that emerge the more you engage with the identity and the impact it has.

I’m also proud of the way each part of the identity, from the charged objects, to the living type, to the guiding voice, all work together to express the Living Practice idea and sense of continual growth; so it really feels like a world as opposed to disparate elements," Jo concludes.

Discover more about Mother Design and Purple Garden.

With over 20 years in the filmmaking industry, Christopher has seen a huge evolution (check out our previous interview for more). As a production designer leveraging the power of practical effects, he argues that there's still space for tactile design in the film world – all it takes is a bit of courage and open-mindedness.

You'll need one of the best drawing tablets to get started, but more specifically, it has to be one of the best iPads for drawing, since Procreate is not available for Android tablets, Windows PCs, or standard desktop computers.

Take a look at Phoebe's tutorial below and let us know if you have any questions.

Brush number 3 that Phoebe creates is the coolest, in my opinion, and looks perfect for creating blood, dust or dirt splatters in the places you need it.

For more on the basics of drawing, see our how-to-draw tutorial series. You might also like to check out the best drawing books.

Starring in some of the best adverts of the 2000s, the Dolmio family carries quite the legacy for the brand. In a world of social-first branding and AI slop advertising, Dolmio's return to form is an ingenious response to audiences that are growing increasingly hungry for human-led design.

To understand more about the Dolmio family's grand return, I caught up with Kyle Whybrow, ECD at Elmwood London, to understand the value of nostalgia and the art of reviving brand heritage.

Every detail was considered and balanced: the subtle nuances in their features that feel familiar yet new, the clothing, the choice of material, the texture of their skin and hair, right down to the micro facial expressions and the wrinkles under the eyes. We took learnings from the great puppet and animation houses, because those tiny movements are what make a character feel alive and let people connect with them.

It was all about respecting where they came from while making them feel right for a modern audience. The red dot and the family make each other stronger: one gives instant recognition, the other gives people something to love. Fresh doesn’t have to mean new. Sometimes it just means sharper.

For the 40th, the family was rebuilt digitally, so we held every frame to the standard of the handmade originals. That’s why I don’t see it as analogue versus technology. Unreal Engine, motion capture, or the Puppetiser in Australia that lets families ‘puppetise’ themselves are brilliant when they serve the idea. Slop happens when the tool becomes the idea.

That makes sense, because typically in video games, the people who walk past you on the street are visual wallpaper. They give the impression that other humans are around, but they have no individuality.

This is exactly why the 2021 film Free Guy, in which Ryan Reynolds lives a repetitive, meaningless existence in a video game world, worked so well. We were all already in on the joke.

But now comes Grand Theft Auto 6, and its makers, Rockstar Games, are about to blow the concept of non-player characters right open.

Beyond the algorithm

In a cover feature for Edge, Creative Bloq's sister print magazine, the studio reveals it art-directed every one of the game’s NPCs, creating around 600,000 animations in the process.

Normally, procedural systems assemble background NPCs, making them largely interchangeable. Grand Theft Auto VI's non-player characters, however, will have their own personalities. Which means any Free Guy sequel (long mooted, but never confirmed) may have to rethink its premise entirely.

According to the Edge article, Rockstar set up a dedicated LA-based team of writers, directors and producers whose job was to make the pedestrians of Leonida, the game’s fictional take on Florida, feel individually realised.

In practice, this means NPCs have personality traits that shape how they react to you. These include their temperament and aggression, where they are, what they’ve seen and how you’ve treated them. Different districts even have their own demographic and professional mix.

Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, describes a process of constantly asking how people might behave. “Who’s going to be aggressive? How many people will go for a weapon? How many are going to test me?”

Why creatives should care

Not only is this making me even more excited to play the game – even more excited than this brilliant GTA/South Park tie-in or these saucy GTA ads – it also says a lot about where we are as a culture. At a time when much of the creative industry is looking for faster, cheaper ways to fill digital worlds, Rockstar has done the opposite. And the rewards, I feel, will be immense.

We all talk endlessly about games being "immersive". But a city doesn’t feel real because of its landmarks. It feels real because of the passer-by who takes offence to something at precisely the wrong moment.

As D&AD’s AI & Creativity Report put it this year, AI has raised the floor, but not the ceiling. GTA 6 looks like an attempt to raise the ceiling the hard way, and I simply can't wait.

The catch is, it ain't cheap. So for Amazon to trim it down, with the $1,999 configuration down to $1,839, is a big deal.

