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We may earn a commission from links on this page.Late last month, Google launched the Pixel 10 and the Pixel 10 Pro. Theyre the latest big releases in the Android world, which might carry more weight given the muted response to the iPhone 17 from some corners of the internet. But even if you are thinking of making the move to a new operating system, I wouldnt recommend either flavor of Pixel 10 as your first port of call.Instead, I think the Pixel 9a is easily Googles best phone for almost everyone. Its technically got the Pixel 9 name, but its also Googles most recent budget variant, so its as current-generation as anything else. And while it does make some concessions to bring the price down, they're fairly minorand the device actually offers a few unique benefits of its own.You dont need the Pixel 10s AIBut what about all the fancy new Pixel 10 AI features? you might ask. I've tried both the base Pixel 10 and the Pixel 10 Pro, and heres the truth: You dont need them.Googles announcement for the Pixel 10 series went hard on AI, and its true that the search giant is ahead of Apple and other smartphone makers on this front. But even with its head start, its clearly starting to run into diminishing returns. Existing AI features like the Gemini assistant and the Screenshots app are available on the Pixel 9, but most of the Pixel 10 exclusives focus on the camera app, and I dont see most people sticking with any of them for long.Case in point: 100x zoom. This Pixel 10 Pro exclusive feature sounds handy on the surface, supposedly letting you zoom in by 100x while still getting hi-res photos in return. But in truth, it just uses the same blurry digital zoom as other phones, then runs your shots through an AI to try to fix them up. Its not really a reason to buy the Pixel 10 Proyou can now get a similar result by just posting a photo to Geminis free, browser-based AI image generator as a promptand it frequently served me up photos with dreamy, unreal imagery that I wouldnt feel comfortable posting. Just look what it did to my beloved Chrysler Building, and ask yourself if you would want to take a photo of a famous landmark only to get back a half-melted bizarro version instead. If you ask me, it's firmly in the realm of novelty, at best. Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt I had a similar reaction to the other big camera AI developments this year, like using Gemini to edit photos or getting an AI to coach you while trying to frame a shot. Gemini image editing, which lets you use natural language to alter your photos, is handy, but also wrests control from you, and doesnt tell you when its doing a simple job like a crop versus a more hallucination-prone one like generative fill. You can check the metadata of your new photo to know for sure, but frankly, the results arent good enough to be worth the time for me. Photos taken on the Pixel 10 (left) vs. those same photos edited by Gemini (right) Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt The same is true of Camera Coach, which uses AI to help you take shots. This has the benefit of not actively putting AI imagery into your photo, but the advice it gave me was rarely more complex than, make sure the subject is in frame and follow the grid lines the previous generation Pixels could already put on your phone for you anyway. Its mostly unobtrusiveeven when youre using Camera Coach, you can take your final shot wheneverbut its so inconsequential that I doubt most people will even take the extra time needed to boot it up.To Googles credit, there are a few AI additions unrelated to the camera that sound a bit more handy, like Magic Cue and Voice Translate. But youre unlikely to run into these often. Magic Cue will use AI to pull information from Google apps like your Gmail to display when it might be relevant in other Google apps, like a phone call. For instance, it could display a boarding pass from an upcoming flight while youre calling to check on it. But it doesnt work with third-party apps, and since thats how I use my phone most of the time, I actually didnt see it pop up while I was testing either the Pixel 10 or Pixel 10 Pro.I also didnt get Voice Translate to work during my testing. This uses AI to translate both your voice and the person youre callings voice if youre speaking to each other in different languages, using what sounded like some pretty impressive voice cloning during its Made by Google demo. But it also needs both callers to have a Pixel 10, and since you cant count on having a lot of multilingual friends that all use the same phone, that means it won't be much more than a tech demo for most people.Basically, Googles new AI makes big claims, but the features are either so niche or so unreliable that they aren't a major selling point save for a very specific type of user. It could be fun to toy with, but is it $300 to $500 worth of fun?The Camera is thinner and not much weakerBut even if the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro arent worth it on their AI alone, the hardware still gets a bump, right? Well, in the case of the base Pixel 10, it actually got a little worse in one specific way, putting it in range of the Pixel 9a.One of the things I dislike most about Googles Pixel phones is the camera bar, which is the long horizontal bump across the entire top width of the device. This houses the camera sensor, but personally, Id much prefer a weaker camera thats flush with the device instead. Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt With the Pixel 9a, Google granted my wish. This phone is the first Pixel in a long time to omit the camera bar, instead putting a single and much thinner pill in one corner of the device and leaving it at that. With the camera bar returning on both the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro, that alone makes the Pixel 9a worth considering as an alternative to me.And the best part? The smaller camera on the Pixel 9a isnt actually any weaker than the camera on the base Pixel 10. Its just missing a lens.Yep, while Google added a new telephoto lens to the Pixel 10 that allows it an up to 5x optical zoom, it also downgraded that phones ultrawide lens down from 48MP to 13MP, which is the same as on the Pixel 9a. And because both phones also have the same main lens, that means for everything but zoomed shots, you dont lose anything by going with Googles budget phone. A close up photo taken on the Pixel 9a Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt To be fair, the Pixel 10 Pro is stronger than both phones on all fronts, but Id argue thats overkill for most users. If you never or rarely touch the zoom lens on your camera, whether to zoom in or out, youll actually get a similar experience across all three devices. So why pay more? Especially when the Pixel 9as camera is so much sleeker. If youre a casual photographer, it could give you the same results, while taking up less space. A hidden upgrade.Better battery life and a smooth OLED displayIf the Pixel 9as camera is arguably on par with the more expensive Pixel 10 phones, then its battery life just straight up surpasses them. Packing a 5,100 mAh capacity, it puts both the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro to shame. To put that into more everyday terms, Google promises 30 hours of battery life on the 9a, but only 24 hours of battery life on either Pixel 10 model.That held up in my testing. While the Pixel 10 died after about 18 hours of watching a video at 50% brightness (my standard test), the Pixel 9a was only a little under 50% capacity at the same time. And it was actually closer to half capacity when the Pixel 10 Pro died, which was after 16 hours of viewing. I actually havent had a full day to dedicate to draining this thing yet, but I assume thats what it would take based on my tests, which easily puts the other Pixels to shame.Granted, 50% brightness on the Pixel 9a isnt quite as bright as on the other phones, since it only hits 2,700 nits of peak brightness as opposed to 3,000 nits on the Pixel 10 and 3,300 nits on the Pixel 10 Pro. But 2,700 nits is still plenty brightthe iPhone 16 maxes out at 2,000 nits. And on all other fronts, the display doesnt compromise: The Pixel 9a has the exact same size (6.3-inches) and resolution (1,080 x 2,424) as the Pixel 10, and also works with Smooth Display for a responsive 120Hz refresh rate. Its even an OLED, so youre not making any compromises by going cheaper here.Half the cost of a Pixel 10 ProPerhaps the biggest reason to opt for a Pixel 9a over a Pixel 10 is the same reason it was worth it compared to the other Pixel 9sits just cheaper.While the Pixel 10 starts at $799 and the Pixel 10 Pro starts at $999, the Pixel 9a is a mere $500. Given how closely it compared to even Googles current-generation flagships, thats a heck of a deal. And that doesnt even come with any cuts to storage space, since both the Pixel 9a and all models of the Pixel 10 Pro begin with 128GB of storage. The cost to upgrade storage is also the same herea simple $100 markupalthough the Pixel 10 Pro does uniquely offer capacities over 256GB.I'll miss Pixelsnap, but the Pixel 10a is probably months awayIve been pretty high on the Pixel 9a so far, but I will make one concessionit doesnt have PixelSnap, and I will miss that.While the iPhone has had MagSafe since the iPhone 12, it took until this year for the Pixel to get its own version. Called Pixelsnap, it allows you to magnetically connect your phone right to compatible accessories and chargers on their own, with no need for cables or adhesive metal circles. The Pixel 10 resting on a Pixelsnap Carger with Stand Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt I wont lie, its convenient. It works with Qi2 charging for faster wireless top-offs, and while Google has its own official Pixelsnap accessories, it also worked fine with my Belkin iPhone charger, as well as a third-party MagSafe wallet I bought for my iPhone.Id miss that convenience by opting for the Pixel 9a instead of the Pixel 10, but I dont know if Id miss it enough to spend another $300 to $500. If there's one reason to get a Pixel 10 model phone instead of a Pixel 9a, I think this would be it.But what about the Pixel 10a?As it did with the 9a, Google is sure to release a budget version of the Pixel 10 series down the line, and at that point, this article will probably become irrelevant. Granted, its not guaranteed to have Pixelsnap, but given how close the 9a already is to the 10, I bet it willitll be an easy way to set the 10a apart from its predecessor.However, the 9a didnt come out until this April, and you can bet the 10a will follow a similar pattern. That means waiting over half a year from now, and frankly, I dont like to prognosticate quite that much. Better tech is always on the horizon, but when making purchasing decisions, we have to live in the here and now. And right now, the Pixel 9a is still the best Google phone for most people.

