Human organs could be bioprinted for transplants within 10 years, according to Lithuanian startup Vital3D. But before reaching human hearts and kidneys, the company is starting with something simpler: regenerating dog skin. Based in Vilnius, Vital3D is already bioprinting functional tissue constructs. Using a proprietary laser system, the startup deposits living cells and biomaterials in precise 3D patterns. The structures mimic natural biological systems — and could one day form entire organs tailored to a patient’s unique anatomy. That mission is both professional and personal for CEO Vidmantas Šakalys. After losing a mentor to urinary cancer, he set out to develop 3D-printed kidneys that could save others from the same fate. But before reaching that goal, the company needs a commercial product to fund the long road ahead. That product is VitalHeal — the first-ever bioprinted wound patch for pets. Dogs are the initial target, with human applications slated to follow. Šakalys calls the patch “a first step” towards bioprinted kidneys. “Printing organs for transplantation is a really challenging task,” he tells TNW after a tour of his lab. “It’s 10 or 15 years away from now, and as a commercial entity, we need to have commercially available products earlier. So we start with simpler products and then move into more difficult ones.” Register Now The path may be simpler, but the technology is anything but. Bioprinting goes to the vet VitalHeal is embedded with growth factors that accelerate skin regeneration. Across the patch’s surface, tiny pores about one-fifth the width of a human hair enable air circulation while blocking bacteria. Once applied, VitalHeal seals the wound and maintains constant pressure while the growth factors get to work. According to Vital3D, the patch can reduce healing time from 10–12 weeks to just four to six. Infection risk can drop from 30% to under 10%, vet visits from eight to two or three, and surgery times by half. Current treatments, the startup argues, can be costly, ineffective, and distressing for animals. VitalHeal is designed to provide a safer, faster, and cheaper alternative. Vital3D says the market is big — and the data backs up the claim. Vital3D’s FemtoBrush system promises high-speed and high-precision bioprinting. Credit: Vital3D Commercial prospects The global animal wound care market is projected to grow from $1.4bn (€1.24bn) in 2024 to $2.1bn (€1.87bn) by 2030, fuelled by rising pet ownership and demand for advanced veterinary care. Vital3D forecasts an initial serviceable addressable market (ISAM) of €76.5mn across the EU and US. By 2027-2028, the company aims to sell 100,000 units. Dogs are a logical starting point. Their size, activity levels, and surgeries raise their risk of wounds. Around half of dogs over age 10 are also affected by cancer, further increasing demand for effective wound care. At €300 retail (or €150 wholesale), the patches won’t be cheap. But Vital3D claims they could slash treatment costs for pet owners from €3,000 to €1,500. Production at scale is expected to bring prices down further.  After strong results in rats, trials on dogs will begin this summer in clinics in Lithuania and the UK — Vital3D’s pilot markets. If all goes to plan, a non-degradable patch will launch in Europe next year. The company will then progress to a biodegradable version. From there, the company plans to adapt the tech for humans. The initial focus will be wound care for people with diabetes, 25% of whom suffer from impaired healing. Future versions could support burn victims, injured soldiers, and others in need of advanced skin restoration. Freshly printed fluids in a bio-ink droplet. Credit: Vital3D Vital3D is also exploring other medical frontiers. In partnership with Lithuania’s National Cancer Institute, the startup is building organoids — mini versions of organs — for cancer drug testing. Another project involves bioprinted stents, which are showing promise in early animal trials. But all these efforts serve a bigger mission. “Our final target is to move to organ printing for transplants,” says Šakalys. Bioprinting organs A computer engineer by training, Šakalys has worked with photonic innovations for over 10 years.  At his previous startup, Femtika, he harnessed lasers to produce tiny components for microelectronics, medical devices, and aerospace engineering. He realised they could also enable precise bioprinting.  In 2021, he co-founded Vital3D to advance the concept. The company’s printing system directs light towards a photosensitive bio-ink. The material is hardened and formed into a structure, with living cells and biomaterials moulded into intricate 3D patterns. The shape of the laser beam can be adjusted to replicate complex biological forms — potentially even entire organs. But there are still major scientific hurdles to overcome. One is vascularisation, the formation of blood vessels in intricate networks. Another is the diverse variety of cell types in many organs. Replicating these sophisticated natural structures will be challenging. “First of all, we want to solve the vasculature. Then we will go into the differentiation of cells,” Šakalys says. “Our target is to see if we can print from fewer cells, but try to differentiate them while printing into different types of cells.”  