That’s a saving of $160, which is not nothing. So if you’ve been nursing an older MacBook, this is a great opportunity to upgrade.

The star of the show here is the M5 chip, which makes everything super-fast. It topped Geekbench’s single-core results when we tested it, and the GPU has also taken a big leap over the M4. If you're running a lot of demanding creative software then, this is the model for you.

Storage is quicker too, with the SSD now running at over 6,000MB/s, almost twice as fast as the previous generation. Finally, the 120Hz display offers excellent colour reproduction, and in our tests it covered 93% of the P3 gamut.

It’s not perfect. It has Thunderbolt 4 rather than Thunderbolt 5, and video and 3D pros may get more from a Windows machine with a dedicated Nvidia card. But for graphic designers, illustrators and photographers, it’s hard to beat. Read our full MacBook Pro M5 review for more.

“In the dark there are secrets and things to be explored,” he says as he explains his approach to the art and creature design you'll find in FLASK. “I see my work as a dark room, with a door slightly ajar at the end, where a little light comes in.”

That ajar door has made Mortensen a go-to name for the macabre. Now he’s opening it onto video games with FLASK, a dark fantasy roguelike deckbuilder from Chop Chop Games.

Inspired by Jim Henson’s 1986 cult classic Labyrinth and the thrash metal of Slayer, FLASK mixes gruesome fantasy, medieval imagery and black humour. Nightmarish creatures roam, magic is best handled with caution, and even a wizard has to worry about the mortgage on his tower.

For Mortensen, the leap meant taking his pen-and-paper illustrations digital, working with a team of artists to turn his monochrome creations into a playable world. That’s a big shift for an artist who has spent most of his career working solo across books, comics, animation, TV and exhibitions.

I caught up with Mortensen to talk about finding his visual identity, the music behind his monsters, and what it’s like to step into game development for the first time. And, of course, you can download FLASK on Steam this Halloween weekend (and beyond), and follow Mortensen on Instagram for more eerily good art.

Read the full Q&A with Mortensen below, and he's even shared a couple of new creatures coming to FLASK very soon.

Game marketing usually runs on slick trailers and carefully managed hype. A dog poo weapon demo inside a crudely animated cartoon is the opposite of that, but it works. The latest episode of South Park (or is it South America now?), ‘Guinea Pig on a Stick’, aired on 28 October and included around 20 seconds of previously unseen gameplay from the forthcoming open-world game, GTA 6.

The clip follows protagonists Jason and Lucia along a busy Vice City beach before switching to Jason, who spots a dog doing its business on the sand. The owner dutifully bags the mess, but Jason has other ideas. He throws something at the hapless dog walker, grabs the bag of poo and smacks the NPC round the face with it. Charming.

GTA 6 gameplay debuts in South Park episode

The visual clash is half the fun. South Park’s flat, cut-out look has barely changed in decades, and dropping a few seconds of Rockstar’s richly detailed, near-photoreal world into it makes the game’s fidelity stand out more than another polished trailer would. The footage is the real thing, too, with Rockstar Games credited in the closing credits.

From a branding point of view, it’s a refreshing move. GTA 6 is the biggest entertainment release of the year, if not the decade, and Rockstar could simply keep releasing bigger trailers and let the internet amplify them (having begun with an equally unique Netflix reveal). Instead, it’s placing the game inside a piece of pop culture that already has an audience, and a voice, of its own.

It’s in keeping with a campaign that has been playful from the start, from a neon logo that reads as a love letter to Vice City and box art that leans hard into PS2-era nostalgia to cheeky parody ads that blur reality and fiction on the streets of Miami.

Rockstar's new GTA 6 gameplay in South Park follows a trend

It also doesn’t feel like an ad. South Park has been referencing GTA 6 all season, so the appearance lands as a punchline rather than a paid slot. Both brands trade on irreverence and a willingness to go further than their rivals, so the tone matches. Nothing feels forced. That’s more than can be said for the brands trying to borrow the Vice City look, from Burger King to Shrek. Rockstar keeps official tie-ups tightly controlled, and the Miami Heat’s Vice City merchandise is a rare example.

There’s a nice bit of brand history here, too. The narrator of the gameplay footage is voiced by Tish Hicks, who also provided the voiceover for GTA 5’s official gameplay video back in 2013. It’s a small touch, but it’s the kind of consistency that makes a brand feel coherent over time, and longtime fans will spot it.

What I like most is that Rockstar is letting a comedy show poke fun at one of its biggest selling points: the extraordinary detail of its worlds. That apparently includes weaponising dog mess.