Another day, another adorable game that I've become completely obsessed with. I came across Roly-Pony this weekend during a particularly soul-sucking bout of doomscrolling, and it's turned out to be the perfect little temporary respite from the horrors. (Shoutout to Alice Ruppert of The Mane Quest for always keeping us informed about the latest in horse games).Roly-Pony is a Suika-style game, meaning it involves dropping and stacking round objects in order to create matching pairs that combine to become different, bigger objects. That'll also clear up space on the board in the process, which is important because, similar to Tetris, you can't allow the objects to pile too high. In this case, you start with horse treats and keep building on them until you've unlocked a bunch of different horses. It's very simple and very cute, with peaceful music going in the background and a lot of little details that people who love horses will really appreciate.The game is free and playable on both the web and mobile, with a leaderboard so you can see how you rank. I naively thought I would just quickly check this game out (because, horses) and move on after a few minutes, but have instead spent hours this weekend trying to crack the top 10. I've now got it bookmarked on both my laptop and my phone, so at this point there's no end in sight. Roly-Pony is free, but there's an option to send a few dollars the developers' way on itch.io if you want to support their work.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/this-horse-themed-browser-puzzle-game-is-an-absolute-delight-and-i-cant-stop-playing-it-214313395.html?src=rss

Choose between automatic and guided manual modes, with a menu of 15 hot and cold drinks.

AI-powered humanoid robots are being rolled out across different industries, with some in the industry saying widespread adoption is here.

An excerpt from issue #38 of befores & afters magazine. Towards the end of Thunderbolts*, the heroes find themselves inside the memory of Bobs (Lewis Pullman) initial experimentation in a Malaysian lab. Here Bob ultimately confronts his alter ego. The Void initially restricts the Thunderbolts from helping Bob, until Yelena (Florence Pugh) is able to break free, parkouring her way through a crumbling lab, before she and the rest of the team eventually help Bob to subdue the Void.The parkour aspect of the sequence, in which Yelena jumps, twists and turns through various obstacles as the lab is crumbling around her, came late in production. It was designed to showcase the close relationship between Yelena and Bob. In additional photography, Pugh performed many of the ins and outs of the parkour moves, with stunt coordinator Heidi Moneymaker carrying out the stunt moves.We would have static pieces of lab equipment or falling building pieces for Heidi to touch or spin off, advises visual effects supervisor Jake Morrison. That gave us a connection point just to make sure that it didnt feel weightless. Anytime where she reaches down and does a fulcrum push, that thing was there. Its just that we eventually made those pieces CG and animated them through the connection points for each moment.Framestore took on the sequence, including adding to the chaos of the lab breaking apart. When they made the sequence a little bigger, outlines Framestore visual effects supervisor Mat Krentz, our brief turned into recreating the lab as a fully CG environment. Not only that, the lab had to grow, it had to expand, and things had to be moving around, with glass breaking and shattering and ceiling cracking and floor opening. We had to cut all the actors out and put them inside, and then also do some digi-double replacements for some shots. Meanwhile, all the props inside the lab were glass, so it was glass on glass!The cracking roof proved to be one of Framestores trickiest moments, says Krentz. We started animating it directionally so that it felt like it was coming from Bob and Void, as in, growing outwards. Jake Schreier ultimately wanted it to feel more ambient in the end and more connected to Bobs punches on Void. So, we had FX animating the cracks based off of the timing of when Bob was punching. It gave us this really cool effect as if the whole room was reacting to Void getting beaten up.The Bob and the Void fight ends with Bob eventually getting the upper hand and sitting on top of Void and punching him. Here, Framestore gave Pullman as the Void the shadow treatment, matching to what ILM had achieved earlier. The studio tested the shadow look first with a 3D version of the Void and then settled on a comp treatment of footage of the actor. Says Krentz: It had to be very, very, very specific about getting rid of all of the details in the shadows of him. You would see a tiny bit of detail in his key light from the practical lighting, and then we would basically compress everything off of that range. A lot of times wed sculpt in some mouth movement, because that was some detail we really wanted to retain. We would roto in shapes and we would do different projections for trying to retain detail in his eyes.The Thunderbolts are initially held back against the lab wall by objects that the Void has pinned or twisted around them. On set, stand-in objects were used and then replaced with CG versions by Framestore. We came up with a lot of the looks for these objects, like the top of a chair pinning down Yelena and Red Guardian. We animated those to pin them, and then there were some effects like dust and debris added to the connecting points to make it feel like they were fighting against them but it was holding them back.For the Yelena parkour moments, Framestores animation team timed out the whole sequence from a third perspective camera to match to the characters run and jumps. Then we animated the props coming through and matched to her jumping off them, details Krentz. So much of it was Florence, and then it was also stunt work, so we worked with Rising Sun Pictures which did most of the face replacements. There were also one or two shots with a full digi-double takeover.During the fight, the Void starts taking over Bobs body through shadow. Again, discusses Krentz, we looked at ILMs treatment of the New York shadow growth and took that as inspiration. We had all the match moves of Lewis doing all the punching. It was a comp treatment, but with 3D match move treatment. We would run noise patterns that mimicked that shadow growth look as he was doing the punching, and we progressed it throughout the sequence to make it feel like it was growing around his neck. It stops just as Yelena comes and grabs him and then starts receding.Ultimately, the visual effects in Thunderbolts* serve as the films invisible backboneseamlessly blending spectacle with story to bring its darker, character-driven world to life. Overall, the picture was a very different experience for me, comments Morrison. The look, the feel and the vibe was the opposite of my last few movies which have been expansive cosmic spectacles. Being challenged to integrate the VFX to the level that the audience genuinely just believe all this happened and subconsciously dont question that is a very different aesthetic to the buckle-up and look at this world building that Im used to.Morrison praises director Jake Schreier and the entire filmmaking team in how they collaborated with VFX on the film. The Heads of Department that Jake collected were truly wonderful to work with and Jakes extreme preparation, storyboarding and consistent vision made sure that each and every department worked together seamlessly to find creative solutions to his requests. As a production VFX supervisor its often hard to explain to people that during the prep stage VFX is often there as a discussion rather than an outright necessity and sometimes just being in a position to point out to the key crew that the old-school techniques are just as good as the new-school ones forces everyone to up their game. We should only rely on VFX to do the things that cannot be done for practical reasons.That said, adds Morrison, this film challenged our vendors in so many different ways but the thousands of artists on the show rose to the challenge and I couldnt be more proud of the final product and thankful to our wonderful worldwide VFX family.You can now get the Thunderbolts* issue of the mag!The post How those Florence Pugh parkour scenes were made in Thunderbolts* appeared first on befores & afters.