If successful, Vital3D could help ease the global shortage of transplantable organs. Fewer than 10% of patients who need a transplant receive one each year, according to the World Health Organisation. In the US alone, around 90,000 people are waiting for a kidney — a shortfall that’s fuelling a thriving black market. Šakalys believes that could be just the start. He envisions bioprinting not just creating organs, but also advancing a new era of personalised medicine. “It can bring a lot of benefits to society,” he says. “Not just bioprinting for transplants, but also tissue engineering as well.” Want to discover the next big thing in tech? Then take a trip to TNW Conference, where thousands of founders, investors, and corporate innovators will share their ideas. The event takes place on June 19–20 in Amsterdam and tickets are on sale now. Use the code TNWXMEDIA2025 at the checkout to get 30% off. Story by Thomas Macaulay Managing editor Thomas is the managing editor of TNW. He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers. Away from work, he e (show all) Thomas is the managing editor of TNW. He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers. Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse). Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week. Also tagged with

While there’s more than one way to format Unity C# code, agreeing on a consistent code style for your project enables your team to develop a clean, readable, and scalable codebase. In this blog, we provide some guidelines and examples you can use to develop and maintain your own code style guide.Please note that these are only recommendations based on those provided by Microsoft. This is your chance to get inspired and decide what works best for your team.Ideally, a Unity project should feel like it’s been developed by a single author, no matter how many developers actually work on it. A style guide can help unify your approach for creating a more cohesive codebase.It’s a good idea to follow industry standards wherever possible and browse through existing style guides as a starting point for creating your own. In partnership with internal and external Unity experts, we released a new e-book, Create a C# style guide: Write cleaner code that scales for inspiration, based on Microsoft’s comprehensive C# style.The Google C# style guide is another great resource for defining guidelines around naming, formatting, and commenting conventions. Again, there is no right or wrong method, but we chose to follow Microsoft standards for our own guide.Our e-book, along with an example C# file, are available for free. Both resources focus on the most common coding conventions you’ll encounter while developing in Unity. These are all, essentially, a subset of the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines, which include an extensive number of best practices beyond what we cover in this post.We recommend customizing the guidelines provided in our style guide to suit your team’s preferences. These preferences should be prioritized over our suggestions and the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines if they’re in conflict.The development of a style guide requires an upfront investment but will pay dividends later. For example, managing a single set of standards can reduce the time developers spend on ramping up if they move onto another project.Of course, consistency is key. If you follow these suggestions and need to modify your style guide in the future, a few find-and-replace operations can quickly migrate your codebase.Concentrate on creating a pragmatic style guide that fits your needs by covering the majority of day-to-day use cases. Don’t overengineer it by attempting to account for every single edge case from the start. The guide will evolve organically over time as your team iterates on it from project to project.Most style guides include basic formatting rules. Meanwhile, specific naming conventions, policy on use of namespaces, and strategies for classes are somewhat abstract areas that can be refined over time.Let’s look at some common formatting and naming conventions you might consider for your style guide.The two common indentation styles in C# are the Allman style, which places the opening curly braces on a new line (also known as the BSD style from BSD Unix), and the K&R style, or “one true brace style,” which keeps the opening brace on the same line as the previous header.In an effort to improve readability, we picked the Allman style for our guide, based on the Microsoft Framework Design guidelines: Whatever style you choose, ensure that every programmer on your team follows it.A guide should also indicate whether braces from nested multiline statements should be included. While removing braces in the following example won’t throw an error, it can be confusing to read. That’s why our guide recommends applying braces for clarity, even if they are optional.Something as simple as horizontal spacing can enhance your code’s appearance onscreen. While your personal formatting preferences can vary, here are a few recommendations from our style guide to improve overall readability:Add spaces to decrease code density:The extra whitespace can give a sense of visual separation between parts of a lineUse a single space after a comma, between function arguments.Don’t add a space after the parenthesis and function arguments.Don’t use spaces between a function name and parenthesis.Avoid spaces inside brackets.Use a single space before flow control conditions: Add a space between the flow comparison operator and the parentheses.Use a single space before and after comparison operators.Variables typically represent a state, so try to attribute clear and descriptive nouns to their names. You can then prefix booleans with a verbfor variables that must indicate a true or false value. Often they are the answer to a question such as, is the player running? Is the game over? Prefix them with a verb to clarify their meaning. This is often paired with a description or condition, e.g., isPlayerDead, isWalking, hasDamageMultiplier, etc.Since methods perform actions, a good rule of thumb is to start their names with a verb and add context as needed, e.g., GetDirection, FindTarget, and so on, based on the return type. If the method has a bool return type, it can also be framed as a question.Much like boolean variables themselves, prefix methods with a verb if they return a true-false condition. This phrases them in the form of a question, e.g., IsGameOver, HasStartedTurn.Several conventions exist for naming events and event handles. In our style guide, we name the event with a verb phrase,similar to a method. Choose a name that communicates the state change accurately.Use the present or past participle to indicate events “before” or “after.” For instance, specify OpeningDoor for an event before opening a door and DoorOpened for an event afterward.We also recommend that you don’t abbreviate names. While saving a few characters can feel like a productivity gain in the short term, what is obvious to you now might not be in a year’s time to another teammate. Your variable names should reveal their intent and be easy to pronounce. Single letter variables are fine for loops and math expressions, but otherwise, you should avoid abbreviations. Clarity is more important than any time saved from omitting a few vowels.At the same time, use one variable declaration per line; it’s less compact, but also less error prone and enhances readability. Avoid redundant names. If your class is called Player, you don’t need to create member variables called PlayerScore or PlayerTarget. Trim them down to Score or Target.In addition, avoid too many prefixes or special encoding.A practice highlighted in our guide is to prefix private member variables with an underscore (_) to differentiate them from local variables. Some style guides use prefixes for private member variables (m_), constants (k_), or static variables (s_), so the name reveals more about the variable.However, it’s good practice to prefix interface names with a capital “I” and follow this with an adjective that describes the functionality. You can even prefix the event raising method (in the subject) with “On”: The subject that invokes the event usually does so from a method prefixed with “On,” e.g., OnOpeningDoor or OnDoorOpened.Camel case and Pascal case are common standards in use, compared to Snake or Kebab case, or Hungarian notations. Our guide recommends Pascal case for public fields, enums, classes, and methods, and Camel case for private variables, as this is common practice in Unity.There are many additional rules to consider outside of what’s covered here. The example guide and our new e-book, Create a C# style guide: Write cleaner code that scales, provide many more tips for better organization.The concept of clean code aims to make development more scalable by conforming to a set of production standards. A style guide should remove most of the guesswork developers would otherwise have regarding the conventions they should follow. Ultimately, this guide should help your team establish a consensus around your codebase to grow your project into a commercial-scale production.Just how comprehensive your style guide should be depends on your situation. It’s up to your team to decide if they want their guide to set rules for more abstract, intangible concepts. This could include rules for using namespaces, breaking down classes, or implementing directives like the #region directive (or not). While #region can help you collapse and hide sections of code in C# files, making large files more manageable, it’s also an example of something that many developers consider to be code smells or anti-patterns. Therefore, you might want to avoid setting strict standards for these aspects of code styling. Not everything needs to be outlined in the guide – sometimes it’s enough to simply discuss and make decisions as a team.When we talked to the experts who helped create our guide, their main piece of advice was code readability above all else. Here are some pointers on how to achieve that:Use fewer arguments: Arguments can increase the complexity of your method. By reducing their number, you make methods easier to read and test.Avoid excessive overloading: You can generate an endless permutation of method overloads. Select the few that reflect how you’ll call the method, and then implement those. If you do overload a method, prevent confusion by making sure that each method signature has a distinct number of arguments.Avoid side effects: A method only needs to do what its name advertises. Avoid modifying anything outside of its scope. Pass in arguments by value instead of reference when possible. So when sending back results via the out or ref keyword, verify that’s the one thing you intend the method to accomplish. Though side effects are useful for certain tasks, they can lead to unintended consequences. Write a method without side effects to cut down on unexpected behavior.We hope that this blog helps you kick off the development of your own style guide. Learn more from our example C# file and brand new e-book where you can review our suggested rules and customize them to your team’s preferences.The specifics of individual rules are less important than having everyone agree to follow them consistently. When in doubt, rely on your team’s own evolving guide to settle any style disagreements. After all, this is a group effort.

Macworld People have high hopes for the Apple Watch in 2025 after the Apple Watch Series 10 disappointed in 2024. Despite rumors of major design changes, the Apple Watch 10 turned out to be more or less identical to every Apple Watch sold over the last few years. The display was just a tad larger and the body was slightly thinner, but overall it was very similar to the Series 9. At this point you might look to the old adage: “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Apple’s Watch follows a proven formula that has brought a lot of success. It should be no surprise that the company isn’t rocking the boat. That might be forgivable, but Apple didn’t even update the Apple Watch Ultra or Apple Watch SE in 2024, leaving both with an older processor generation. Luckily this year it looks like Apple will deliver some long awaited Apple Watch features. Read on to find out what’s in store for Apple Watch Series 11 in the fall of 2025? Here’s what we’ve heard so far about the 2025 Apple Watch. We’ll run though what’s expected for each Apple Watch model below, starting with the Apple Watch Series 11. Apple Watch Series 11: Release date Launch at September iPhone event: Tuesday September 9 (probable) Pre-order from September 12 On sale from September 19 For years now, Apple has announced the new Apple Watch together with the new iPhone at a September event, with both products going on sale the following week. We haven’t heard anything to make us think that won’t be the case again this year. The most likely date is the second Tuesday of September, which is September 9. Pre-orders for the Apple Watch Series 11 will probably begin that Friday (September 12) with general availability in stores a week later (September 19). Apple Watch Series 11: Price Likely to start at $399, unless Apple has to raise prices Ever since the Apple Watch Series 3, Apple has kept starting prices the same for the aluminum Apple Watch and we don’t expect a price hike this year. This means that the Series 11 will start at $399 and the larger version will cost $429, with an extra $100 for cellular capability and higher prices for various bands. With the Series 10, Apple also offered a titanium case for $699/$749, which includes LTE like the Ultra. Rumors suggest Apple will keep that option around with the Series 11, likely at the same price. However, no discussion of future Apple product pricing is complete without mentioning U.S. tariffs, which are changing rapidly and could have a big impact on pricing. It’s simply too difficult to predict whether tariffs will increase the Apple Watch’s price, the odds are significant. Apple Watch Series 11: Design The Apple Watch Series 11 is likely to look nearly identical to the Series 10.Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry Rumors throughout 2024 told us to expect more significant changes to the Apple Watch design last year, and then the Series 10 debuted and it looked like a very slightly flattened Series 9. This year, there aren’t even any rumors of big design changes. Currently, all signs point to an Apple Watch that is identical in appearance to the Series 10, with the possible exception of new colors, possibly sky blue to match the MacBook Air and iPhone 17. Apple Watch SE 3: Release date, price and design Launch at September iPhone event: Tuesday September 9 (probable) Pre-order from September 12 On sale from September 19 Apple hasn’t updated the Apple Watch SE since 2022 and that update was an extremely minor one, bringing a new chip and crash detection with a lower price of $249. It was initially rumored that 2024 would bring a substantial update to the budget watch with a plastic redesign, but that didn’t happen. Then Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported that a plastic SE redesign would arrive in 2025 alongside the Series 11. However, a rumor in March claimed that the new Apple Watch SE had run into production issues and was in “serious jeopardy.” So Apple may need to switch to an aluminum design for the new SE or stick with the current model for another year. The Apple Watch SE hasn’t been updated since 2022.Henry Burrell / Foundry Apple Watch Ultra 3: Release date, price and design Launch at September iPhone event: Tuesday September 9 (probable) Pre-order from September 12 On sale from September 19 We do expect that there will be an Apple Watch Ultra 3 in 2025. Rumors so far point to 5G and satellite texting capabilities, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The Apple Watch Ultra 2025 might also be slimmer. And yes, the display might be even larger. In addition to that you can expect all the features coming to the Apple Watch Series 11. Apple Watch 2025: Features coming to the Apple Watch Apple has been working on incorporating a microLED display on the Apple Watch for several years, according to various leaks and rumors, but it’s not expected to debut on the Series 11 this year. Some think this display shift will come to Apple Watch Ultra first, but even that isn’t expected in 2025. Health We’re not expecting any