With GTA 6 due on 19 November, there’s still time for more surprises. If this is the template, I’d take it over another dozen predictable cinematic trailers.

Pre-order GTA 6 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S:

But such an eccentric story needs immersive production design to match – that's where Christopher Glass comes in. To understand the meticulous practical effects process behind I Love Boosters and more, I sat down with Christopher to uncover the intricate artistry of production design and the evolution of the industry.

When there is work, it tends to be less creative and completely risk-averse. There is a focus on collecting libraries of “content” versus actually having an interest in making great films, TV shows or commercials. That’s why movies like “I Love Boosters” and what NEON and A24 are doing is much needed today.

In an ideal world, film companies would break away from these monstrous corporations and return to smaller autonomous studios, run by people who truly care about telling unique and compelling stories.

We used miniatures on “I Love Boosters” in a different way. Almost the entire third act is a combination of full-scale and 1/6th and 1/12th scale miniatures. We have stop-motion characters running across moving vehicles, down streets and alleys. It was an intentional choice for the handmade look.

In fact, when we were shooting, our Director Boots Riley thought some of the miniature shots started looking too real and told the folks at Blind Beagle FX (the miniature company run by Christopher Warren) to make them look more “miniature.”

One time Spike asked me to move the coffee table about 4 inches in one direction. I had to explain to him that the metal table, with a spring-loaded stretching magazine was attached to the stretching rug, and both were bolted into moving tracks underneath the floor connected to levers hidden just out of view of the perpendicularly moving walls at the end of the room… So it wouldn’t be easy.

Everything in that set depended on precise placement, choreography and movement. Every pattern and texture of fabric had to be precisely made and printed to achieve the “pixel” stretching effect throughout. The umbrella on a stand, a bike and a lamp had to be meticulously sculpted to be extruded by movement.

The large moving wall actually hovered on air bearings and was timed to the music. The hallway was made of ribbons stretched with so much tension, it bent the original steel frame and had to be rebuilt before shooting. The list goes on and on. Nothing was easy about that project. I thought it was the end of my career, and it was all going to go down in flames. But to my pleasant surprise, we won a Gold Cannes Lion for Film Craft.

Coming in close second for most difficult was “I Love Boosters!”

Discover more about Christopher Glass.

From its trend-defying product design to its slick campaigns, Nothing oozes style in an effortless way that many brands will spend an eternity trying to capture. Sometimes it's not about competing for the best adverts or the swankiest product launches, but building something authentic.

Nothing has been on my radar for a while, particularly after it employed 365 party girl Charli XCX to promote its Headphone model. Nothing came out swinging, announcing Charli as its first Global Brand Ambassador, marking a distinct finger on the pulse of pop culture. With a Midas touch for all things cool, getting the BRAT composer to be the face of its brand was an instant boost in social clout.

But Nothing doesn't just embrace this party lifestyle as a fleeting trend. The return of its Club Nothing (R) initiative sees the brand support grassroots music scenes, underground parties, and alternative sound experiences with a $40,000 grant. This year's winners, Black Bass Collective, Oroko Radio, Whorechata and Signal, represent a diverse array of independent music culture, providing a much-needed boost for the struggling and uncertain status of the live music scene.

In short, Nothing's 'cool' image isn't just performative; it's productive. Often, brand philanthropy can come across as virtue signalling, but Nothing knows its place in culture and is actively helping to improve the industry that supports it. Being cool is much more than getting the latest trending celeb to rep your tech – it's about living and breathing community.

For more Nothing news, check out why Nothing designs its phones “like logos” or take a look at why the Nothing Phone (4b) makes no sense, but we still love it.

One moment early in his career led to one of Patrick Stewart's most inspirational quotes. Near the end of his time at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, his director Duncan Ross hauled him in for a dressing-down: Stewart was holding back, and it showed on stage. Ross’s advice stuck with him for years, when he was told: "You will never achieve success by insuring against failure".

As reported by Broadway World, Patrick Stewart repeated that advice over the years, and it’s easy to see yourself in it. We all have a go-to subject, a favourite brush, a style we know will land. And when a sketch starts heading somewhere odd, it’s tempting to bin it and start again. Play it safe long enough, though, and you end up making the same piece on repeat.

So next time you’re facing a blank canvas, try the thing you’re not sure about. It might flop. It might also give you something you’d never have found by sticking to what works.

The Star Trek and Marvel Cinematic Universe art books you need: