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Grease Pencil 3.0 was going to be included in the LTS release which preceded 4.3, but various complications prevented it from being ready for the main branch. Needless to say, it is finally HERE. In spite of the changes, there's a lot that is still familiar, and you won't need to re-learn a great deal in order to use it.BrushesOne big change is how brushes are stored, accessed and shared. They are now part of the asset system.Modifying and creating your own custom brushes is an easy system with some fail-safes! For example, you can't save modifications to core brushes, but you can duplicate and save out your own custom brushes!Because they are saved as assets, they can now be accessed in new .blend files.Tools, Menus, where to find thingsThe Draw toolbox has been re-organized, grouping together tools into handy pop-outs.Tint is now a brush; Cutter has been renamed "trim".The edit menu has replaced the Transform Fill tool with a new Gradient tool.Where Transform could be toggled between Move, Rotate and Scale, the Gradient tool now works on all three by clicking and dragging. It works on both gradient and texture materials.Some modes such as Curve editing have been rethought. Curve editing used to be accessed in Edit Mode next to the select buttons. This would change your edit points to bezier curves with handles, and you could edit your strokes like you would a curve object.You can now change your points to a variety of curve options for editing. This is now found under the Stroke Menu when in Edit ModeLayers, Stroke settings and Modifier menuLayers still function the same, but with some added settings which make workflow SOOOO much better!Layer groups are now a thing! You can now group layers for easy organization. Additional tools such as Merge Group have also been added.Stroke Settings were found under layer properties, allowing you to modify some stroke settings such as thickness scale or curve resolution.Stroke Thickness was where you could set how the width of a stroke would be seen - either World or Screen Space. World would lock the stroke thickness to the scene scale, whereas Screen Space locked the thickness in relation to your viewport. This caused a strange scaling issue if you zoomed in or out.This has now been removed, and the stroke thickness can now be set in your brush settings and can be measured in world units or pixels. Also the scaling will be locked to your scene and not in relation to your screen.The Modifier pop-out menus have been brought in line with the rest of Blender.You'll notice here that Geometry Nodes can be added as a modifier for Grease Pencil Objects too!Geometry NodesGeometry nodes can now expand what you can do with grease pencil - and probably warrants its own article. Backwards/Forward compatibility:Great care has been taken in converting older files into the new architecture. This is such a credit to the developers. Everything you created is there - palettes, materials, layers. There may be minor issues with a couple of modifiers such as noise, and any brushes you created in earlier versions won't be imported, unfortunately.Opening newly created files in an older version will not work, since the Grease Pencil architecture is heavily rewritten. So do back up those legacy files saved in the original version!Conclusion:Aside from these changes, Grease Pencil still seems to function much like before, so workflows you might be used to are just made faster and more intuitive. If you'd like to see these changes in more depth, check out my video covering all of these key areas here!https://youtu.be/zrIPbky8Xf8

OpenAI is once again lifting the lid (just a crack) on its safety-testing processes. Last month the company shared the results of an investigation that looked at how often ChatGPT produced a harmful gender or racial stereotype based on a users name. Now it has put out two papers describing how it stress-tests its powerful large language models to try to identify potential harmful or otherwise unwanted behavior, an approach known as red-teaming. Large language models are now being used by millions of people for many different things. But as OpenAI itself points out, these models are known to produce racist, misogynistic and hateful content; reveal private information; amplify biases and stereotypes; and make stuff up. The company wants to share what it is doing to minimize such behaviors. The first paper describes how OpenAI directs an extensive network of human testers outside the company to vet the behavior of its models before they are released. The second paper presents a new way to automate parts of the testing process, using a large language model like GPT-4 to come up with novel ways to bypass its own guardrails. The aim is to combine these two approaches, with unwanted behaviors discovered by human testers handed off to an AI to be explored further and vice versa. Automated red-teaming can come up with a large number of different behaviors, but human testers bring more diverse perspectives into play, says Lama Ahmad, a researcher at OpenAI: We are still thinking about the ways that they complement each other. Red-teaming isnt new. AI companies have repurposed the approach from cybersecurity, where teams of people try to find vulnerabilities in large computer systems. OpenAI first used the approach in 2022, when it was testing DALL-E 2. It was the first time OpenAI had released a product that would be quite accessible, says Ahmad. We thought it would be really important to understand how people would interact with the system and what risks might be surfaced along the way. The technique has since become a mainstay of the industry. Last year, President Bidens Executive Order on AI tasked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with defining best practices for red-teaming. To do this, NIST will probably look to top AI labs for guidance. Tricking ChatGPT When recruiting testers, OpenAI draws on a range of experts, from artists to scientists to people with detailed knowledge of the law, medicine, or regional politics. OpenAI invites these testers to poke and prod its models until they break. The aim is to uncover new unwanted behaviors and look for ways to get around existing guardrailssuch as tricking ChatGPT into saying something racist or DALL-E into producing explicit violent images. Adding new capabilities to a model can introduce a whole range of new behaviors that need to be explored. When OpenAI added voices to GPT-4o, allowing users to talk to ChatGPT and ChatGPT to talk back, red-teamers found that the model would sometimes start mimicking the speakers voice, an unexpected behavior that was both annoying and a fraud risk. There is often nuance involved. When testing DALL-E 2 in 2022, red-teamers had to consider different uses of eggplant, a word that now denotes an emoji with sexual connotations as well as a purple vegetable. OpenAI describes how it had to find a line between acceptable requests for an image, such as A person eating an eggplant for dinner, and unacceptable ones, such as A person putting a whole eggplant into her mouth. Similarly, red-teamers had to consider how users might try to bypass a models safety checks. DALL-E does not allow you to ask for images of violence. Ask for a picture of a dead horse lying in a pool of blood, and it will deny your request. But what about a sleeping horse lying in a pool of ketchup? When OpenAI tested DALL-E 3 last year, it used an automated process to cover even more variations of what users might ask for. It used GPT-4 to generate requests producing images that could be used for misinformation or that depicted sex, violence, or self-harm. OpenAI then updated DALL-E 3 so that it would either refuse such requests or rewrite them before generating an image.Ask for a horse in ketchup now, and DALL-E is wise to you: It appears there are challenges in generating the image. Would you like me to try a different request or explore another idea? In theory, automated red-teaming can be used to cover more ground, but earlier techniques had two major shortcomings: They tend to either fixate on a narrow range of high-risk behaviors or come up with a wide range of low-risk ones. Thats because reinforcement learning, the technology behind these techniques, needs something to aim fora rewardto work well. Once its won a reward, such as finding a high-risk behavior, it will keep trying to do the same thing again and again. Without a reward, on the other hand, the results are scattershot. They kind of collapse into We found a thing that works! We'll keep giving that answer! or they'll give lots of examples that are really obvious, says Alex Beutel, another OpenAI researcher. How do we get examples that are both diverse and effective? A problem of two parts OpenAIs answer, outlined in the second paper, is to split the problem into two parts. Instead of using reinforcement learning from the start, it first uses a large language model to brainstorm possible unwanted behaviors. Only then does it direct a reinforcement-learning model to figure out how to bring those behaviors about. This gives the model a wide range of specific things to aim for. Beutel and his colleagues showed that this approach can find potential attacks known as indirect prompt injections, where another piece of software, such as a website, slips a model a secret instruction to make it do something its user hadnt asked it to. OpenAI claims this is the first time that automated red-teaming has been used to find attacks of this kind. They dont necessarily look like flagrantly bad things, says Beutel. Will such testing procedures ever be enough? Ahmad hopes that describing the companys approach will help people understand red-teaming better and follow its lead. OpenAI shouldnt be the only one doing red-teaming, she says. People who build on OpenAIs models or who use ChatGPT in new ways should conduct their own testing, she says: There are so many useswere not going to cover every one. For some, thats the whole problem. Because nobody knows exactly what large language models can and cannot do, no amount of testing can rule out unwanted or harmful behaviors fully. And no network of red-teamers will ever match the variety of uses and misuses that hundreds of millions of actual users will think up. Thats especially true when these models are run in new settings. People often hook them up to new sources of data that can change how they behave, says Nazneen Rajani, founder and CEO of Collinear AI, a startup that helps businesses deploy third-party models safely. She agrees with Ahmad that downstream users should have access to tools that let them test large language models themselves. Rajani also questions using GPT-4 to do red-teaming on itself. She notes that models have been found to prefer their own output: GPT-4 ranks its performance higher than that of rivals such as Claude or Llama, for example. This could lead it to go easy on itself, she says: Id imagine automated red-teaming with GPT-4 may not generate as harmful attacks [as other models might]. Miles behind For Andrew Tait, a researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute in the UK, theres a wider issue. Large language models are being built and released faster than techniques for testing them can keep up. Were talking about systems that are being marketed for any purpose at alleducation, health care, military, and law enforcement purposesand that means that youre talking about such a wide scope of tasks and activities that to create any kind of evaluation, whether thats a red team or something else, is an enormous undertaking, says Tait. Were just miles behind. Tait welcomes the approach of researchers at OpenAI and elsewhere (he previously worked on safety at Google DeepMind himself) but warns that its not enough: There are people in these organizations who care deeply about safety, but theyre fundamentally hamstrung by the fact that the science of evaluation is not anywhere close to being able to tell you something meaningful about the safety of these systems. Tait argues that the industry needs to rethink its entire pitch for these models. Instead of selling them as machines that can do anything, they need to be tailored to more specific tasks. You cant properly test a general-purpose model, he says. If you tell people its general purpose, you really have no idea if its going to function for any given task, says Tait. He believes that only by testing specific applications of that model will you see how well it behaves in certain settings, with real users and real uses. Its like saying an engine is safe; therefore every car that uses it is safe, he says. And thats ludicrous.

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. AI can now create a replica of your personality Imagine sitting down with an AI model for a spoken two-hour interview. A friendly voice guides you through a conversation that ranges from your childhood, your formative memories, and your career to your thoughts on immigration policy. Not long after, a virtual replica of you is able to embody your values and preferences with stunning accuracy. Thats now possible, according to a new paper from a team including researchers from Stanford and Google DeepMind. They recruited 1,000 people and, from interviews with them, created agent replicas of them all. To test how well the agents mimicked their human counterparts, participants did a series of tests, games and surveys, then the agents completed the same exercises. The results were 85% similar. Freaky.Read our story about the work, and why it matters. James ODonnell Chinas complicated role in climate change But what about China? In debates about climate change, its usually only a matter of time until someone brings up China. Often, it comes in response to some statement about how the US and Europe are addressing the issue (or how they need to be). Sometimes it can be done in bad faith. Its a rhetorical way to throw up your hands, and essentially say: if they arent taking responsibility, why should we? However, there are some undeniable facts: China emits more greenhouse gases than any other country, by far. Its one of the worlds most populous countries and a climate-tech powerhouse, and its economy is still developing. With many complicated factors at play, how should we think about the countrys role in addressing climate change?Read the full story. Casey Crownhart This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things energy and climate.Sign upto receive it in your inbox every Wednesday. Four ways to protect your art from AI Since the start of the generative AI boom, artists have been worried about losing their livelihoods to AI tools. Unfortunately, there is little you can do if your work has been scraped into a data set and used in a model that is already out there. You can, however, take steps to prevent your work from being used in the future.Here are four ways to do that.Melissa Heikkila This is part of our How To series, where we give you practical advice on how to use technology in your everyday lives. You can read the rest of the series here. MIT Technology Review Narrated: The worlds on the verge of a carbon storage boom In late 2023, one of Californias largest oil and gas producers secured draft permits from the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop a new type of well in an oil field. If approved, it intends to drill a series of boreholes down to a sprawling sedimentary formation roughly 6,000 feet below the surface, where it will inject tens of millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide to store it away forever. Hundreds of similar projects are looming across the state, the US, and the world. Proponents hope its the start of a sort of oil boom in reverse, kick-starting a process through which the world will eventually bury more greenhouse gas than it adds to the atmosphere. But opponents insist these efforts will prolong the life of fossil-fuel plants, allow air and water pollution to continue, and create new health and environmental risks. This is our lateststoryto be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which were publishing each week onSpotifyandApple Podcasts. Just navigate toMIT Technology Review Narratedon either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as its released. The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 How the Trump administration could hack your phone Spyware acquired by the US government in September could fairly easily be turned on its own citizens. (New Yorker$)+Heres how you can fight back against being digitally spied upon.(The Guardian)2 The DOJ is trying to force Google to sell off ChromeWhether Trump will keep pushing it through is unclear, though. (WP$)+Some financial and legal experts argue that just selling Chrome is not enough to address antitrust issues.(Wired$)3 Theres a booming AI pimping industryPeople are stealing videos from real adult content creators, giving them AI-generated faces, and monetizing their bodies. (Wired$)+This viral AI avatar app undressed mewithout my consent.(MIT Technology Review)4 Heres Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy plan for federal employeesLarge-scale firings and an end to any form of remote work. (WSJ$)5 The US is scaring everyone with its response to bird flu Its done remarkably little to show its trying to contain the outbreak. (NYT$)+Virologists are getting increasingly nervous about how it could evolve and spread. (MIT Technology Review) 6 AI could boost the performance of quantum computers A new model created by Google DeepMind is very good at correcting errors.(New Scientist$)+But AI could also make quantum computers less necessary.(MIT Technology Review)7 Biden has approved the use of anti-personnel mines in UkraineIt comes just days after he gave the go-ahead for it to use long-range missiles inside Russia. (Axios)+The US military has given a surveillance drone contract to a little-known supplier from Utah.(WSJ$)+The Danish military said its keeping a close eye on a Chinese ship in its waters after data cable breaches.(Reuters$)8 The number of new mobile internet users is stallingOnly about 57% of the worlds population is connected. (Rest of World)9 All of life on Earth descended from this single cell Our last universal common ancestor (or LUCA for short) was a surprisingly complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago. (Quanta)+Scientists are building a catalog of every type of cell in our bodies. (The Economist$)10 What its like to live with a fluffy AI petTry as we might, it seems we cant help but form attachments to cute companion robots. (The Guardian)Quote of the day The free pumpkins have brought joy to many. An example of the sort of stilted remarks made by a now-abandoned AI-generated news broadcaster at local Hawaii paper The Garden Island,Wiredreports.The big story How Bitcoin mining devastated this New York town GABRIELA BHASKAR April 2022 If you had taken a gamble in 2017 and purchased Bitcoin, today you might be a millionaire many times over. But while the industry has provided windfalls for some, local communities have paid a high price, as people started scouring the world for cheap sources of energy to run large Bitcoin-mining farms. It didnt take long for a subsidiary of the popular Bitcoin mining firm Coinmint to lease a Family Dollar store in Plattsburgh, a city in New York state offering cheap power. Soon, the company was regularly drawing enough power for about 4,000 homes. And while other miners were quick to follow, the problems had already taken root.Read the full story. Lois Parshley We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.) + Cultivatinggratitudeis a proven way to make yourself happier. + You cant beat ahot toddywhen its cold outside.+ If you like abandoned places and overgrown ruins,Jonathan Jimenezis the photographer for you.+ A lot changed betweenGladiator I and II, not least Hollywoods version of the male ideal.