Animator Weilin Zhang (Jujutsu Kaisen, Mob Psycho 100) has started a new interview series with fellow animators, and we are honored to bring them to Cara! The concept of this zine will be a serialized interview of many different animators I know, where I ask them about reasonably esoteric things on the craft of animation seldom spoken about in public discourse.I think there is a lacking amount of depth in the educational material available to animators on the internet, particularly in English-speaking communities, so this is in hopes of supplementing that pool of information. Introductions: Spencer Wan Spencer Wan is an animator known for his work on Castlevania (2017); The Owl House (2020); and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023). He is the founder and director of Studio Grackle, the studio responsible for the trailer of Hades (2018) by Supergiant Games. Weilin Zhang on Spencer Wan:Spencer Wan is one of the most "complete" animators that I know. I can elaborate on what I mean by admitting that it's kind of hard to encapsulate his body of work with a word more specific than ingenuity. In every department he's ever handled (there's a lot), he's always managed to pick up his own ideas and solutions. I felt that very early on when I came across his tumblr page in 2016. His style in terms of animation and illustration was something I had never seen before among the animators I had known during that time. Every aspect, from the color palette of his backgrounds, to the timing his of animation was new to me and still kind of exists in it's own compartment in my head... but that was just his work as a student and a freelancer. Since then, he's worn more hats on the productions he's been on and his new tricks now are starting to solve logistical problems to do with animation itself. Did you know his lightning animation on The Owl House looked the way it did to work with TV regulations to do with epilepsy? His body of work speaks on all aspects of animation, because he is kind of just proficient in every aspect of the craft. Introductions: WEILIN-ZINENice to meet you, My name is Jerry and I'm your interiew host for the glorious WEILIN-ZINE! Im conducting these interviews in the hopes of one day having a Great Forest of Knowledge for the next generation of animators to grow with. I love animation and I want there to be more animation in the future! More and if possible, better than ever before! So that the next-next generation can grow up with even better animation! And then they'll make even betterBETTER animation!!11!1! Please spread this interview far and wide so that generations of aspiring artists can enjoy these interviews!!!!Jerry Nguyen, host & interviewer, WEILIN-ZINE Interview with Spencer Wan6/23/2024~7/12/2024Jerry Nguyen: you know, I feel like growing up and talking to animators of different levels of experience one of the correlations that surprised me at first was that even an animator's tastes in the kinds of animation they like change. So much so I think I can almost guess what an animator likes more accurately by factoring their experience.I'd like to ask you if you still remember what "good" animation looked like to you when you were youngerI think animators that are just starting out, particularly younger animators, have a very specific and pointed preference in animation that they think IS goodSpencer Wan: Well I remember back then I was really attracted to simplicity. I used to get seriously put off by the use of heavy shadows and highlights, so I gravitated toward Norio Matsumotos animation because hed intentionally excluded shadows where other animators would assume it was expected.Like back then it took me a while to see value in some of the best animation out there. I remember I turned my nose up at both Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion because the styles were too detailed for what I was interested in.And when it came to the movement I really liked when things moved in a way I didnt expect.Like it couldve been the best looking hand drawn 3D rotation in the world and I would not have cared. I wanted to be surprised.This was all before I had the vocabulary or knew any of the animators names though. I just knew something about it was getting to meJN: you know I think the fact that he doesn't draw shadows really affects how he puts down black lines. Especially in fabric, I think there is always an extreme frustration where not putting down a line for a fold feels like too little, but putting down a black line is way too harsh, and so as an in between we'll use shadows to record those forms in the drawing. Norio Matsumoto I think excelled at visualizing the balance of his drawings when it was finished as a cel rather than the drawing he put down on the animation paper itselfSW: You know I dont think I ever really thought of it that way. I think for me it was like the drawings already sing without shadows and adding any more to it just felt like muddying it up.I remember when that internal shadow trend started for clothing and it never really landed with meJN: ohhhh, now that you say out loud I guess that was a trendactually, it's funny cause now you ended up bringing back a lot of those heavy black shadows for the Hades trailers and before that also in the Invader Zim Opening.I guess I might suspect that some of it is just a result of the artstyle of the projects themselves, but it looks like you've worked your style around it so I'm wondering if that opinion aged somewhat until nowSW: Well I more meant like specifically the use of only shadow for the interior of cloth. Like I remember thinking everyone was trying to copy that one Yutaka Nakamura scene from Space DandyThe black shadows I used on those projects were mostly just because the Zim one was supposed to look edgy and Hades already had those shadows in the styleAlthough I think it is kind of what my hand naturally wants to do nowId rather do like black shadows than have actual shadows hahaLike if you left it up to me Id only use shadow to show rim light or have one of those ones where it cuts diagonally across the character to make it moodierI love that shitJN: I love that shit too, honestly a lot of the web gen animators who joined around the 2010s feel similarly hahaI think with the Nakamura trend, people had never seen someone animate high fidelity fabric shading that emulated realism like that before. I reckon most people thought it was borderline impossible until he started to do itI think there's something interesting about your threshold for what counts as muddy, the fact that shadows seems to so clearly step over that line. You would think that shadows might be a bare minimum requirement of detail considering how it's basically everywhere in real lifeSW: I guess so, but Im really never aiming to make something look like real life in my workIve only ever wanted to make it look like animation.I dont know, theres a balance in my head that just gets ruined when you start throwing shadow everywhere.And you know, its a lot faster to draw without it, so win winJN: when you conceive of the thing your gonna draw, does it just start as a drawing rather than something like a real subject that you might have to perform the abstraction of in your head?SW: Yeah thats exactly it. I picture a drawing.I mean if Im drawing a real subject then Im going to picture reality, but if Im drawing an animated character then I picture an animated characterI just dont do much realism these days. No one pays me for thatIt used to be I couldnt make the drawings in my head so Id just let my hand run wild, but eventually my skill caught up to what was in my mind. Spencer Wan - SpiderPunk JN: well, lord knows you'd shake the earth if someone did. I still think about that spiderpunk testSW: That one was so hard for me to conceiveWe only had like a few early concepts for the character and they gave me some punk rock poster reference and said make it as crazy as you possibly canI couldnt come up with anything crazier than the style changing every single drawingBut it was like I had to conceive a new thing every time before moving on to the next drawing. I didnt want it to look like it was just changing color. It had to like feel like it was changing styles even if you couldnt see every single oneAnd I wanted to mimic the haphazard collage nature of early punk rock posters so I also had to collage everything togetherMy file crashed so many timesJN: I feel like I saw like 10 new illustration techniques that you've never done before in just that one animation.SW: Yeah I also was bad at them!I was like god damn Im not creative enough for this. I wanted structure back so badlyIf that test had been any longer I wouldve totally run out of ideasJN: so that was all stuff you figured out on the assignmentI legitimately thought you just have used techniques like that before on pieces I just haven't seen yetSW: Yeah I just looked at the posters and tried to recreate the techniques for some of themJN: crazySW: Like okay I can tell this was printed with a printer that was like straight up out of toner, but I have to do it on a computer soStreaky splatter texture subtract layer? I dunnoAnd then I ran out of poster techniques so I just grabbed anything that came to mindLike a spiderman Halloween maskJust slap that in there onceIts relevantI think they actually also did that in the movie on their own, but on MilesJN: This is such a strange reoccuring thing where you frequently lament that you don't possess this creative energyis there someone/something that you might look to as a foil to you in this regard??I can personally attest that I've tried to do some of the rendering styles in even just one frame of that test and I couldn't figure it outlike even the fact that you could identify that this one effect was a printer with no toner I feel like requires a degree of experience with printingSW: Well I used to play around with that stuff a lot more when I was youngerAnd thanks, but I never felt like I was really getting anywhere with any of those styles. It was like that feeling of trying to recreate a style but never quite getting there, only it happened to me a few dozen timesJN: I mean where would you liked to have gotten to?SW: Anything closer to the look they created just by experimentingIt never felt like I got that authenticityJN: hmmm, and for Spiderpunk structure was the thing was distracting you from that stuff?SW: Well I'm used to structure. Usually in production the quality of your work is measured by how well you met the director's vision and how well you stay on model. I'm used to doing that, but here they were telling me to just go off on my own and smack it as hard as I could with every creative tool available to meActually I struggled a lot with that on that production because any time I got Joaquim's boards I had a hard time moving away from themIt was like okay, I don't wanna mess this up, so I'd do a very literal interpretation where I'd be careful to keep everything he put into it in placeAnd then we'd get to review and they'd be like can you do this again but mess it upJN: When you went and messed it up did it go through?SW: Basically yeahJN: sounds like you really have to like strain yourself to do this other thing they were asking you to do hahaSW: Well it's just difficult when you get a storyboard that's detailed. It's like it's telling you you MUST do it like this.JN: Animatics do tend to be pretty compelling to work withI guess you've never really worked off of a comic panel storyboard aside from when you worked with Chengxi Huang rightEven he would do animatics and his panels had a specific blocking to them though, not sure if that dampened the effect storyboards have for youSW: Youre forgetting we both worked on that Carol and Tuesday thing a while backIts not the timing that gets in my way. Its the drawingsWith Chengxi its fine because I can more or less just use his poses and Im pretty sure hed want it that way anywayAnd I think on a TV production Joaquim wouldve been happy with that tooBut we were on a feature together and I was supposed to be trying to invent things every time I made a testOr at least it felt that way. Apparently it feels that way for a lot of people in featureJN: yea I did forget we were on that together actually, my badIf it was the drawings that tied you down then would crappier drawings have liberated you or just further confused you. You know how like there are those panels of essentially stick figures sometimes in some storyboardsSW: Actually yeah. As long as I can tell whats going on I usually prefer crappy drawings. Or at least thats what lets me exercise the most creativityJN: I think this is kind of a really funny topic that kind of worthwhile to get into, the idea that you, me, and probably a lot of animators might prefer shittier drawings in some scenarios.There's been a few other pieces of your answer that I think warrant revisiting, and if it's alright I want to backtrack through this conversation back up to the opening question to kind of tie it back up in order to continue discussing that very first answer"Crappy" is obviously reductive from my part, but I think more specifically I really prefer drawings that are sprawling and suggestive rather than simple and discreet, if I had to say.Im not sure if this is how you would describe what you're imagining when I say "crappy" though. what would you say?SW: I would just say anything that isnt trying to demand I draw the scene an exact wayPast that it doesnt really matter much to me. It can be suggestive or gestural or just a quick scribble because someone ran out of timeAs long as its giving me permission to ignore how its drawn, then thats enoughA storyboard is supposed to be an idea anyway, not a layout guideI get it though, I mean in America thats whats expected nowJN: It'll probably be gradual but if American storyboard artists had better pipeline with the animators (which I think is where it's trending) we might see animatics gravitate in that directionSW: That would be great, except were rapidly barreling in the other directionJN: still?SW: Thats what I see anywayJN: how do you figure with Flying Bark?SW: I mean Flying Bark is a great studio and has a ton of talent.And it hasnt stopped American storyboard artists from jamming their boards full of unnecessary poses even knowing that theyll be able to to a good job with itPart of that is on the higher ups for expecting that sort of thing, but part of it is on the artists for creating that expectation in the first placeAnd like, thats not going to make a lick of difference if you have the animators at flying bark working for you. Theyre going to do good work regardlessBut I bet its annoying for them to have to use every single pose in those storyboardsJN: I'd bet on that too. I think they should just convert half of the American board team into just animators haha, feel like most of them wish they could animateI always suspected that might have been why they feel the need to put out such over-realized animaticsat least part of why*SW: Im certain most of them could animate. Ive tried to encourage that but I almost never see people take the plungeI think they WANT to animateI think theyre afraid of job securityYoud have to be pretty insane to pick animation over storyboarding in America if you were thinking about moneyI mean, when I first started, there were hardly even any jobs for animators hereIts wild to see those start to creep back inJN: feels pretty great. Personally speaking everytime I've had to work on an animatic like that I have always thought "why don't you just get the board artist to just animate this".I'd claim that animatics like that hold back the potential of the entire pipeline if you have talent like Flying Bark.the animatics really force the hand of the animators to produce extremely snappy, darting motion because that's pretty much all you can afford to do while still stringing together the poses in each sceneparticularly when there are that* many panelsSW: You know if theres a sheet timer involved the animators that get that are forced to use all of those poses too. They dont get a choiceI think its probably different for Flying Bark since they work entirely digitally, but Im speculatingBut yeah Id agree with you. If you made me use all of those poses it would seriously hold back my workLuckily Ive never been contractually obligated to. I would cut poses all the time and no one was ever the wiserJN: yea, I have also been very fortunate to bend rules and get away with itfirst time hearing about a sheet timerSW: So when America started outsourcing animation to South Korea, they needed a way to communicate the timing of the animatic and the lip sync to the animators thereSo some old animation people became sheet timers who write this episode long x sheets that include all that info including compositing directionIm summarizing a lot here, but thats basically how it wentAnd the sheet timers are ancient now. They dont really train new sheet timers. Every sheet timer Ive met has been in their 60s at leastBut as an animator on one of these productions, you just get your section of x sheet that pertains to your scene and all the timing and posing has already been decided for youYou basically just make it on model and add breakdownsSo now picture youre handed a scene where the storyboarder chose to draw over a dozen poses and they didnt understand animationYou can see how frustrating that would beMost of the union productions Ive been on call them scenes by the way, not cutsJN: just sounds like all of America's pipeline problems are concessions to having to make overseas outsourcing work yet againScene lengths are also getting tighter and tighter too,,It's honestly kind of crazy how much your work is shaped by how long a scene is. I've had to forego so many ideas, probably like at least half, just because that specific cut was 6-10 frames too shortas a specific example, it is impossible to animate the kind of floating, weighty quality that you find in old Disney or Satoru Utsunomiya, or Hashimoto these days unless you break the time length pretty egregiouslySW: Well traditionally the scene length is decided by the editors and not by the storyboardersThe editors are actually in a different union so they really dont like it if artists branch over into timingThe union I mean, not the editors specificallyBut yeah, in American animation they tend to cut much faster. Its just whats taughtPeople always said that my scene lengths were super longJN: I dont think I would have ever thought that would be a factor in thiswait then who comes first in the pipeliine, the storyboard artist or the editor??SW: The storyboard artist does. Then it gets passed to an animatic editor who times itBut these days we have a lot of board artists timing their own animatics before the editor ever get itJN: that pipeline seems to make a lot more sense when I remember that until recently storyboards were ostensibly comic stripsSW: I mean, they still are. No matter how you look at it its an animaticPeople are just conflating them because the storyboarders still identify as storyboarders and so when they post their work on the internet they say these are my boardsI think Ive done the same thing actuallyJN: right, I mean just to clarify I meant that having editors time out the scene made a lot more sense if they were given storyboards drawn on those thumbnail blocks where either there wasn't any time written down or the timing was still pretty broad and estimatedactually, I think they do that in Japan because they still use konte pagesSW: Id kill to have someone time my storyboardsSo much work I wouldnt need to doJN: wow are you sure?sounds like it could demand a lot of correspondence to get it rightSW: I feel like it would be more a matter of just directing the timing situationally, but yeah overall I dont think I need to have full control over thatJN: interressttinnggggSW: I see you forming opinions about me over thereBut you should KNOW this about me by nowI dont need full control when I directJN: I just mean it gives me something to consider about my own preferencesnot sure I have considered the opportunity to delegate handling that beforeSW: Well if you find a good animatic editor to work with let me know hahaJN: ...you know what? I will consider it it, I might have some candidates in mindSW: I mean Ill probably keep timing these smaller projects, but for a full 22 minute episode Id be very eager to hand that offId be eager to hand off the storyboards too, for the most partJN: give it to meeeeeeSW: DealJN: alright, well I think the other thing that I really wanted to talk about with you that you had mentioned earlier was about how you picture things in your head. Im going to be honest this might straight up torpedo this interview because this is probably way too subjective to really reliably converge on the same definitions but let's fuck around and find outParticularly I think it's interesting that you sometimes just start from a drawing if it's what your work asks of youbut over the last few days I sort of started to check with myself if I might also do that I think I do too. And if I had to guess the reason I can do that probably more than anything has to do with sheer amount of "drawings" I've looked at in my lifeIt's kind of* weird but like at some point the drawings you see sort of "are real" much like the buildings and people you see are "real" in the way that they occupy your surroundingsSW: You sure about that? You havent been able to see them since you were a kid?JN: you know I really don't knowI could remember cartoons that I had seen, but when I drew it was always beginning from imagining what the real thing wasand then working it downit wasn't until my teenage years where I started to emulate artists that I could begin to start with a "cartoonized" imagefrankly when I started to emulate Nakaya Onsen it was probably the most palpable moment where I could do thatI always had trouble with configuring the ribcage and pelvis, but when I started to emulate the way Nakaya Onsen drew, I literally started to be able to draw anything I wanted to some extentSW: You bathed in the knowledge of the Nakaya OnsenJN: more real than you can imagineit was like discovering a cheat codeSW: It was a little different for me. I was always able to picture cartoons since I was very youngEmulating other artists for me was more about training my handsI remember I used to like overlay them on my vision and watch them doing things in whatever room I was inJN: seriously??you'd have to be able to like transpose their proportions according to perspective and everythingSW: I can assure you it wasnt an active effortJN: could you like modulate what the cartoon looked like?for example if you imagine like a spectrum of cartoon to realistic, could you have slid down that spectrum all the way to realistic?SW: Mmm probably not back thenAnd at some point I stopped doing it because people thought it was weird Id just be staring offI just figured its something everyone didOr could doJN: lmfao, how old until you found outSW: I mean I think I just found out nowI havent thought about that in a long timeIts not like I ever talked about itJN: well, in that case. Since it seems like I might infer that realism was something you* trained your mind to be able to visualizeI kind of want to ask if this was also true with respect to motionI mean did the cartoons you imagined move in a specific way..?SW: It was so long ago now. I think they just moved like cartoons Id see on TV back then JN: Sorry about the long silence here, on the other hand the time gave me ample time to mull on your answersI think where our last conversation ended off I was very interested in how drawing and more interestingly consuming animation might have expanded the sensitivity of your visual imaginationyou know how like people who are very into music are extremely sensitive to the texture of certain sounds, or even how people who have a wider vocabulary to describe different hues allegedly appear to be much more sensitive to subtle hue changes?I think stuff like this is well understood in the visual sphere for static images, like how people are able to describe a painting or a photo in terms of hue, lighting, brushwork, composition etcbut I dont think in terms of animation Ive ever really come across the same level of vividness. I know at least for me watching animation has given me the capabilities to picture differences in my head that I dont really have the words to describe. I think Norio Matsumoto is a landmark example for me personally, specifically the way he animates acrobatic mid-length scenesand I think it has a little bit to do with the way he modulates his frame ratesSo I just first wanted to confirm with you if youve also experienced this thing where looking at so much animation has expanded your sensitivity with regards to movementI know Ive asked you before and heard you lament about the fact that at your current stage youre much more affected by lower framerate animation to the point where itd steer you into wanting to* make your animations smoother than you otherwise would have because the choppiness in your own work would bother you otherwise.SW: Ahh yes. My Richard Williams syndromeNorio Matsumoto totally still does it for me though. Im much more sensitive to it in my own workOr in the work of animators Im directingIm a lot less bothered if its not related to my work at allI can MAKE myself be bothered, but why would I?If Im watching someone elses work Id rather try and turn the criticism off and try to enjoy itJN: Before you start animating a scene do you imagine it in your head first?SW: I do, yeah.I usually do some thumbnails of whats in my head and then move on to storyboardsJN: does it work kind of like what we talked about earlier where you kind of imagine directly the kind of movement you need rather than starting from a realistic version and then caricaturizing it?SW: Yup! Theres really no realism involved in the way I workJN: How'd that look like?? Were you able to like imagine the individual frames or did you imagine like a video playingSW: I mean were getting back to the thing where I could just see characters whenever I wantedJust, these days I do it all in my headJN: yea, I guess I'm just trying to figure out what the boundaries of it are if there are anyI came across Shingo Yamashita's old web diary one time and he mentioned how he thinks in Japan, there's 2 ways of animating. 1 is you plan the scene as a series of still frames that the scene transitions through. 2 is you imagine a film being played and you sort of pause the film in your head every 1/12th of a second or so and draw that still frameand I guess I'm curious if you have something like this going on where you might feel you fall closer to either side of this dichotomySW: Maybe closer to the second one. Its just not a film for me. I didnt watch too much film or grow up studying film, so my understanding of drawing doesnt come from thereIm just grasping at a scene I can be inJN: Sure, sorry I just mean video not necessarily live actionSW: Right, no I get itBut for me I picture the entire spaceI guess itd be less like a film and more like a 3D software?Im sure its not super uncommon to be able to just live in the space in your headJN: yea probably notSW: When I do my thumbnails youll usually see me redraw the same idea from a few different angles and then I just cut the things that dont work for meThose basically become my beats and then I use film rules to figure out how to connect themJN: so you have like a 3D sim of the whole scene in your head as you thumbnailSW: For lack of a better analogy, yeahI can look at it top down or from below, or I guess from any angle I want toThe one thing I cant do is change the camera lensI have to figure out focal length through experimentingJN: okay that's fucking interestingSW: Cause its not a camera for me, its the focal length of my eyeballJN: hmmm I mean it's kind of bizarre you can sort of frame step things because that's also something that your eyeballs can't doat least Im not confident that your brain processes things in frame ratesbut things* like smears and blurs do eyes to us...SW: Well Im not exactly frame stepping or whateverIts more like super smash brosJN: uhhhhhSW: Like you can pauseAnd move the camera aroundI did that all the time as a kidJN: I seeeeSW: And my pose to pose in animation also comes from experience. I used to only use straight aheadJN: I guess then if your imagination works like that one of the things i can imagine you having to adjust to is getting a sense for how long 1/12th or 1/24th or 1/8th of a second feels like in your imaginationSW: Well, actually I figure all that out laterLike I can make it faster or slower, but whats the pointYou knew right? I draw all my animation before timing it outJN: I didn't know that actuallySW: Oh. Maybe we never talked about thatI draw the entire thing on 1sAnd then I pick my timing laterMy brain naturally times things on 3s for 24fps, so I usually start by making the whole thing 6sAnd then I make it 8s for slower, 4s for fasterAnd if it felt right at 3s it just stays a 6The 3s thing is just because of how I developed. I used to animate almost exclusively on 3sJN: fascinatingcause if the poses look right it doesn't really matter how the timings differ it'll only change the pace at which the movements occur huhSW: ExactlyJN: if you play a video at 0.5x it still looks reaalisticSW: One day I was just like why am I starting and stopping drawing when its just gonna end up on 3s anywayI could just continue drawing without breaking my flow and worry about the rest laterIf your spacing is good your timing really becomes secondaryJN: I used to time it out as i drew so that as I flipped I could get a better sense of the timing of the whole animation so I could be better informed on how to decide the spacing for the next frame I was gonna drawI since abandoned it and animate like what you are describing nowSW: I think you just naturally end up here eventuallyThe old school style is to use the x sheet to time your drawings so it makes senseJN: rightthe other thing I was curious about is when you go to animate a scene how do you figure out whether to use animation camera illusions like background slide vs an actual camera over the canvasSW: Oh, that?Its usually just whether the characters feet are onscreenWith some exception but it ends up that way 90% of the timeA background slide is always a better option for production so I favor that whenever I canJN: so that doesnt occur to you in imagination it's just something you work out after you're done with that partSW: Well its something I work out while Im looking at the storyboard trying to figure out my layoutId rather not worry about really precise camera movements that someone else has to replicate later in AE, not to mention strobingAlthough I have plenty of tricks for getting around thatJN: ..you do??SW: And then if youre working with an Asian studio you probably need to think about paper and peg switching and its such a choreWell yeahLike for example I would do things like create a 4 frame camera movement for a 4 frame holdCant strobe if you just freeze the character in place long enough for the camera to zip past themI had someone try to rewrite my x sheet for that once, citing strobingAnd I was like did you actually look at this or what? JN: wait if im understanding it right you'd just animate the camera at 4 fps?SW: Well that was for a quick movementBut like, for a longer one you can use the same principleSay you need to make the camera pan quickly over the scene but its uhhh like 12 framesYou can plan your motion around that so it either holds longer in the middle or is on 1s just in the middleThe strobing only happens with the spacing is far enough for the eye to pick it up, right?So if the thing is barely moving when the camera is moving fast, no strobingAnd then when the camera slows down it can move againJN: that's smart as fuckyea that makes a lot of senseSW: Its just something I picked up on while I was fucking up hahaMost of what I do is because of some frustrationAnd trying to get around it without making more drawingsTruly I am the laziest animatorJN: uhhhhhSW: [emoji]Put that in your interview Links: Spencer Wan: Cara X TumblrWeilin Zhang: XDiscover more:Animation on Cara Cara Edit: Animation (2022)

Talent wins the day. And when small business owners invest in talent through top-tier benefits, they lay the groundwork for consistent, scalable growth and stronger financial performance over the long haul.When you get past the 401k, employer-sponsored healthcare and PTO, does your benefits package actually pass the smell test with todays workforce? According to a recent study by Prudential Financial, theres a wide gulf between what employees say they want from the workplace and what employers are actually providing. While 86% of employers believe they are offering modern benefits, only 59% of employees agree. And the gap is even wider with younger workers. Another survey from MetLife finds 89% of employees believe their organization could strengthen trust by improving their benefits packages.That all sounds great, but the biggest challenge small business owners face is figuring out how to provide a robust and industry-leading set of benefits without going out of business. When I launched Cyber Guardian Consulting Group, a managed service provider that provides a full range of cybersecurity services, I made employee benefits the cornerstone of everything we were going to do. Our current menu at Cyber Guardian includes:100% employer-paid healthcare, vision, dental, plus copay reimbursementsMortgage rate buydowns of 23%, helping employees overcome barriers to homeownershipLifestyle perks that include 50% off Apple gear, weekend Uber Eats credits, unlimited snacks and drinksInstead of Employee of the Month awards designated by a piece of paper or temporary parking spot, we provide PAMP Suisse 10 gram gold bars to high-performing employees on a quarterly basis.Cryotherapy services through an ongoing partnership with local spas. Whether a dip in the ice bath or a trip to the cryo-chamber, our employees value this emerging wellness initiative that relieves pain, reduces inflammation and boosts overall healing.Here are four principles that we used to design a benefits package that consistently beats market expectations without breaking the bank:1. Budget with boldnessIndustry wisdom suggests allocating 2528% of payroll toward benefits. Thats fine if you want to compete on average. But if you want to win, you need to invest like it. At Cyber Guardian, weve budgeted up to 45% of payroll toward benefits. Its a strategic investment in performance, retention, and culture. We scrutinized every dollar and connected it to a measurable impact. While it was difficult to sustain these benefits in our early stages, we felt making a substantial investment upfront would pay off in the long term. We had to stretch and get creative in our budget, but the return we received in overall team talent, stability, morale, and productivity made it well worth it in the long run.2. Ask your people. Study your competitors.We didnt guess what mattered. We asked. From early on, we surveyed our team to find out what they truly value in their benefits. It was clear the rising costs of homeownership were on the minds of many. As one of our New Yorkbased employees, Francisco Rosa IV, noted, In a city where affordability feels out of reach for so many, reducing the burden of a mortgage resonates deeply.We also studied our competitorsboth current and aspirational. It wasnt enough to keep pace with others in cybersecurity. We looked at what companies like Google and Meta were offering, then asked ourselves how we could adapt those ideas to fit our size and budget. Its amazing how far creativity and listening can take you.3. Build the essentials first, then layer in high-impact extrasYou dont need to go from zero to gold bars overnight. We started by covering the core needs: healthcare, time off, flexibility. Then, we layered in unique benefits over time as we grew and gained confidence in what worked. Mortgage rate buydowns, Uber Eats credits, and lifestyle perks came later as they only made sense after we had a solid foundation. If youre just getting started, focus on one or two high-impact extras that align with your culture, then build from there.4. Constantly test, refine, and improveWeve gone through more than 30 versions of our perks package over the last few years. Some ideas didnt take off right away and required some fine-tuning, such as a pilot project where we provided weekend credits for food delivery but needed to swap out vendors due to technical difficulties and user feedback. But we treated the whole system like a product: constantly refined, based on real user (employee) feedback. Benefits should always be evolving. And if you create an open loop of listening and tweaking, theyll only get stronger.Of course, you have to be excelling in your core business activities to drive benefits growth. But assuming you check that box, prioritizing people through meaningful, evolving benefits is one of the smartest investments you can make. That philosophy has helped us achieve a near 100% retention rate over the last five years. You dont need a mega-budget or corporate backing to pull this off. You just need intentionality, creativity, and a genuine commitment to improving your teams day-to-day lives. Build around your peopleand theyll build everything else.

If you're designing something as important as the call system used in hospitals by nurses, you've got to do heavy end-user research, and make the complicated simple. That's the approach industrial design consultancy Thrive took with their Voalte Nurse Call Station for client Hillrom.Advancing Connected CareHillrom partnered with THRIVE to lead the medical product design for the next-generation nurse call systemthe Voalte Nurse Call Station. This advanced system is the central hub of a connected care ecosystem, empowering caregivers to respond to their patients' before the fall, the cardiac event, and before the code blue. It is the physical face of the new Voalte Platform, which brings together the acquisitions of Voalte and Excel Medical under the Hillrom brand to deliver a single unified approach to care communications technology that is unmatched in the industry.The Voalte Nurse Call Station is designed to be modular and deployed throughout the hospital environment at nurse stations, hallways, and patient rooms. It comprises a touch screen, articulating base, and handset to deliver best-in-class ergonomics with a modern and minimal design that embodies the feeling of precision that end-users expect from a best-in-class medical device. A Vision of the FutureHillrom, a subsidiary of Baxter International Inc., is a medical technology company offering patient support systems, surgical solutions, and front-line care products since its founding in 1929. Hillrom recognized that nurse call systems were overdue for a leap in modernization with fragmented hospital systems and their disparate solutions, making patient, staff, and even device connections complex and inefficient, negatively impacting patient care. There are up to 1 million falls in hospitals in the US each year, with an average cost of $13,316 per fall; that's a $1.3 million increased cost for a 100-bed facility with 179 falls per year. Hillrom's vision was to build an ecosystem of connected technologies to advance hospital care and enhance patient and caregiver outcomes. Hillrom understood that to bring this vision to life, they needed a seamless ecosystem of digital and physical devices and engaged THRIVE to take a human-centered approach to the medical product design of the Voalte Nurse Call Station, the keystone and central hub of the system. Time for ChangeThe team began with extensive in-field research with healthcare professionals to understand their behavior and frustrations with existing nurse call systems. We shadowed Hospital Unit Controllers (HUCs) and Charge Nurses in Pediatric and Rehabilitation units to understand user needs, process flows, desired functionality, work-a-rounds, and any unarticulated needs related to the Hill-Rom Nurse Call Suite. The research informed the development of three experience design principles that informed the overall product design and user experience. Best in Class ErgonomicsWe took a human-centered approach to the Nurse Call Staff Station driven by our in-field insights, focusing on the comfort of Health Unit Coordinators (HUCs) and Charge Nurses, who use the system for up to twelve hours a day on a single shift. The key area of sacrifice was handset comfort, with existing product designs being challenging to hold and uncomfortable on the ear for extended periods. We benchmarked twenty different handsets to determine optimal usability, arriving at an optimal weight range of range 150-200 grams, a 50/50 weight balance between ear and mouth, angled mouth, and earpieces for better face contouring (approx. 15 degrees) with a dished ear cup for improved sound quality, and an hourglass contour to comfortably fit hand sizes from a 5th percentile female to a 95th percentile male. In mission-critical moments, grasping the handset quickly and easily is vital to HUCs and Charge Nurses. Delivering on this need, we adopted an 'open C' configuration to the handset cradle so the handset could be grasped easily from the left or the right side in the center of the handset for optimal balance and control. Hospital environments can be noisy and chaotic, with a multitude of alarms. To ensure caregivers never miss a call, we added a "dome light" to the top edge of the entire unit to provide user-friendly visual notifications as well as auditory ones. The articulating stand enables HUCs and Charge Nurses to operate comfortably from standing and seated positions.A Modern Medical Visual LanguageHospitals are fighting for business. They need to communicate to patients and families that money has been invested in the right placesthat their clinicians and nurses have the best medical-grade equipment money can buy. The Nurse Call Station had to convey precision, efficiency, and excellence at a glance and be fit for purpose, telegraphing that it can deliver in life-and-death situations. In response, we developed a visual design language called 'Human Touch' using softened geometries and subtle, inflated surfaces to humanize the product and make it approachable, friendly, and intuitive, juxtaposed with precise chamfers and edges to communicate precision and accuracy. ---Our research showed that healthcare professionals don't want flashy, non-functional ornamentation. HUCs and Charge Nurses care most about the data displayed on the screen. So, we removed as much extraneous detail from the viewing surface and the surrounding components as possible, adding a strong sense of localized symmetry to communicate simplicity, purposefulness, and ease of use. Another critical insight that informed our industrial design approach was that healthcare professionals view overly expressive products with suspicion and gravitate to simple products with a tight, tailored fit that signifies that products are dependably engineered and manufactured when in hospital environments and can withstand their rigorous conditions. We tightly packaged all the nurse station's components and reduced the overall footprint by removing mass from the phone cradle and articulating base to emphasize the two key interaction areas of the product: the handset and touchscreen. Medical professionals respond positively to products that look like they will fit nicely into their chaotic, crowded, and intense workspaces. We purposely made the station 'clinical' with a white and silver CMF to stand out from the other beige and black boxes that inhabit nurse station desktops, telegraphing its importance to clinical workflow. Execution is EverythingTHRIVE spearheaded all aspects of the mechanical engineering for the Nurse Call Station using our structured ISO 9001 quality management system and design documentation process. This enabled us to meet all regulatory requirements and operate efficiently and effectively with Hillrom's chosen Contract Manufacturing (CM), engaging them throughout the medical product design process as partners to guarantee design suitability for assembly, servicing, and class-leading performance. Our Design and Engineering team worked iteratively, creating a series of proof-of-concept prototypes that were evaluated by end users and continuously improved throughout the development process. We used integrated modeling and THRIVE' moldflow and mechanical finite element analysis simulation capabilities to understand and assess the potential performance of our concepts from early-stage ideation to commercialization. Validating the manufacturability of each component while managing quality control and design aspects to ensure all parts were produced free of defects such as shrinkage, warpage, weld lines, sink marks, and other undesired defects. Our robust design controls and statistical tolerance techniques ensured a seamless transfer of the design intent and fulfillment of all Hillroms requirements. Quality-managed documentation, including CAD data, engineering drawings, assembly instructions, and production specifications, helped guarantee commercialization excellence. Setting A New StandardThe staff station represents a significant leap in modernizing nurse call systems, providing faster processing power, enhanced audio, and a camera to support video-based communications with patients and caregivers an industry first. Since the launch of the Voalte Nurse Call System in 2021, the reception from hospitals has been overwhelmingly positive. One hospital reported reduced response times by 80 percent, another reduced falls with injury by 87 percent, and another reported caregivers spending 30 percent more time on direct patient care.The success of the Hillrom Voalte Nurse Call System has bolstered Hillrom's reputation as a leading medical device maker and innovator in the connected care category, conveying product leadership, market sensitivity, and high value through sophisticated, well-detailed medical product design. It has positioned Hillrom perfectly to capitalize on the forthcoming projected growth in the nurse call systems market (expected to rise from USD 1.18 billion in 2018 to USD 2.79 billion by 2026) owing to the reduction in the nurse-to-patient ratio. You can see more of Thrive's work here.

Theres something deeply satisfying about holding a tool that feels engineered rather than manufactured, isnt there? The weight distribution, the way surfaces meet, the subtle click of mechanisms engaging with precision rather than just adequacy. Most folding knives today prioritize function over finesse, delivering utility without much thought to the daily experience of carrying and using them. Polish designer Ostap Hel and the team at OKnife apparently disagreed with this approach when they set out to create something different.The AION folding knife emerged from an unusual collaboration that began at Blade Show 2023, where Hels philosophy of simplicity and precision aligned with OKnifes vision of creating tools that transcend mere utility. Rather than starting with existing knife conventions, they drew inspiration from the geometric forms of Olights Arkfeld Ultra flashlight, translating those clean lines and faceted surfaces into a blade that feels both contemporary and timeless. The name itself references the Greek concept of eternal time, suggesting ambitions beyond typical product cycles.Designer: Ostap HelClick Here to Buy Now: $95 $120 ($25 off). Hurry, only 80/200 left! Raised over $204,000.What sets AION apart becomes apparent the moment you handle it, starting with details that most manufacturers would consider unnecessary complications. The extended jimping along the spine provides not just better traction but also more confident transfer of force in every cut, whether youre preparing kindling for a campfire or opening stubborn packaging in your workshop. The flipper and liner lock deliver a snappy, precise action, locking solidly with the assurance of fine engineering that makes each deployment feel deliberate rather than accidental.Perhaps most notably, AION features OKnifes first hidden pivot system, creating a near-seamless spine fit that enhances the knifes continuous silhouette while making the grip feel more organic and balanced in your hand. This isnt just an aesthetic flourish but practical engineering that eliminates the typical pivot screw protrusion that can catch on pockets or interfere with a comfortable grip during extended use. The geometric facets running through the handle create visual interest while providing secure purchase points for your fingers.AION-Zr DamascusThe material choices reflect serious consideration of how different users might employ their knives in real-world scenarios rather than just laboratory testing conditions. The zirconium Damascus version offers a unique pattern thats literally impossible to replicate, like a fingerprint in metal, paired with M390 powder steel that holds its edge through countless tasks. For those who prefer lighter carry, the OAL aluminum variant provides an exceptional strength-to-weight ratio, while the titanium option balances industrial toughness with refined elegance that improves with age and use.AION-TiFlying Tigers Bomber EditionThese material decisions matter most when youre actually using the knife for the tasks that define daily carry: slicing through rope while setting up camp, trimming excess material from craft projects, or making precise cuts in leather or fabric. The hand-rubbed blade finishes arent just beautiful but functional, reducing friction during cuts, while the DLC coating on certain variants provides corrosion resistance that keeps the blade performing consistently regardless of weather conditions or work environments you encounter.The butt-end dual-handed clip represents another thoughtful departure from convention, positioning the pocket clip for perfect symmetry while accommodating both left and right-handed users without compromise. Traditional side-mounted clips often create imbalance and can interfere with the knifes profile, but AIONs approach maintains clean lines while ensuring secure, comfortable carry that doesnt telegraph the presence of a blade to casual observers.The manufacturing process itself deserves recognition, combining CNC precision machining with meticulous hand finishing to ensure each AION represents a faithful realization of the original design concept. This hybrid approach allows for the consistency that modern users expect while preserving the subtle variations and attention to detail that distinguish handcrafted tools from mass-produced alternatives. Each knife feels like a one-to-one translation of the designers vision rather than a compromise forced by manufacturing limitations.What makes AION particularly compelling is how it addresses the often-overlooked reality that the best tools become extensions of their users rather than mere implements. The knifes proportions work intuitively, the materials make sense for their intended applications, and the overall aesthetic feels comfortably cohesive rather than trying to make bold statements about tactical capability or aggressive styling that many EDC knives unfortunately embrace.Click Here to Buy Now: $95 $120 ($25 off). Hurry, only 80/200 left! Raised over $204,000.The post Discover the AION Gentlemans EDC Knife That Redefines Everyday Precision first appeared on Yanko Design.