The next Blender update will let users import 3D Gaussian Splats from PLY and SPZ files. Though there's no export yet, users can render splats using Blender's engines (if you need a system that keep up, see our guide to the best laptops for 3D modelling).

Gaussian splatting is a relatively recent approach to 3D that allows artists and designers to recreate real-world objects and environments as photorealistic, interactive 3D scenes from a collection of ordinary photos or videos. Unlike traditional 3D models made of rigid geometric triangles and polygons, a splat is made of millions of tiny, overlapping 3D coloured blobs that store information about its position, size, shape, color, and transparency.

Until now, the only way to work with Gaussian splats in Blender has been via external tools like Brush or COLMAP and importing the resulting .ply files using specialised add-ons. Blender 5.3 adds native import and allows rendering via Workbench, EEVEE, and Cycles.

Check out the examples from CGMatter on YouTube above, and from VFX artist Jason Key on X below.

The release notes mention four limitations for now. Performance is not ideal, the pipeline assumes sRGB color space, and areas of low opacity/high radiance can render incorrectly as Cycles and EEVEE operate in linear space. Also, Apply Transform on a Gaussian splat does not work correctly as it does not yet handle the new scale, rotation and spherical harmonics attributes.

Also see how Chaos has solved the problem of relighting Gaussian Splats.

The classic LAMY Safari has been admired for decades for its good looks – and for its fantastic price. And right now, it's now even more attractive, reduced by almost $10 to just $27.22 at Amazon for a limited time.

LAMY produces high-quality, German-engineered pens known for their minimalist Bauhaus-inspired design, ergonomic grips, and reliable performance. The Safari is one of its most famous designs (if you're looking for a pen for drawing rather than writing, also see our reviews of the best pens for artists).

A beautiful pen at a beautiful price

If our coverage of beautiful pens has proven anything over the years, it's that pen prices can vary wildly. But you don't have to pay hundreds or even thousands for a Montblanc or Tibaldi to get an iconic fountain pen that adds a touch of class and mindful tactility to everday writing.

The Lamy Safari is popular because it combines rugged durability, an ergonomic design, and reliable writing performance at an affordable entry-level price Made from tough ABS, the same material used in Lego bricks, the body is lightweight and impact-resistant, designed to survive daily abuse in a backpack or pencil case.

The molded triangular grip encourages a proper tripod finger position, making it comfortable for long writing sessions. The stainless-steel nibs can be swapped out in seconds, accommodating different line widths or left-handed writers, and the pen writes smoothly right out of the box with a consistent ink flow. It's clear to me why it's been the benchmark for starter fountain pens since it made its debut at the Frankfurt Fair in 1980.

In Us, in case you didn't know, is a co-op horror game from Engawa Games, an independent Japanese game development studio previously known for its chaotic co-op game Parking Together!.

The multiplayer survival horror title follows a team of exorcists around a village corrupted by demons. Players work together to spot which villagers are secretly monsters in disguise, then exorcise them before things turn nasty.

It all sounds like the sort of game I'd love: part social deduction, part tense atmospheric horror, built for playing with friends.

Better still, it dropped with some deliciously eerie, atmospheric key art. A stained-glass window, candlelight, a robed figure, a gun-toting exorcist crow in a fedora. There's a lot of skill and imagination on show here, and Engawa Games certainly deserved for their new release to go viral. But unfortunately, it did so for all the wrong reasons.

In case the image at the top of this page hasn't loaded, the problem is with the stylised lettering of the title: "In us" looks far more like "Anus". As DualShockers spotted, the effect is unmistakable once you see it, and impossible to unsee afterwards.

Why did it happen?

This isn't the first typographic fail we've seen, and why, you might wonder, does it happen? My guess is that, most of the time, it's a symptom of designers spending hours staring at a logo up close, at high resolution, usually on a big screen. After a while, you stop seeing the letters as letters and start seeing them as shapes to be balanced.

Basically, once you really start digging into the details, your brain stops seeing the big picture. Which – unlikely as it seems – means it's easy to miss what a word looks like to someone glancing at it cold; at thumbnail size, on a phone, for half a second. Stylised display type only makes it worse.

It's all reminiscent of the "Invisible Gorilla" experiment created by researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons to show that people who are focused on one thing can easily overlook something else. To demonstrate this effect, they created a video of students passing a basketball among each other.

Viewers of the video were asked to count the number of times the players with the white shirts passed the ball. As result, many of them failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit appearing in the centre of the image. And I'll admit it, when I saw the video for the first time, I made that exact mistake myself. (Something my wife, who doesn't miss a trick, will never let me live down.)

I wasn't too surprised, because I'd already spent over 20 years working in print magazines. During which time, I would sometimes fail to spot a massive typo on the cover design we were working on until I'd seen it at least 30 times, because I'd be so obsessed with getting other aspects of the design nailed.

Sometimes (whisper it) these covers actually got printed with a typo - despite having been approved by a dozen other people up the publishing chain. Thankfully none of those errors related to embarrassing body parts. But as the saying goes: there by the grace of God go I.

In other words, enjoying mocking Engawa Games for their typography fail today. But prepare for tomorrow, because it could be your turn next. And watch out for that gorilla!

For accomplished character designer Hugo Richard, one such moment occurred when he finally hit upon a process for creating images that resonated with him, after years of searching.

“One day I noticed an artist making a super rendered piece starting from incredibly detailed line work and flat colours,” he says. The technique suited Hugo immediately. “With flat colours, I learned how to control mood through saturation and temperature,” he tells us.

When a friend noticed how important line work was to Hugo, he suggested he give it greater emphasis in his work. To develop this ability he turned to the work of Charles Bargue. “I was truly impressed by how he was able to distribute weight just with simple lines, and to control the thickness of the line to show volume without any shading,” he says.

Another step forward took place when he discovered a classic art book published in the 1950s, Drawing the Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis. “At the time I had a basic understanding of building structure, but I didn’t realise I could build a face in geometric forms,” Hugo remembers. The book taught him fundamental art techniques related to volume. “It was my first confidence boost in trying to approach light and shadow from a geometrical perspective.”

Adding to the mix

Illustrator Serena Malyon found that mixed media was key to her evolution as an artist. “When I realised that I didn’t have to be a watercolour purist, and that I could combine different mediums to create the look I wanted, I started making some really weird and unique artwork,” she says.

“I handle colour most easily in watercolour, so I do a base painting in that medium. Then I go over it with either traditional acryla gouache, or digital paint to refine it and fix mistakes. Allowing myself not to be a watercolour/media purist has given me permission to have a lot of fun and experiment in my work. I’ve found a way of working that feels the most authentic to me.”

Art director and visual development artist Caroline Vos discovered a whole new way of working when creative director Bobby Chiu told her that he uses his Navigator tool in Photoshop as a thumbnail for his art, to see if it’s working at a smaller scale. “I built on the idea and started creating many small thumbnails on a single canvas,” she reveals.

“It was a massive game-changer for working fast; not allowing myself to get bogged down in details, fleshing out compositions that worked; finding the big shapes and giving myself multiple options to choose from; as well as bagging some nice compositions for future ideas. The beauty of it is that you can resolve big issues fast and then increase the selected thumbnail to canvas size, knowing that the bones of the artwork are in place and working.”

A simple tool that made a big difference to Caroline is a physical artists’ colour wheel. “It’s a little cardboard wheel with values and complementary schemes set up as sliding layers,” she says. “I always use the wheel to establish the basis of my colour scheme and try not to deviate from it, rather than winging it and wondering what feels off.”

Gokcen Yuksek, who paints in oils and works as a digital sculptor, tells us that her work took a step forward when she realised during a life drawing class that she didn’t have to force herself to use a style that she struggled with; it was okay to use a style that came more naturally to her.

“It made me understand the difference between challenging myself to improve and forcing myself into a style that wasn’t really mine,” she says. “Once I started drawing and painting in a way that felt authentic, improving became much easier.”

She tells us that her workflow has completely changed over the years. “I used to paint directly onto the canvas in fine detail from the start. Now I build paintings gradually through layers and underpainting. I think the difference was that I started to be more patient, stopped worrying about the speed and the final result and started playing around with transparency, effects and process basically having more fun with it.”

After noticing several periods of stagnation when his art stayed the same for a long time, concept artist and illustrator Hardy Fowler realised that “if your art isn’t changing, it isn’t growing”.

He explains: “When something starts to feel like it’s working, there is a tendency to take our foot off of the gas – to slow down and even stop growing. I have learned to fight that instinct. Even when things are feeling good, I try to be in a constant state of change. “I try to add a new technique, workflow, brush or colour palette to my work at least once a year. It’s uncomfortable and difficult, but I always end up learning something new and my work is forever sorted into before and after that new spin occurred.”

Setting the scene

Fine artist Hope Doe tells us that she learned how values work from a theatre production when she was at college. “I didn’t know just how important it was to organise values to make a detailed mess readable. But something clicked while watching a play.”

Hope noticed that the stage used foreground cutouts and a background painting to set the scene, with actors and props in the middle. “The movement and action were lit up the most, while the background was secondary and the foreground often appeared darker,” she says. In this moment, she understood clearly how lighting can be used to guide the viewer’s eye, and began to apply the technique in her paintings.

Mumbai-based watercolour artist Sucharita Suri creates whimsical art inspired by nature, folklore and myth. A big realisation was how much her assumptions about her own abilities constrained her art practice. When she challenged those assumptions and pushed herself to explore elements that she had dismissed, everything changed.

“Don’t mistake a current limitation for a permanent one,” she advises. “The moment I stopped defining myself by what I couldn’t do and started focusing on what I was willing to learn, my creative world expanded dramatically.”

Sucharita also stresses the importance of understanding the power of mindset for creative growth.

"Today, I am best known for my whimsical animals, but there was a time when animals were largely absent from my work. Despite decades of working as a creative professional, I carried an unexamined belief that painting animals was not one of my strengths. An early unsuccessful attempt had silently become a limitation I accepted as fact.

The breakthrough came when she recognised that experience does not automatically free us from creative assumptions.

“Once I stopped treating that belief as truth and approached the subject with curiosity rather than judgement, an entirely new body of work began to emerge. The animals I had avoided became the very subjects through which I found my most distinctive visual voice. ”

A similar shift happened with watercolour, which Sucharita had previously dismissed after a few disappointing experiences. Returning to it later, I realised the issue had never been the medium itself.

“I had mistaken unfamiliarity for inability. Approaching watercolour with patience and openness revealed possibilities I had overlooked, and it has since become central to my artistic practice. That shift taught me a lesson that continues to shape my practice: creative growth often happens on the other side of discomfort. Many of the limitations we face as artists are not technical limitations but self-imposed ones”.

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

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The best logos often tell a story with design alone, and Gerwig's Narnia logo is no different. Bright, whimsical, and bursting with character, the design proves that reinventing a classic can work best when you bravely stray from tradition.

The new Narnia: The Magician's Nephew logo features a contemporary take on the classic serif font of the books and 2005 film series. With swooping letterforms and rounded edges, it has a distinctly childlike wonder that creates a warmth compared to the previous archaic serif design.

A burst of light emerges from the centre of the design, pooling out into purple, orange and blue hues that radiate a magical energy, while the simplicity of the black background allows each beam of light to shine.

Despite the refreshed look, the logo proved divisive for some. " It’s more Tron than Narnia," one X user wrote, while another chimed in, "Even the title looks woke...we just can't have nice things." It wasn't all doom and gloom, as others seemed intrigued by the director's take, with one fan writing, "Greta Gerwig’s vision is already looking magical!" while another added, "There’s something about seeing Narnia through Gerwig’s style that just feels exciting."

For more film news, check out Laika's stunning Wildwood trailer or take a look at how the new Digger poster strikes graphic design gold.

Some people writing on X have even called the movie a "satanic inversion" of Disney's classic because it presents the traditionally evil stepsisters as misunderstood. But are creative reimaginings what fairy tale tradition is all about?

Soundtracked by Charli XCX’s Mean Girls, the Steps teaser above provides our first taste of what to expect from the movie. Billed as loose satirical, musical comedy take on Cinderella, it's being produced by Netflix Animation Studios with Amy Poehler’s Paper Kite Productions.

It's directed by Student Academy Awards gold medal winner Alyce Tzue (Student Academy Awards and John Ripa, co-director of Raya and the Last Dragon. Stars include Ali Wong, Amanda Seyfried, Stephanie Hsu, Daniel Radcliffe and Bette Midler,

Critics argue that the comedic approach risks trivialises a classic fairy tale by turning it into a parody. Many are particularly upset about the characterisation of Cinderella’s “evil” stepsisters, now named Lilith and Margot, as kind-hearted but misunderstood,

"You guys are destroying childhood memories with this one," one person writes on X. "Coming soon, a Netflix series about how Buffalo Bill was just misunderstood.?" someone else predicts.

"Peak wokeness. Invert reality. Good is evil and evil is good," another person writes.

Of course, even the smallest tweaks to a much-loved story can cause controversy. Just look at the reaction to the new Harry Potter logos.

But let's remember that the "reality" of Disney's 1950 Cinderella involved talking animals, a fairy godmother and a pumpkin that turns into a carriage, And that fairy tales have naturally always been subject to flux due to their inheritance from oral tradition. There is no definitive version.

The original Cinderella story is far older than Disney with roots in ancient Greece, Egypt, and China. Disney largely followed Charles Perrault’s 1697 French version, Cendrillon, but it softened some of the darker elements and it changed how the story ends for the step sisters leaving things hanging whereas Perrault had Cinderella forgive them and marries them off. Disney did actually make two direct-to-video Cinderella sequels that give one sister, Anastasia, a redemption arc.

Other versions of Cinderella were much darker. In an earlier Italian version, Giambattista Basile's La Gatta Cenerentola, the heroine kills her first stepmother. In the Brothers Grimm's version, Aschenputtel dated to 1812, the stepsisters slice off their own toes to try to fit the slipper and end up having their eyes pecked out by birds.

In short, Cinderella has been retold countless times. By flipping the perspective, Netflix can differentiate Steps from previous adaptations and possibly find something new to say with it.

Modern audiences have actually responded well to narratives that humanise “villains.” Just looked at Wicked and Maleficent. There's an appetite for stories that question moral binaries.

By recasting the sisters as complex characters, Netflix challenges outdated tropes and opens space for more nuanced storytelling. Whether it takes full advantage of that space remains to be seen.

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Yesterday, the football club Oxford United launched a range of sportswear that it called the Campus Collection. It pulled the drop within just a few hours after people on social media immediately noticed an unintended link to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US. The club has apologised, but some of its supporters don't see the issue.

The Oxford United clothing designs featured text that read 'United 93' presented in the style of player numbers on football shirts. 'United' is part of the club's name, and the number was a reference to 1893, the year the club was founded.

The problem is that United 93 was one of four flights hijacked by al-Qaida on 11 September 2001. The plane crashed after passengers challenged the terrorists,

An English League one football club might not be expected to consider all potential connotations of that combination of name and number, but United 93 became particularly well known after being brought to the screen in a movie of the same name.

The debacle was made worse by the US-inspired style of the clothing designs, which seems kind of strange for an English football club. Oxford United had described the collection as “inspired by the style and culture of American sports."

What's more incredible is that it seems they were so close to realising that there could be a controversy. The club reportedly planned to launch the collection a week earlier on 11 September but delayed it due to concerns over the sensitivity of the date. If they had waited longer, there's a chance the designs wouldn't have drawn so much attention, but still nobody realised the potential misinterpretation of the slogan.

“The range was released without understanding of the historical context and associations”, the club said in an apology posted on social media “It should not have reached the point of sale and we take full responsibility for not undertaking proper due diligence.

“We have removed the collection with immediate effect and are reviewing our approval processes to ensure nothing like this happens again. Once again, we would like to put on record our sincere apologies for this error and any offence caused.”

Some Oxford United fans see the design blunder was unforgivable. One person wrote on the club's forum that it was a “monumental cock-up that I would expect to be sacked for if I’d signed off on it”.

However, others are defending the club. "Not everything revolves around America," one person writes on X.

"Class jersey, class idea. Literally zero to apologise for. Next Porsche will apologise for their 911," someone else wrote, referring to the German carmaker's iconic sports car.

What do you think? Was it necessary for a small English football club to consider the global connotations of its merchandise design?

While some of the best 3D printers can be complex, we rate this as a great setup for beginners, hobbyists and pro creators alike. There are also deals on larger machines and Anycubic's top resin printers too, and there are discounts on materials and other supplies. You can claim a pack of vouchers for additional savings if you subscribe to the Anycubic newsletter.

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New York's Manhattan has been rendered as a virtual game world almost as much as it's been beset by world-ending threats on the big screen, so you might think you know what you're in for with Control Resonant. It's then to Remedy's credit that the studio has created an apocalyptic event for the city so unlike anything you've ever seen.

Whereas its predecessor, Control, was set completely within The Oldest House, a brutalist Manhattan skyscraper with impossible Escher-esque interiors that serves as the headquarters of the clandestine government agency The Federal Bureau of Control, Resonant sees that game's paranatural threat, The Hiss, spilling out and warping the city into a twisted version of itself. In another twist, the sequel sees you switching from the now MIA Jesse Faden to her troubled brother Dylan, who had spent most of the first game in captivity as a victim of the FBC's inhumane experiments.

With a new protagonist and an expanded setting, Control Resonant morphs into a different, more ambitious beast of a game than its predecessor, all while building on its uniquely New Weird aesthetic. I've seen my share of apocalyptic virtual cities, but the unsettling sight of dead floating bodies, streets suddenly shifting upwards, or skyscrapers refracting into nothing is quite unlike anything else, while an even stranger phenomenon called 'patterning' might be the logical conclusion of genAI hallucinating a form into multiple uncanny versions of itself.

Control Resonant is a new weird beauty

That weirdness is balanced by the mundane details also well realised in Manhattan, like being able to peer into apartment windows and still make out things like lighting fixtures and radiators, while there's fun to be had just observing the fake billboards and flipping advertising panels around town. Visually, it's the most ambitious of Remedy's games made with its proprietary Northlight Engine, which also fully incorporates path tracing for its environments. With my capable but modest rig, I actually prioritised performance and turned off ray tracing, yet still marvelled at how the game's atmospheric art direction of ominously lit rooms and reflective surfaces remained largely intact.

When outside, however, you're often not stopping to gawp as Dylan's traversal abilities, most unlocked almost out the gate, mean that you'll always want to be on the move, where you go from bounding across the city with elevated jumps and air-dashes to shifting gravity.

Alas, this isn't an open-world Manhattan like Marvel's Spider-Man. Despite being able to double-jump (triple-jump if you counter-hold the jump once to get an elevated boost that you can also glide a long distance for) and air-dash twice, a lot of the level architecture has been designed to be out of reach, while the city's been carved up into zones sectioned with high-walled gates that don't happen to be accessible from that side. In its most confounding way to keep you from finding your own game-breaking path, you can see the outside stairways that are a prominent feature of New York apartment buildings, but you can't use them as ledges.

This Manhattan is more of an outdoor maze, and you'll also navigate underground or into buildings, including revisiting The Oldest House. I don't totally mind this, if only it did a better job of signposting. I appreciate that Remedy doesn't lean on the modern crutches of yellow paint or waypoints directing your every move, but there were also a lot of times where I was just running around in circles (both indoors and outside), which naturally only gets more complicated later on when you're traversing impossible spaces that flout the rules of reality. This was one of my key gripes with Control, and even with a map this time, it's annoying that the same issues rear their heads again on a larger scale.

I was at least more receptive to Control Resonant changing up combat, shifting from shooter to melee, with the mysterious shape-shifting Aberrant Dylan wields opening up different playstyles. I first gravitated toward the wide-ranging scythe, though I also had the freedom to switch to another weapon style, like the swifter twin blades, which also have a higher chance of landing critical hits. Complementing this are cooldown-based combat abilities you gain when you defeat huge bosses known as Resonants and inherit their powers Mega Man-style (though you'll have to choose one of two), such as a shield or projectile attacks; my personal favourite is an area-of-effect ground pound best used on enemy crowds. The icing on the cake is that you unlock and customise these skills not through a menu, but by entering Dylan's stark, abstract mind palace, called The Gap, where you can also access an astral arena to test your new toys and tricks.

You really do need to use all your skills, as you're constantly swamped by Hiss from all directions. Their designs are also an improvement over Control, with much more visible variety, from spherical types that heal nearby enemies to one that's possessed a bus, while an even deadlier enemy variation emerges later in the story to keep you on your toes. There's almost a bit of Devil May Cry to this, with an emphasis on air combos and a camera that's further back to keep you aware of your surroundings, and I'm relieved to be playing an action RPG that doesn't involve parrying for once.

It's then just a shame that a lot of the time the enemies you're fighting are so very spongy, where you're having to mash the buttons a lot more than you think before they're eviscerated. And you're rarely able to pull off combo finishers because you're constantly dodging more enemies approaching you, or worse, the ones out of your periphery firing projectiles at you. Even with all the powers you're unlocking, I often felt like I wasn't getting more powerful since each zone also levels up, spawning even tougher (read: spongier) enemies.

The saving grace is Remedy's generous suite of accessibility options, where you do have the freedom to argue against its intended difficulty, and adjust damage dealt or received, even toggle on one-hit kills if you want to feel like a paranatural god. Better yet, you can make these adjustments while still earning the relevant achievements. Yet even when I did give in and experiment with these options, I still felt like the wave of spongey enemy encounters felt excessive, and question the design wisdom of equating difficulty with protracted encounters and longer grinds.

Ultimately, Control Resonant's strongest when it just lets you go off and experience its weird world, which might include reality-bending puzzles or taking a taxi to another dimension. Remedy's knack for storytelling through a mix of media is again on display, from its many needle drops (surprisingly from a bespoke original soundtrack) to the integration of live-action performances including Matthew Porretta reprising his role as the FBC's eccentric researcher Casper Darling. Nothing may quite reach the audacious highs of Control's Ashtray Maze or Alan Wake's 2 musical number, but a lengthy flashback that plays out as a 16-bit pixel art RPG like Earthbound is a heck of a curveball.

Even if not everything here works for me gameplay-wise, Control Resonant is nonetheless a return to form for Remedy after the mixed reception of FBC: Firebreak, showing that the studio's capacity for mind and reality-bending world-building hasn't faltered.

He was 20 the first time he met a producer, and he remembers trying to extract every scrap of knowledge from the conversation, because he'd spent his entire life up to that point without access to anyone who could open a door for him. That experience left him with a lasting frustration: that being a great storyteller has so often required moving to LA, begging for permission, raising money, and hoping someone lets you make your film. Concentrate that much control over who gets to tell stories, he believes, and you're not far from propaganda.

Todorovic is co-founder of Flow Studio, the AI filmmaking company partnered with Autodesk, and he talks about generative tools less like a technologist and more like someone settling an old score.

AI can fix a broken film industry

He likes to point out how strange the industry's economics have become. He remembers walking through San Francisco with his co-founder, comparing notes on film budgets against the buildings around them – a hospital costs roughly $20 million to build, he tells me, while a film can cost ten times that and still flop in a weekend. "Absolutely insane," he calls it, evidence, in his view, of an industry whose economics have come detached from any reasonable connection to what things cost to make. He compares it to Spielberg's ET, made for around $4 million and considered a major production at the time, versus the $300 million now routinely spent on a streaming film.

Against this broken system, Todorovic sees AI tools in filmmaking, such as Flow Studio’s 3D Editor + Canvas or MotionMaker in Maya, as a way to rebel, to reset and find a new way of doing things, with new filmmakers able to find their voice. He explains his context: at the start of the 20th century, Thomas Edison's company held a monopoly on motion picture cameras and on the Nickelodeon theatres where films were shown – "because they literally cost a nickel to watch". If you wanted to make or screen a film, you paid Edison a license fee. A generation of directors and producers, tired of the arrangement, looked for somewhere to escape it, and found a small farm town in California.

"They moved there because they were like, 'okay, I can shoot on a beach, I can shoot in the US'," Todorovic explains. "But most importantly, it took forever to come by train across the country. By the time the lawyers came to shut down the production, they were already done. And the California judges were much more lenient." The first Hollywood studios, in other words, were founded by indie producers fleeing a monopoly on storytelling.

"I always found that so fascinating," he says, "because it's kind of history repeating itself, always." The indies who built Hollywood to escape one monopoly eventually built their own – first over distribution, once they owned the theatres, then over production, once budgets climbed into the hundreds of millions. Streaming broke the distribution monopoly. Todorovic thinks AI is about to break the production one.

"What I think is going to happen now – we're going to cut production costs from hundreds of millions of dollars," he says. "Honestly, we can cut it by 95, 99%."

Speaking as a former VFX artist…

Todorovic doesn't pretend the ending is a utopia. "When that happens, there's going to be so much content that it's going to be all about discovery," he says. "This is where I think studios will still dominate, because they're going to have marketing dollars." He reaches for the Spotify comparison: anyone can make an album in a bedroom now, and almost nobody hears it, because the bottleneck didn't disappear; it just moved further downstream.

During our conversation, the prospect of, and scale of, a potential Anthropic IPO comes up – because America is obsessed right now – what it could mean for San Francisco, then pivots, in the same breath, to the fact that the film industry has never had an equivalent moment for the people at the bottom of a call sheet – "no stock, no upside, just the next job if you're lucky", he adds.

For Todorovic, VFX artists and artists below the line in general "get hit the hardest." Blamed if a film fails – poor VFX – and rarely credited for a success, the way a director is. He's speaking from experience: Todorovic began his career as a VFX artist and compositor, and says he arrived expecting real creative input and found mostly what he calls grunt work, matching someone else's instructions to the pixel.

He's still visibly frustrated by productions that publicise how little CGI they used as a selling point, while the several hundred VFX artists who spent months working long hours on the film go unmentioned. To him, that's not a badge of authenticity; instead, it's several hundred people's work being erased for a marketing line. He says these are people who already absorbed the pandemic and a strike before AI arrived as a third hit, and the anger toward AI makes sense to him, even though, as he puts it, the technology itself had nothing to do with any of that.

It's okay to be angry about AI

He's not trying to talk anyone out of being angry. He just doesn't think it changes the outcome, because he's watched this fight before. The film industry, he points out, exists downstream of a technological upheaval itself – starting with the invention of the camera. Sound was fought as the death of "real" film. A Disney studio head is said to have waved off the idea of 3D animation when John Lasseter pitched the tech, reportedly asking why he'd bother if it cost the same as what he already had. The iPhone-shot indie film Tangerine drew scepticism for using a phone camera; Todorovic says that within a few minutes of watching it, he'd forgotten how it was shot and simply cared whether the story worked.

Every technological leap in this industry has met resistance before settling in, he suggests, whether it's cameras, sound, computer animation, or now AI filmmaking tools.

If he's right that studios end up dominating the discovery layer the way they once dominated the theatres, because marketing budgets, not production budgets, become the scarce resource, then that's not a new problem AI has created. It's the same cycle finding its next foothold: indies break a monopoly, then build one of their own, and someone eventually escapes that one too.

The question Todorovic can't answer is how long this round lasts before the next Hollywood shows up. Asked when the field settles into a new monopoly, because on his own telling it always has before, he doesn't offer a year, a milestone, or a hedge dressed up as an answer. "We just don't know when that is yet," he says, and leaves it there, but after speaking with Todorovic, one thing is clear: he believes AI will open the door to new filmmakers and, importantly, new stories.

Take a look at Flow Studio on the Autodesk blog.

Many people don't realise that Cricut machines aren't limited to vinyl cutting. You can create all kinds of things from custom clothes to home decor, engraved pieces and embossed invitations for premium wedding stationery. The company's heat presses can be used with iron-on vinyl (HTV), Infusible Ink, sublimation and direct-to-film (DTF) transfer to press custom designs onto clothing, fabric, ceramics and wood and more.

You can use them with a wide range of materials, but Cricut sells a wide range of dedicated supplies specifically made to work perfectly with its machines. Here's a selection of what you can find in the sale.

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Cricut sale deals: US

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There are a fair few rivals to Cricut's craft machines, but two in particular stand out. First there's Silhouette, a US company that produces machines that match up to Cricut in most categories. Secondly, HTVRONT offers a broad range of accessories, such as cutting mats, as well as materials like vinyl for crafters that aren't unlike Cricut's official products for a bit less.

Our guide to the best Cricut Alternatives has all the details you need on shopping elsewhere, or take a look at our guide to the best Silhouette machines for more details.

While many modern third-person survival horror games pay a debt to Resident Evil or Silent Hill (the latter's composer Akira Yamaoka is incidentally Red Nun's Legacy's composer), the original game Remothered: Tormented Fathers was actually designed as a spiritual successor to the cult classic Clock Tower series, and which actually preceded the first Resident Evil. That game was in fact inspired by the 'giallo' films of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento, which felt especially serendipitous for the Italian studio.

Even the series' story is set in Sicily where the studio is based, although for Red Nun's Legacy, director Antonio Cutrona says that the team has decided to lean in on this explicitly.

"Our location scouting included just around our offices," he tells me. "The main villa [for the game's setting] is actually from an abandoned villa in the Etna area." Cutrona's referring to Mount Etna, a volcano on Siciliy's east coast that's still very active. While as a horror, most of the action is indoors, he promises the final game includes exterior locations where Etna is visible.

However, when I got a chance to try Red Nun's Legacy at Gamescom, what stood out to me was the attention-to-detail of its interiors. As new protagonist Susan, you wake up inside a mysterious villa, which follows the survival horror tradition of finding locked doors and unusual puzzles from objects and environments that seem to exist from another time and place.

But while locations in horror games tend to be decayed and decrepit, I found myself marvelling at this villa's ornate environmental design, from the beautiful mosaics decorating the baths to tables with colourful ornaments that would be easy to mistake as interactable objects.

Much of this detail has been made possible with the series' upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 and its Lumen and Nanite technologies. It's also with this powerful engine that Stormind has had the expertise and capacity to work on other AAA projects like Mafia: The Old Country.

Arguably, the secret sauce is that, while classic survival horror had come from Japanese developers' second-hand interpretations of Western settings and aesthetics, Stormind's team has been able to take in a rich array of references from its own culture and history in Sicily.

"This is about staying true to the Sicilian aspect of it, and believe it or not, we have many colours in our villas and architecture," Cutrona explains. "We didn't stick with a particular century or period for our cultural references - you can see things from the Roman times, the Greek times, the Baroque and Renaissance periods. We basically took what was important to us and tried to reference it everywhere.

"Having that kind of reference allows us to set us apart from other kinds of games. As Sicilian developers, we can do something that is truly our own and not the same story."

That said, there are still some outside influences. Of particular note are the Novices, masked enemies dressed in nun's habits that stalk Susan, who move in an uncanny fashion that was inspired by Butoh, a form of avant-garde Japanese dance theatre - serendipitously, there's also a Butoh organisation based in Sicily.

"One of Butoh's core principles is that nature itself is controlling you, which transfers to our idea of how [the Novices] move and behave," "The Novices undergo hypnosis, so when they speak to you they're actually saying things not relevant to Susan," Cutrona explains. "One of Butoh's core principles is that nature itself is controlling you, so that also transferred to our idea of how [Novices] would move and behave."

For any original IP, it's important for it to have its own unique imagery and motifs so that it's not just an imitation of something established. For the Remothered series, that has been its themes of hypnosis and trauma, also reflected in the metronomes that act as save points, as well as the titular Red Nun whose large cornette is decorated with an ominous red mask resembling a moth, also symbolic of the mind.

"They're all tied up to the concept of hypnosis, which is the mythos of the series," Cutrona concludes. "Harry Potter has magic, Lord of the Rings has elves. Remothered is all about hypnosis and trauma, and since the first game, it's how we have expanded the series."

Remothered: Red Nun's Legacy releases for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2 on October 27, and you can wishlist on Steam.

The new Dyson CameraJet is, according to the Singapore-based vacuum cleaner company, the world's only toothbrush with a camera (we're presumably not counting any that may have been made by the KGB or MI6). This revolutionary tech is, presumably, intended to have some benefits for oral health, but one creative on Instagram has found another use for it that's as silly as the device itself: they're using a Dyson CameraJet for street photography.

Apple will be trembling, because who needs a camera phone with a mechanical variable aperture when you have a toothbrush that can take shots like this?

All Gear No Skill regularly shares tips on hardware and editing on Instagram. While the $499 Dyson CameraJet doesn't allow for native image recording on device, the photographer used it as a camera by simply taking screenshots via the accompanying MyDyson app.

The result is a series of sometimes dreamy and sometimes elegiac urban scenes distorted by the camera's fisheye lens, with unpredictable colours and an almost infrared look at times. I'm looking forward to Dyson's 'Shot on a toothbrush' campaign.

What's the camera on the Dyson CameraJet toothbrush actually for? For influencers who want to film their morning routine, I guess. How else are they going to share their brush technique with followers? Or maybe its for Meta Glasses fans who want to perv on their guests when they go to the bathroom?

I don't know, but it exists and it's currently sold out in the US and UK.

For an illustrator famous for inventing an entire world, James Gurney has a surprisingly strong attachment to reality; we saw that when he shared easy-to-learn art tips for turning the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Gurney is best known for Dinotopia, his richly imagined series of paintings and books about a lost civilisation where humans and dinosaurs live side by side, but look closely and you start to see how much real-world observation holds all that invention together. Gurney studies things, properly studies them, and that habit feeds directly back into the worlds he creates.

In an interview about his book Color and Light, Gurney explained that working from imagination and working from observation were “indispensable to each other”. He couldn't spend too long painting from imagination without going outside and looking at the real world again, but equally, he never wanted to become someone who only painted what was in front of him.

I feel like that advice is relevant to anyone making art now, when reference is everywhere, and it's incredibly easy to either lean on it too heavily or avoid it altogether because using reference can somehow feel like admitting you can't draw. Gurney's approach is more interesting than either extreme. The things you observe don't just give you something to copy later; they become part of the visual vocabulary you draw from when you're inventing something that doesn't exist.

Once you start imagining things, you look at reality differently. You're no longer just looking at a tree; you're noticing the shapes you could exaggerate, how the branches might frame a composition, and the strange colour sitting underneath the green leaves. You start seeing possibilities in ordinary things because you're looking at them as an artist who wants to transform them.

With Gurney's approach, observation isn't simply the research stage before the real creative work begins, and imagination isn't something you switch on once you've finished studying. Each one changes what you get from the other. And that's why Dinotopia feels like a good example of the whole idea. It's an imaginary world full of things that never existed, yet its believability comes from Gurney having spent so much time looking at things that do.

The more closely you look at reality, the more convincing your imagination can become – and, perhaps more importantly, the more interesting reality becomes when you look at it with the intention of changing it.

Read James Gurney's blog, Gurney Journey, for more advice, insights and inspiration.

Our favourite James Gurney art books:

The new Galway logo streamlines history and heritage into a strikingly distinct and immediately recognisable bilingual mark. It really does a lot for a minimalist abstract 'G'.

Galway City Council says its new logo design was inspired by the city's civic heritage, maritime history and bilingual character.

The tail of the maroon lower-case 'g' was inspired by the shape of the hull of the ship that features in the city's Coat of Arms. The upper bowl draws on the tradition of seanchló, the historic Irish script, and the circular fáinne, a small lapel pin worn to show a person's ability to speak Irish, reflecting Galway's preservation of the language.

It also has a clever second meaning, with the bowl of the G representing the city's people and the detached tail or hull representing the council supporting and serving them. It's a nice way to communicate what the council is supposed to be there for.

There has been some controversy around the Galway rebrand. Just days before the launch of the new logo, there had been reports that the process was being put on hold amid public calls to keep the previous design (see above).

The previous iconic 'Galway G’ was created by local designer Jimmy Conneely for the city’s quincentennial celebrations way back in 1984. The design used a less abstract G with the same maroon colour and a white line that formed an arrow leading to a galleon in the top right-hand corner. This represents the Galway docks that connected the western Irish city to the world.

“At a time when our culture is being eroded, we are getting rid of a local man’s design,” a publican told the Irish Independent .

I can understand the attachment to the old design, but it was designed before the development of things like the internet and digital apps. I don't agree that logos necessarily need to be as minimalist as possible, but the classic G design would be difficult to use in its entirety in many applications, particularly its shield element.

The new Galway G seems to do its job very well. It's clean and modern, and easily adaptable to a multitude of uses, including in combination with art assets for striking variations that depict iconic city scenes.

The council says it needed to embark on the rebranding after a review found that the public didn't always recognise the full range of services it delivered. The new visual identity is intended to help create a stronger and more consistent connection across those various services.

Basically, we want to find two or more styles of art that seem quite different to each other and study their unique qualities, noting any similarities between them. Then we take these qualities, throw them in a blender, sprinkle a little of our own personal style on top, and the end result should be something fun and original.

Hopefully you’ve found a few new tricks to add to your creative toolbox for next time. Keep in mind that the more contrasting these styles are, the more interesting the results will be! In this workshop, I’ll be looking at 19th century Japanese art styles – most notably Nihonga and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and the more western movement of Art Nouveau, then taking these and merging them with my own more modern approach to digital painting, which will be focusing primarily on form, lighting and detail.

While the nerd in me would love to infodump on what I’ve learned, I’ve only got the space here to touch on a few of the relevant key points. So feel free to reach out if you’d like to know more! If you need to build your own art setup, see our guides to the best drawing tablets or the best laptops for drawing.

Pro tip: Use the Symmetry tool to help with your borders and frames! If you add a stroke effect to your layer and turn Fill to 0%, you can draw clean lined areas very quickly (Hard Round Inker Brush).

Pro tip: I like to add vibrant splashes of colour to create variation and interest in key parts of the picture. Cool and warm tones can be used to help shadows sit back and create more depth.

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

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While logo disputes aren't a rarity in the design world, the similar market of the two athletic brands creates higher stakes for New Balance to protect its trademarked identity. Seeking the intervention of the Massachusetts federal court, it's clear the brand isn't going to back down easily.

The legal dispute centres around Decathlon's Kiprun running sneaker, featuring a stylised 'K' emblem on the side of the shoe, which New Balance claims in its filing is "unmistakably an N". New Balance alleges the design infringes on its trademarked 'N' logo, which has been used by the brand since the 1970s.

Despite New Balance attempting to contact Decathlon earlier this year to resolve the issue, the brand now seeks a block on the alleged infringing logo, alongside the destruction of existing products and monetary damages.

For more branding news, check out the Washington Commanders logo controversy or take a look at the Patagonia logo lawsuit controversy that's every brand's worst nightmare.

"How do you make people go faster?" is the blunt version of the pitch, Colella says. The targets are the obvious ones, including rendering and the production tasks that eat a creative's day without adding much to the finished work.

But she pushes back on the idea that saved time by the new AU tools seen at AU26 just becomes more content, more ‘stuff’. "The way you work might change, but for the better, so you can be more creative, because AI is not doing the creative," she says.

I asked her directly: is this really about giving one animator two workloads, or about giving that animator room to try things they'd never have had time for otherwise? "Yeah," she says, identifying pre-production as the clearest example. Artists can build more assets and run more iterations before things get expensive, catching problems early instead of finding them once a lot of money is already spent.

It's a better frame than the usual one, honestly, because she's not focused on how many minutes a tool shaves off a task; she's considering what happens to that hour once it's freed up. Does the studio just extract another hour of work, or does the animator finally get to chase the weird idea they'd normally have cut for time?

Nobody wants to admit they're using it

There's a wrinkle here, and it's not technical, as Colella tells me plenty of customers using Autodesk's AI tools would rather not say so out loud. "If they are using the AI tools, they won't. They don't want to tell us," she says.

Part of the reason, she thinks, is the noise around AI generally. "Every show, every podcast you're listening to" tells creatives their jobs and their art are at risk, says Colella, and she's plainly tired of it, hoping that at some point "people will stop fearmongering everybody and start using the tools for what they can do." That's the real state of AI in creative work right now: the tools might genuinely help, but admitting you used one can feel like admitting something about your skills or your job security – so people quietly use them and say nothing.

Autodesk's answer, according to Colella, is to fold the AI into workflows people already use rather than asking them to relearn everything. MotionMaker is still Maya, ensuring the AI sits inside a familiar tool instead of replacing it. "We're going to combine these two worlds," she says. It's not "traditional tools vs AI tools." It's the same artist deciding when to reach for which one.

Colella also thinks Autodesk owes people clarity about what's actually AI and what isn't. "We have to, at this point, be very transparent about what is an AI feature and what is not an AI feature," she says, reflecting on why artists need to know how a tool is built before they'll trust it.

And that suspicion runs the other way too, as Colella says audiences are getting sharper at spotting AI-made content –she points to TikTok now flagging clips that contain any AI-generated material – and admits she can sometimes tell something's off before anyone tells her it was AI-generated, just as we all can, instinctively.

The limitations of AI

Colella is careful not to oversell what the technology can currently do, and she has a concrete example on hand. She points to Obsession and Backrooms – two low-budget horror films that bypassed traditional studio financing entirely – and notes that neither one was made with Autodesk's tools or AI. Backrooms, for instance, was built in Blender. Both films still had to be finished using professional-grade tools, and that's what Colella picks up on: a film may be made in Blender, but it still needs traditional editing, comping and colour grading software to finish the movie, and the same is true of AI.

"AI can only get you so far today," she says. "It's not going to get you the whole way." That's where she thinks Autodesk is positioned differently from the wave of AI startups chasing the same space, as it can actually carry a project the rest of the way with existing tools.

That distinction feeds directly into why Autodesk's AI push is centred on 3D rather than 2D, where most of the generative AI hype has concentrated. Her reasoning is blunt: 2D has been comparatively easy for AI to disrupt, but 3D has resisted it. "3D was never easy, and now with AI, it's not easy to just replace it," she says. Flow Studio could have gone the 2D route – it's the more crowded, more hyped lane – but Autodesk deliberately didn't. "We're a 3D company, so for us it felt very logical," she says, framing the tools as assistance for a discipline that still can't be automated wholesale.

Is Autodesk safe from the AI bubble?

Colella also draws a sharper line than most executives when asked whether an AI bubble is coming. Her answer is essentially: not for us. "There's a lot of fundraising. There's not a lot of selling," she says of the wider AI landscape, and plenty of companies are raising money on the promise of AI, with few actually shipping products people pay for in production. She contrasts that with Flow Studio, which she's quick to point out is "shipping and selling," not a demo or a roadmap promise.

Her read is that the AI market isn't repeating the dot-com pattern of speculative buying at any price; she says investors are more cautious, which means the reckoning may take longer to arrive but will still come for companies with hype and no revenue.

But AI is here, and staying, and the bubble has yet to burst, so I reflect on the core promise we're always told AI promises to deliver – more time. But what really happens if everyone gets that hour or two back because AI is taking on the drudgery?

Colella thinks the bigger effect might not be efficiency gains inside existing studios at all. She points to the current contraction in film and TV: tighter budgets, fewer greenlights, a pullback from the streaming boom's output that accelerated once major studios started scrutinising what they were actually getting for their money.

She bets that cheaper production opens the door for projects a traditional studio would never fund. "I think there's going to actually be more creators than there is today," she says, foreseeing a boom in more people making films and shows that traditionally studios would never look at. Potentially more content flowing back into an industry that's currently gun-shy about spending. Right now, she says, the industry is stuck in a kind of holding pattern, everyone waiting to see how the economics shake out before committing.

That's a different story than the usual AI pitch of doing the same work with fewer people and studios cutting jobs.

Maybe that's the real test for AI in creative tools going forward: not how much faster it makes someone, but where the saved time actually goes. Squeeze everyone for double the output, and you've won efficiency but lost the point and likely lost creativity. Give artists room to experiment instead, and the technology looks like something else entirely.

For more on Autodesk Media & Entertainment tools, visit the Autodesk Media & Entertainment blog.

These wonderfully retro headphones actually come in five different colour options, but the bright orange cups on a transparent headband are my favourite for a Star-Lord-like look. This is also the option that we tested for our FiiO EH11 review back in April. They look like a classic wired headphone but boast modern Bluetooth connectivity and even an app with adjustable parametric EQ, which is amazing for this price (to compare, see our guide to the best wireless headphones).

Today's best Bluetooth headphones deal

Budget retro headphone perfection

These headphones made our reviewer smile when he saw them, and the smile just got wider when he tested the sound profile. In a sea of similar budget wireless headphones with retro foam cups, these standout both in terms of style and sound quality.

Regarding the former, as well as the fun colours, there are those cool wooden rotary controls on the cups, which give them a unique vintage look. As for the sound, the stock profile is warm, with the bass turned up to compensate for on-ear low frequency leakage. The treble has enough detail and the midrange is tastefully forward, delivering textured vocals. It's better than many much more more expensive mainstream headphones that we've reviewed .

If that profile doesn't happen to be to your liking, you can use the integrated Parametric EQ via the FiiO Control mobile app to customise the sound as you like it. This is something almost unheard of for a $30 headphone (even the Apple AirPods Max 2 doesn't have it, and they cost $549!)

While it's easy to be blinded into creating the best logos or swankiest graphics, the new BFI London Film Festival identity demonstrates the value of design with purpose. Tranquil yet dynamic, it shines in its simplicity, effortlessly marrying heritage with contemporary style.

Created by Pentagram partner Maria Willer and her team, the new brand identity centres around the familiar methods of filmmaking and film screening. Custom-cut letters form the 'LLF' shorthand logo, while light projections against a black background emulate the cinema screen, creating a dynamic identity that emanates vibrant energy.

The letters and lighting were then filmed and photographed to create a sense of motion, using handheld camera movements, hanging the letters to encourage organic movement, and enlisting the help of a rotating table. This motion footage was then digitally edited to enhance the typography, giving each letter a sense of presence and control.

At its core, the new BFI London Film Festival identity oozes refinement, opting for unfussy visuals that shape-shift and speak to tell its story. Instead of grand reinvention, the timeless design is a testament to the power of considered, human-curated craft that earns your attention, rather than stealing it.

For more design inspiration, check out how OFFF 2026's visual identity was secretly harvested from the bodies of actual people or take a look at the AI movie that hijacked Cannes.

When the cultural landscape of 1960s America erupted into an explosion of colour, harmony, and counterculture energy, it was Max who gave the movement its defining visual language. His iconic, psychedelic palettes were streaked with cosmic suns, flying sage figures, and utopian landscapes, and they reshaped modern visual culture, translating complex spiritual ideals into an accessible, universal canvas. This is something Max knew, and celebrated.

"The way the Beatles captured the music mood of the late sixties and early seventies, I captured the visual," he said in an interview with Noupe magazine.

With his death, we lose a profoundly important artist. Here, we look at his life in his own words.

The origins and cosmic beginnings

"My life's journey has been an odyssey through time and space... create my story, not only of who I was but also of who I was to become – an artist living in New York City, where I have been fortunate to reach a global audience with my art and philosophy." – Michael Murphy Gallery

"If I didn't choose art, I would have become an astronomer." – A-Z Quotes

On spiritual awakening and creative flow

"The Swami and yoga taught me a whole new way to draw. It empowered me to feel the cosmic consciousness within, and to allow that to flow out of me into my art." – Michael Murphy Gallery

"When I tap into my inner cosmos — that nucleus of creativity within me — it becomes a source of ever-expanding possibilities, enabling me to go from one magical adventure to another." – Park West Gallery

"I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman." – A-Z Quotes

The pop culture phenomenon and liicensing peak

"I just somehow captured the mood. The way the Beatles captured the music mood of the late sixties and early seventies, I captured the visual." – Noupe

"We were all together generating the feeling of love, peace, harmony and togetherness. It was not a competitive thing; it was unity… in unity is strength." – Noupe

"Don't worry about mistakes. Making things out of mistakes, that's creativity." – Geekmom

Reflections on life, freedom, and legacy

"Freedom is what I value most in life, and I'm happy to say that my lifelong goal of keeping myself in a space of creative and spiritual freedom has been met, even though at times it has been difficult." – Park West Gallery

"I'm just wowed by the universe. I'm just glad to do something I love to do. I love colour, I love painting, I love shapes, I love composition, I love the people around me. I'm adoring it all. My legacy is in the hands of other people." – Atlanta Journal Constitution

Though the eras he captured are long gone, Peter Max’s work remains important. He saw the universe as an expanse of colour and light, and has left behind a legacy that encapsulates the cosmic spirit of an era.

Head to our quote of the day series for other important words from famous creatives.

Are they clever billboard ads? Yes. Are they slightly terrifying in context? Also yes. A perfect example of how environment can make or break a campaign, the new Hunger Games ads blur the line between reality and fiction, drawing us into the terrifying world of Panem, which now seems eerily similar to our own.

Featuring a bright graphic of a soldier against a flowery background, the poster loosely emulates the style of soviet propaganda posters. With bold text reading "peace is preserved not promised", the design has an eerie and threatening authority to it that could easily be interpreted as real, were it not for the District badges dotting the corners and small text that reads "brought to you by the Capitol".

The mobile billboards fittingly appeared outside of the U.S. Capitol Building, Belgium's NATO Headquarters, Philadelphia's Independence Hall and Thailand's Democracy Monument. Perfectly placed to be provocative and eerily rooted in truth, the ads prove that fiction isn't always that distant from reality.

For more ad inspiration, take a look at this Bic advert that's pure print perfection or check out how this company sparked brand romance with 100 hand-crafted loe letter billboards.

To select my favourites, I've focused not just on looks but also how easy they are to set up, the quality of the display, how much storage they offer, and how much this is all going to cost you.

Be aware – these are back-lit digital photo frames, and so they will emit a light, especially noticeable when your room gets darker. If you don't want that light source, go read my list of the best e-ink art frames, which act more like paper, and come to life when a light source is directed at them.

My top pick of the digital photo frames right now is the Aura Carver (10.1"), thanks to its unlimited free cloud storage, vibrant screen and lack of subscription. I've also included a budget option, an e-ink model and a frame that also comes with speakers.