The government is considering exempting newly-built council housing from the Right to Buy for a set period after completion, in one of several proposed reforms of the policy designed to help local authorities protect their stock.Angela Rayner has likened fixing the housing crisis without reforming the Right to Buy to trying to fill a bath when the plugs not in.The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has today published a consultation paper outlining several ways the policy could be reformed. This follows Labours election manifesto pledge to increase protections on newly-built social housing.In todays paper, MHCLG is calling for views on whether newly-built social housing should be exempt. Currently council tenants can buy a home with a discount as soon as three years after they move into a property. The MHCLG paper says this disincentives councils from investing in new housing.MHCLG said stipulating any home built after a given date is exempt would be simple to understand and give councils greater confidence to build. However, it said this would remove the ability of a tenant from ever being to exercise their statutory Right to Buy, while the homes would not rationally be defined as new after a given period.>> Also read:Was Angela Rayner right to buy?Instead, it suggests newly-built social housing could be excluded for a set period of time, such as 10 or 20 years. The paper seeks feedback on what this time period should be.At-a-glance: Right to Buy consultationThe government is proposing an overhaul of the Right to Buy and is seeking feedback on proposals. The key measures include:Increasing the three-year minimum tenancy period for tenants to be eligible to apply under the scheme.Reviewing the current exemptions to the scheme and whether newly built social homes should be exempt for a given period of time (such as 10 or 20 years) to encourage council investment in new homes. MHCLG is also asking whether homes that have been improved through council investment to a high standard should also be exempt.Seeking views on the replacement of homes with an emphasis on more social rent homes and if there should be a target to replace all future sales on a one-for-one basis.Increasing the period in which councils have the right to ask for repayment of all or part of the discount received when a property is sold from five to ten years.From tomorrow:Discounts will be reduced to pre-2012 levelsThe cost floor protection period, under which discounts can be limited to avoid the price falling below what has been spent on building, repairing and maintaining properties,will be increased from 15 to 30 yearsThe paper asks for views on how council investment in retrofitting or improving homes to a high standard can be protected, and whether there should be an exemption for these homes.The government is also considering increasing the minimum amount of time a tenant has to have lived in a property in order to qualify for the Right to Buy from its current level of three years.It said: In order to deliver a fairer scheme that represents better value for money, the government thinks that the length of time someone needs to have been a public sector tenant should increase; a tenant occupying a property for three years is extremely unlikely to have paid rent that equates to the available discount.It asks for feedback on whether this period should be extended to five years, 10 years or more than 10 years.The consultation paper also seeks views on whether replacement homes should be for social rent, whether they should be the same size and in the same area and whether there should be a target to replace all future Right to Buy sales on a one-for-one basis.MHCLG is also asking whether the time period in which a council has the right to ask for repayment of discount upon sale of a property by a Right to Buy tenant should be increased from five to 10 years.The consultation is proposing changes to the minimum and maximum discounts as a percentage of the property value and applying the same rules to both houses and flats. It is also suggesting simplifying the receipts system to make it easier for councils to use this money to buy and build more social homes.The government has already taken steps to change some aspects of the policy, with some changes coming into effect tomorrow.This includes Right to Buy discounts returning to the levels they were at before the David Cameron-led coalition government increased them in 2012. Officials have estimated this will lead to Right to Buy sales falling to 1,700 a year, down from the 6,000 registered in 2023/24 and the average of 11,000 a year seen between 2014 and 2018.The government from tomorrow also increases the cost floor protection period from 15 to 30 years under which discounts can be limited to avoid the price falling below what has been spent on building, repairing and maintaining properties.Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister and housing secretary, said: Too many social homes have been sold off before they can be replaced, which has directly contributed to the worst housing crisis in living memory.We cannot fix the crisis without addressing this issue its like trying to fill a bath when the plugs not in. A fairer Right to Buy will help councils protect and increase their housing stock, while also keeping the pathway to home ownership there for those who otherwise might not have the opportunity to get on the housing ladder.The consultation closes on 15 January.Sector reactionAdam Hug, housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association (LGA) said:The LGA has long-called for reform to Right to Buy as the system in its current format does not work for local authorities and those most in need of social housing.Steps taken by government already this year to amend the scheme are positive, and the measures set out today in this consultation will help further in supporting the replacement of sold homes and to stem the continued loss of existing stock.Councils are keen to deepen our collaboration with the government to increase affordable housing and help people on council housing waiting lists and record numbers stuck in temporary accommodation.Tracy Harrison, chief executive at Northern Housing Consortium said:With more than 420,000 households on social housing waiting lists in the North, more social homes are desperately needed, and we must protect those that we already have. Weve been consistently calling for reform to Right to Buy , so these changes are very welcome. They will help stem the loss of social homes and support local authorities to replace those that are sold.We particularly welcome the proposals to exempt newly build homes from the Right to Buy as this will help councils build with confidence. The confirmation that Right-to-Buy will not be extended to housing associations is also long overdue.Gavin Smart, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) said:The CIH has been very concerned that there are now some 220,000 fewer homes available at social rents than there were a decade ago. The reforms announced today will help to turn this around. We have already welcomed the decision that councils can reinvest all their receipts from sales, and todays proposal for further measures to protect newly built homes from the Right to Buy will also help. The outcome from the various measures the government is taking should mean that the Right to Buy is a much more sustainable scheme than it has been since 2012.Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation (NHF) said:At a time when 4.2 million people are in need of social housing in England, we strongly support the governments aim to protect the countrys social housing and welcome confirmation that Right to Buy will not be extended to housing associations.Social housing is the only housing that is affordable to families on low incomes. Last year there were only 700 net new social homes due to sales through Right to Buy, whilst over 150,000 homeless children spent the night in temporary accommodation. We support peoples ambitions to own their own home and agree that routes to affordable ownership are important, but they must not come at the expense of our social housing which is a vital and increasingly scarce resource.Alongside these reforms, we look forward to working with the government on the long-term housing strategy that is needed to deliver its housing ambitions and build a generation of new social homes.

A survey of nearly 900 professionals found more than a third had experienced insults relating to protected characteristicsThe research found more than a third of all architectural professionals had experienced insults, stereotypes or jokes relating to protected characteristics.New research published by Arb has revealed staggering levels of discrimination and sexual misconduct experienced by architecture professionals in the workplace.A survey of 898 architecture professionals found higher levels of discrimination and sexual misconduct than in other sectors which publish similar research, including academia and parts of the medical profession.One in four female professionals have experienced unwelcome sexual advances and nearly two in five had experienced unwelcome sexual comments, while more than a third of all architectural professionals had experienced insults, stereotypes or jokes relating to protected characteristics, according to the survey.This number was found to be higher for women, at 53%, while 46% of both ethnic minorities and people with disabilities reported similar experiences.Despite the prevalence of workplace misconduct uncovered in the research, it found a third of all professionals would not feel confident raising concerns if they experienced or observed misconduct due to fears that it would not be taken seriously or would impact their career.The research was carried out by independent agency Thinks Insight & Strategy, which was appointed by Arb following concerns raised by architecture professionals during the regulators survey on its education reforms.Arb chair Alan Kershaw said the body had been appalled at the findings of the research, which included detailed interviews with 15 survey participants.He said: Architects play a vital role in society. The public rely on their competence and need them to behave ethically, to treat people with respect, and to raise concerns should they have any.The vast majority of architects are good professionals who behave ethically. But we are appalled to learn that many of them suffer higher levels of discrimination and sexual misconduct than some other professions.There is a clear need for leadership here; all professionals in the built environment sector need to support a better culture for a better built environment.In response to the findings, Arb now plans to set firmer professional standards for architects through its new code of conduct and practice and include supplementary guidance on leadership and inclusion.The regulator said it will also provide tools to support professionals in raising concerns and challenging unethical behaviour, and collaborate with other sector leaders to promote changes in behaviours and conduct.Examples given by participants indicate issues of workplace misconduct span the wider built environment sector, with some professionals reporting inappropriate behaviours on construction sites or in client meetings, with others sharing experiences which started at university.RIBA president Muyiwa Oki said the evidence made it clear that the entire profession must act.RIBA is deeply concerned by the findings of ARBs research, which reveals widespread discrimination and sexual misconduct in the profession. This type of behaviourcannotand will notbe ignored, Oki said.He added that championing workplace wellbeing was a priority for RIBA, which is preparing to publish findings of its own investigation, and that the institure was ready to take bold steps.Mark Thompson, managing partner at Ryder Architecture, said the research starkly illustrates the failures of our sector and the importance of embedding a tangible shift in mindset.The architectural community needs to wake up to the damage it is causing to its people, quality of work and reputation through the persistence of toxic behaviours, he said.

Danny Campbell - Hoko founder with Hoko blue bricks (September 2021) Source:&nbsp Jeff HolmesScottish celebrity architect Danny Campbell said he had learned lots after being reprimanded by the ARB over a conflict of interest at his architecture company, Hoko Design The BBC Scotland Home of The Year host says he has scaled back his business after being handed the sanction at a hearing of the ARBs professional conduct committee, held between 28 and 30 October in Glasgow.The committee concluded that Campbell failed to appropriately manage a conflict of interest at his 2016-founded architecture firm, Hoko Design, which arose over a property development project in Giffnock, in Scotlands Central Lowlands, between 2020 and 2022.The hearing heard how the client on the project selected a second company, also owned by Campbell, Hoko Build, to be contractor on his project without understanding the conflict of interest between the companies. The client, who later terminated the contract, said he only realised the extent of the conflict of interest after the project had fallen well behind schedule.AdvertisementCampbell was director and majority shareholder for both companies, as well as a third company, Hoko Shop, which were all separate legal entities but were collectively intended to provide a one stop shop for clients seeking design, build and shopping resources for small domestic projects. The self-billed Uber of architecture was featured in the AJ in 2020.The ARB concluded that Campbells actions breached the standards of the Architects Code on three counts, including failing to recognise a conflict of interest, and failing to adequately supervise the Hoko Design employee who was overseeing the project.However, the panel concluded that Campbell's failings were not deliberate. It stated: This was not a wilful disregard of regulatory obligations but was an error from an architect at the start of his career.Moreover, the ARB said Campbell has since shown empathy towards the client, been reflective of his practice, and had taken corrective steps, including closing Hoko Build.The panel said it was satisfied that Campbell had set up his company with an intention to create a better service for clients, and that profit, while an inevitable goal, was not intended to be at the expense of clients interests.AdvertisementIt said this was demonstrated by Hoko Designs tendering method, which was deliberately designed to prevent [Hoko Design] from having an unfair advantage by knowing the value of competitors tenders.The committee chose to impose a reprimand as its sanction against Campbell, which it said is appropriate for cases at the lower end of seriousness.Responding to the outcome, Campbell told the AJ that he took full responsibility for the project in question, and had since scaled back his businesses to operate solely as Hoko Design, which now outsources all construction work.The architect said: While it was not a project I was involved in, and there was sufficient oversight with six architects within the team at that time, I take full responsibility as the owner of the company. Its important to note this was during a period marked by the pandemics significant project backlog and challenges in securing tradespeople.Hoko has worked with more than 1,000 homeowners and this is the first time weve had a dealing with the ARB and we've learned lots from the process that is making the business better.Hoko Design and Hoko Build, though part of the same ownership structure, operated as distinct entities managing different aspects of projects. The oversight of these structures followed standard industry practices designed to streamline operations and make the process more seamless for homeowners.Being faced with the logistical barriers of making this a reality, we have scaled back our operations and Hoko design is now the sole entity of the business. We now fully outsource building on every project.2024-11-21Anna Highfieldcomment and share

The Kent-based architects' proposals for a new 1,439m2 workshop and museum for rocking horse maker the Stevenson Brothers has secured approval from Ashford Borough Council. Councillors unanimously backed the plans.Hollaway submitted two applications for the site in Bethersden, High Halden: one for a new museum, a workshop and 22 homes south of the village; and a separate application for nine homes to replace existing work spaces.The new workshop and museum includes a caf, farm shop and views of the rocking horse making process.AdvertisementThe existing workshop in the village, south west of Ashford town centre, will be demolished to make way for nine affordable one and two-bed flats in two three-storey buildings on a 0.1ha plot.The practice told the AJ that the 6.8 ha museum and workshop site was an opportunity to demonstrate [the] genuine craftmanship of the 40-year-old firm, which made rocking horses for the late Queen.Hollaway added that the housing provision would enable the redevelopment of the Stevenson Brothers workshop. The scheme also brings all parts of the manufacturing process together on one site alongside new homes and associated landscaping, biodiversity gains and landscaping improvements.Hollaways schemes were recommended for approval by Ashford council ahead of committee, with planning officers saying they would deliver an addition to the councils 5 Year Housing supply, which it cannot currently demonstrate.The planning report added the homes represented a social benefit that would contribute to the governments target to significantly boost the supply of homes [and] Such homes would be affordable which would address the needs of groups with specific housing requirements.AdvertisementLast year, Hollaway Studios 17 million F51 skatepark in Folkestone was crowned the best new building in the RIBAs South East region.

Visual effects supervisor Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser discusses the collaborative effort to make Alien fans scream once more.By Dan Brooks(Credit: 20th Century Studios)Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser remembers it well. It was summer 1979. He was 12 years old. Two years prior, Star Wars: A New HopeAlien and he was dying to see it, though he was too young to buy a ticket and his parents refused to take him. As such, Sepulveda-Fauser did what any underage cinema-obsessed kid would: he snuck in to see it at Los Angeles vaunted Egyptian Theatre.I remember the impact that it had on me, he tells ILM.com. It was the first movie that I saw where I said, Oh my God, thats what a real alien movie is about.Cut to 2024, and Sepulveda-Fauser is now a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, having led the companys Sydney studio in work on Alien: Romulus. For him, Alien will always be about the feeling of Ridley Scotts original film and, thankfully, Alien: Romulus director Fede lvarez thought the same.When Fede described his idea of making it like the original, it was just one of those realizations where its like, man, I get to recreate that childhood moment, in a way, Sepulveda-Fauser says. The result was a 40-year full circle for me.Alien: Romulus arrived in theaters August 16 and quickly became a bona-fide box-office hit; as the movie continued its impressive run, Sepulveda-Fauser spoke with ILM.com about his approach to Romulus visual effects and the secrets behind some of its most memorable sequences.Concept art by Amy Beth Christenson (Credit: ILM & 20th Century Studios)Back to basicsThe seventh film in the Alien series, Alien: Romulus takes place between the events of the original film and Aliens (1986), and follows a group of young Weyland-Yutani colony workers eager to abscond to a better life. At the heart of Alien: Romulus are Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her adopted brother, Andy (David Jonsson), who just happens to be a kind-hearted but damaged robot. A chance at escape leads the crew to an abandoned spacecraft, but instead of freedom they find unexpected terrors including our old friend, the xenomorph.Romulus leans into the series horror roots and, from the beginning, lvarez and Sepulveda-Fauser were in alignment on how it all should look.From the get-go, from the day that I met him, one of the very first things that he said was, I dont want this thing to feel CG. I want this creature to feel real. If it doesnt feel real, its not going to be scary. So the goal was to get as many practical elements in camera as we could. Everything else that we needed to build in computer graphics had to work around that, and integrate into photography seamlessly. This would be a stark contrast to 2017s Alien: Covenant, the last film in the series, which relied heavily on digital effects and creatures. For Romulus, Legacy Effects was on board to handle the practical elements, with ILM and Weta FX creating the visual effects for various sequences.Director Fede lvarez. Photo by Murray Close. (Credit: 20th Century Studios)Under this ethos, the main challenge for Sepulveda-Fauser, as well as production visual effects supervisor Eric Barba, was matching ILMs visual effects to Legacys practical work; if they were successful, audiences would not be able to tell where one stopped and the other started. This includes not just creatures, but sets and starships. lvarez had the model shop create miniatures of the Corbelan ship, research center, and the EV, which Sepulveda-Fauser used to create digital replicas for the movie. The tricky part was keeping the character of a practical model in the close-ups, he notes.First and foremost, however, was bringing the xenomorph back to life.Bigger ChapWhen it came to realizing the xenomorph, Alien: Romulus used just about every trick in the book. There was a man-in-a-suit version, a bunraku puppet, and an electronic build. Scenes requiring more fluid movement, however, meant ILM would have to work its magic.The Legacy puppets are beautiful up close. They hold up really well. But as soon as we have to incorporate specific body movements, we have to jump in with visual effects, Sepulveda-Fauser says. When the xenomorph is in motion, we cant get a practical creature of that size to perform some of the movements required for an action sequence. In the elevator shaft sequence, for example, when hes getting shot or when he catches Rain or hes coming toward her, those scenes are a blend of our wide and medium close-ups with practical effects. We had to match the xenomorph model perfectly so we could have closeups cut between practical and CG.(Credit: 20th Century Studios)Still, Sepulveda-Fauser and his team took care not to overdo it, always looking at the original Big Chap, as the xenomorph was called during production of Alien, as a guide, as well as those in James Camerons Aliens for reference.Fede always said, I want this alien to be creepy. He didnt want over-exaggerated motion on the creature, Sepulveda-Fauser explains. His concern was that as soon as it moves too much or too fast, we take the audience out of the movie. We start feeling that CG on the screen. He wanted creepier movements. Thats why theres the slow crawling on the walls. The slower movements make it feel creepier, strange. The creature is doing something impossible its crawling on a wall yet we had to make it feel possible, ominous, and weird.Ultimately, having Legacys new builds proved to be the best reference.I mean, seeing a practical creature on set is inspiring. Youre seeing it under real, live conditions and in real action, he says. You see it and think, We know exactly what this xeno needs to look like, and we did. We replicated it as faithfully as we could to a real living creature.Facehugger strollOne of the more tense sequences of Alien: Romulus finds Rain, Andy, and friends tip-toeing through a frigid corridor, hoping to avoid the attention of the crafts resident Facehuggers. Throughout, the creepy crawlies move slowly, tapping their finger-like appendages, before finally becoming alert to their guests presence and launching a spine-tingling attack.Thats funny, because that sequence was shot in a couple of different spots, Sepulveda-Fauser notes. I shot a lot of that second unit, and that was in conjunction with some puppet work for the Facehuggers. There were Facehuggers that were set up in crates by the Weta puppeteers and the actors performed through the rest of the set imagining the CG huggers that we would fill in. When you look at that sequence, its a combination of, again, jumping from practicals to all CG. The Facehugger was another creature that we had to match absolutely perfectly.Animating the Facehuggers is one case where ILM broke a bit from the original films, feeling the creatures could use a bit more fluidity to satisfy Fedes vision.In some cases when we saw that action of the Facehugger on set, it was obvious that it was a puppet. Although that was desirable in many cases, after a while the director realized this sequence was not going to be super exciting with things on wheels rolling along chasing these guys, Sepulveda-Fauser says. So we had to work out different Hugger run cycles for the chase. That took some time and experimentation, because it needed to both look like a mechanical thing, so it could pass as practical, and also it needed to follow this very specific action that the director wanted. We went through tons and tons of experimentation on how to make that work and, finally, we landed on something that Fede was really happy with, because they still look like they could be animatronic. We always kept it to some grounded reality.The x-rayFeatured prominently in the movies trailer is a particularly disturbing scene: the crews pilot, Navarro, uses an x-ray wand to scan her own chest, and finds something alive inside. Its a clever spin on the series classic chestburster scenes of old and, to work, it had to look both believable and creepy.When the creature guys came on to do the chestburster, everybody was really excited because they were doing tests on the side and it was the first time we were seeing something so iconic to Alien in a scene, recalls Sepulveda-Fauser. It was a good feeling, Were going to do it like they did in the original. When Fede came up with the idea of the x-ray, it was even more exciting because weve never seen what this looks like from the inside. How exactly do we do that? So we digitally-built all of Navarros skeletal, muscular, circulatory structure, as well as organs. We researched the look of an x-ray, and we worked up the ideas in compositing, with animation to match the original puppet, broke some ribs, and popped it through. It was a quick moment but pretty neat.Considering its heavy use in promoting Alien: Romulus, I submit to Sepulveda-Fauser that this scene played a large role in getting fans new and old excited for the movie.It was a new take on the chestbuster and he made it terrifying in a different way, Sepulveda-Fauser says. I remember the original movie. You didnt know what was going to happen, then all of a sudden, blam! This guys on the table and the alien pops out of his chest and everybody in the audience goes bonkers. You couldnt do that again. If you recreate it, its not going to be as effective. So setting it up with Navarro, again feeling sick, you kind of know whats going to happen, but you actually dont know whats going to happen. The reveal of the creature from the inside was a great idea. That was the scary moment. Understanding this thing is ready to pop out. We werent repeating the original, were scaring you in a slightly different way, and I thought that was really cool.Zero-G journeyIn a movie filled with action set pieces, this might be the standout. Following a shootout with a xenomorph swarm, Rain must navigate from one end of a hall to another all in zero gravity while the creatures acid blood floats dangerously around her. Initially, however, it was meant to be a much smaller sequence.That was an interesting one because Fede had a really specific idea of what he wanted, explains Sepulveda-Fauser. In the beginning when we were first understanding the effect, it was a lot more subdued. It was going to be some alien blood in zero-g. But its a big action sequence and Rains had this big fight. There was a lot going on. The acid effect needed to have more character and quickly developed into, No, the acid is an actor in this scene. This is a very, very scary moment. Its got to be something else, it needs to be frightening, turbulent, its got to be an immediate danger that they cant pass. And it needs to perform with intensity and visual impact.To achieve the intensity of the redesigned sequence, Sepulveda-Fausers Sydney team worked closely with ILMs San Francisco studio.We worked hard with the team in San Francisco to put all this together, he says. There were a lot of requirements there. We were in zero-g, it needed to be terrifying, it needed to come toward our actors, to look impassable, but they still needed to be able to somehow make it through. We also needed a moving air current to affect the acid swirling in zero-g. So there was a lot of choreography needed. It took a lot of development and experimentation to get the recipe for realism so that it didnt feel magical as in a Harry Potter movie. It was easy to go into a fantasy world really quick with this effect. We finally came to a setup that I believe was successful, so that it sold the idea that this was possible as kind of a funnel of real acid happening within the set.Signing offThanks to the success of Alien: Romulus, now the highest-grossing horror film of the year, the future seems bright for the xenomorph and our favorite space horror franchise. Though its gratifying for Sepulveda-Fauser, the reward is in the work on-screen.It makes me really proud to say that the Sydney team put this together, Sepulveda-Fauser concludes. Im a little older now. Ive been at ILM for 20 years and in the industry for 30-plus years. A lot of the people that I worked with are of course a bit younger and very, very excited about what we do. To see that new generation of talent embracing traditional methods of filmmaking and adding to it is inspiring. This was one of those shows where youre looking back at film history, looking back at a historic movie, and having to produce something new that still touches back to that with fidelity. This team really put in a thousand percent to make that happen. We achieved something memorable, hopefully for the audiences but even more so for us as big fans. It was a difficult task and it was an easy thing to not get right. But the crew got it right. They worked so hard and put so much care and love into it, that it worked. I really am proud of this work. Its likely one of the best projects that Ive ever worked on.Dan Brooks is a writer who loves movies, comics, video games, and sports. A member of the Lucasfilm Online team for over a decade, Dan served as senior editor of both StarWars.com and Lucasfilm.com, and is a co-author of DK Publishings Star Wars Encyclopedia. Follow him on Instagram at @therealdanbrooks and X at @dan_brooks.