The best digital frame overall

The Aura Carver pairs a crisp, vibrant panel with free, unlimited cloud storage and zero subscription fees. Setup is painless, and Aura's gift mode lets you preload photos and a welcome message, which makes it a strong choice as a present for others.

Because it only displays in landscape, vertical shots get paired up side by side rather than shown full-screen, and how well that pairing works depends on whether you sort photos chronologically or let the app try to match them by subject. Video playback is a nice bonus but can look a little choppy on loading, so this is best thought of as a frame for photos first and video a distant second.

Those niggles aside, though, this remains one of the easiest frames to set up and just leave running, which is exactly what most people want from one.

The best budget digital frame

The Frameo 10.1" delivers solid colours, easy-to-use touch controls, and seamless photo and short-video sharing via the widely supported Frameo ecosystem, all for well under $80. That makes it the easiest frame on this list to recommend if price is the deciding factor.

The touchscreen is responsive enough that even less tech-confident relatives can swipe through a gallery without help, and because Frameo is used across several other budget frame brands too, families don't need everyone to own the same hardware to send photos over.

The 16GB of onboard storage, expandable via microSD, is enough for tens of thousands of photos, and short video clips add a bit of life to the slideshow without needing a subscription. One issue reported by some, though, is that auto-rotate doesn't always catch a photo's orientation correctly.

The best e-ink digital frame

The Reflection Frame uses e-ink to display photos as if they've been printed out. It reflects ambient room light just like physical paper or a canvas print, running for months on a single charge without a power cord hanging down the wall, which sets it apart from every other frame on this list.

Updating the image is done by tapping your phone to a corner of the frame over NFC and Bluetooth, so there's no Wi-Fi setup, no account, and nothing uploaded to a cloud server unless you choose to.

The trade-off for that calm, print-like look is that Spectra 6 e-ink can't match an LCD panel for vibrancy: colours lean more toward a fine-art print than a bright tablet screen, and swapping the image takes a few seconds rather than being instant. It's also a manual experience rather than a family-sharing hub, since there's no remote slideshow or always-on connection.

The best digital frame if money is no object

The Meural Canvas II is designed specifically for fine art. The patented TrueArt display technology diffuses light to mimic real paint textures and adjusts backlighting for a clean, anti-glare finish, and its optional $69.95-a-year membership grants access to a library of more than 30,000 artworks.

The wood-finished frame snaps on and off in seconds without tools, and because the whole unit can be mounted vertically or horizontally, it adapts to more walls than the fixed-orientation frames on this list.

The app makes everyday use of your own photos straightforward, with simple controls for cropping, scheduling and displaying individual images. Where it can still be a chore is loading a large batch of photos in one go, since there's no bulk "select all" option. It's also worth pointing out that the fixed 16:9 aspect ratio also doesn't suit the 3:2 or 4:3 ratios most cameras and phones actually shoot in, so expect some cropping or letterboxing.

The best art TV

The Hisense Canvas TV S7N offers a painterly art display experience that rivals Samsung's Frame TV while being much cheaper. The price includes an UltraSlim mount and a teak wood magnetic bezel. An anti-reflective matte finish helps to eliminate glare, and built-in motion and light sensors allow you to toggle Art Mode when you enter the room. All without asking for a subscription the way Samsung's Frame TV does.

As a TV itself it's not perfect: HDR content can suffer from shallow black levels and soft detail next to Samsung's rival. On the plus side, it's a capable, high refresh-rate set for gaming, and its price relative to Frame TV, plus the included frame and art library, make it excellent value overall.

The best audio-visual hybrid frame

The Samsung Music Frame features a high-fidelity wireless speaker system – six drivers in total, with support for Dolby Atmos – behind a photo or artwork. Streaming support is extensive, covering AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect alongside Bluetooth, and setup through Samsung's SmartThings app takes less than a minute once you have an account.

That said, the sound quality isn't perfect: reviewers found it gets loud and fills a room, but the more volume you push, the muddier and less detailed it becomes, lacking the dynamic contrast that similarly priced standalone speakers deliver. Also, while swapping the front artwork is easy enough, only images that fit an 8x8 inch square will display properly.

It's the second major feature announcement from Canva this month, following an update to its Visual Suite. This time the focus is squarely on professional users: designers, animators, photographers and data storytellers who have spent the past year watching Canva grow its toolset significantly via acquisitions.

Crucially – and I know this what everyone will be worrying about – Affinity and Cavalry's core apps will stay free. Upgrading to a paid plan will only offer you extras (the AI Studio in Affinity and team features) and not the tools professionals need to create with. Check out the full feature list here, or read on for the highlights.

• Explore Canva

What's new in Affinity

Firstly, there's the Blend Tool, which Affinity says was one of its community's most-requested features. Rather than hand-placing every step of a transitional effect, you can now sculpt it live, using bias and easing to control where it speeds up or bunches, with elements distributed evenly along a curve by true distance rather than stretched to fit. This is a really fiddly problem in vector work, so if it performs as described, it will be a real time-saver.

There's also a streamlined Mask Tool, native 3D model support, and INDD import for pulling legacy InDesign files in directly. This is excellent news, and makes it much easier for anyone migrating from Adobe.

For photographers, there is an improved RAW engine, batch imports, reusable colour looks, and an AI Scene Decomposition tool that attempts to split a flattened image back into editable layers. Users also get a dedicated Astrophotography Studio, plus scripting support that lets users automate repetitive tasks across vector, pixel and layout work in a single script – or, via a Claude AI connector, describe the automation in plain language instead of writing it.

What's new in Cavalry

Cavalry is Canva's motion design tool. The update adds more than 50 features and enhancements, including a new Metaballs shape, Lighting, Twist and Ripple filters, an enhanced Isolines shape and a reworked Graph Editor. AI additions include Remove Background, Generate Vector and Image to Layers tools.

Canva says selected elements of a Cavalry animation – text or colour, for instance – will soon be editable directly inside Canva itself, while the core scene stays locked. In theory, that means motion designers build the polished, on-brand asset once, then hand it off for others to tweak without the constant back-and-forth of adaptation requests.

Affinity files can now also be imported directly into Cavalry, and both apps add support for Canva Sheets, which tightens the pipeline between design, animation and data.

The bigger picture

Canva says that "professional craft matters more than ever" in an AI-saturated industry (see more on why it's taking the AI additions more slowly than other platforms). Canva is continuing to group together its acquisitions (Affinity, Cavalry, Flourish, Leonardo) into a single ecosystem, maybe in hopes that convenience and interoperability will keep professionals inside its orbit rather than reaching for standalone Adobe alternatives.

Canva says the rollout starts now, with more updates promised as each product matures.

Here he presents four examples of his work. If you're inspired, see our guides to the best drawing tablets and the best laptops for drawing and digital art.

The Black Rider

“An undead rider crosses a desolate landscape, carrying the weight of ancient curses. I focused on atmosphere and silhouette to create a sense of mystery and quiet menace.”

Morvane

“This piece began as a simple encounter between a rider and a creature. I was interested in creating a sense of unease and scale, allowing the atmosphere to carry the story.”

Nomad Ronin

“A samurai-like character alongside a mechanical being, exploring the contrast between traditional and technological forms. Organic and industrial shapes within a single design.”

Hunters

“This piece is a character design exploring the visual language of fantasy hunters. I used colour contrasts to strengthen readability and create a clear visual hierarchy.

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

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

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

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