new health sensors. Apple’s blood glucose monitoring initiative is still years from ending up in a watch, it seems, and while there have been rumors of high blood pressure monitoring, that’s apparently not quite ready to appear this year, either. Specs So what will be new? You can bet on a new S11 SiP (system in package), offering somewhat better performance. Don’t expect a big boost in battery life, though—that has been a near constant 18 hours for nearly the entire lifespan of the watch. Apple Intelligence and the new Siri could be one of the new features of watchOS 12 and the Apple Watch Series 11.Michael Simon/IDG Apple Intelligence AI is a key aspect of almost every new Apple product now, and rumors suggest Apple is working on bringing some AI features to the Apple Watch. The actual AI models probably won’t be able to run on the watch; rather, the watch will gather data, the processing will be done on your iPhone, and then the watch will display results or notifications. Many of the new AI features will likely debut as part of watchOS 12, but some might be kept as Series 11 exclusives in order to help differentiate the hardware. 5G and Satelite It’s also rumored that the Apple Watch Ultra 3 will support 5G cellular and satellite messaging, which could also come to the Series 11. Apple debuted a wireless chip in the iPhone 16e, but it’s not clear whether it’s small or efficient enough for the Apple Watch yet. No changes? The Series 11 could just be a ‘Series 10s’ We criticized the Apple Watch Series 8 for being largely the same as the Series 7, and the Series 9 for being almost identical to the Series 8. This looks like it could be another one of those years, where there are only very minor changes to the Apple Watch that you won’t even notice in everyday use. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad watch, or that Apple is in trouble. There is virtually no competition for the Apple Watch, and as long as Apple keeps pressing forward with watchOS software features, it’s likely to keep selling a lot of Apple Watches. But if you’re hoping for a major change to the Apple Watch hardware, you’ll probably have to wait another year or more.

Human organs could be bioprinted for transplants within 10 years, according to Lithuanian startup Vital3D. But before reaching human hearts and kidneys, the company is starting with something simpler: regenerating dog skin. Based in Vilnius, Vital3D is already bioprinting functional tissue constructs. Using a proprietary laser system, the startup deposits living cells and biomaterials in precise 3D patterns. The structures mimic natural biological systems — and could one day form entire organs tailored to a patient’s unique anatomy. That mission is both professional and personal for CEO Vidmantas Šakalys. After losing a mentor to urinary cancer, he set out to develop 3D-printed kidneys that could save others from the same fate. But before reaching that goal, the company needs a commercial product to fund the long road ahead. That product is VitalHeal — the first-ever bioprinted wound patch for pets. Dogs are the initial target, with human applications slated to follow. Šakalys calls the patch “a first step” towards bioprinted kidneys. “Printing organs for transplantation is a really challenging task,” he tells TNW after a tour of his lab. “It’s 10 or 15 years away from now, and as a commercial entity, we need to have commercially available products earlier. So we start with simpler products and then move into more difficult ones.” Register Now The path may be simpler, but the technology is anything but. Bioprinting goes to the vet VitalHeal is embedded with growth factors that accelerate skin regeneration. Across the patch’s surface, tiny pores about one-fifth the width of a human hair enable air circulation while blocking bacteria. Once applied, VitalHeal seals the wound and maintains constant pressure while the growth factors get to work. According to Vital3D, the patch can reduce healing time from 10–12 weeks to just four to six. Infection risk can drop from 30% to under 10%, vet visits from eight to two or three, and surgery times by half. Current treatments, the startup argues, can be costly, ineffective, and distressing for animals. VitalHeal is designed to provide a safer, faster, and cheaper alternative. Vital3D says the market is big — and the data backs up the claim. Vital3D’s FemtoBrush system promises high-speed and high-precision bioprinting. Credit: Vital3D Commercial prospects The global animal wound care market is projected to grow from $1.4bn (€1.24bn) in 2024 to $2.1bn (€1.87bn) by 2030, fuelled by rising pet ownership and demand for advanced veterinary care. Vital3D forecasts an initial serviceable addressable market (ISAM) of €76.5mn across the EU and US. By 2027-2028, the company aims to sell 100,000 units. Dogs are a logical starting point. Their size, activity levels, and surgeries raise their risk of wounds. Around half of dogs over age 10 are also affected by cancer, further increasing demand for effective wound care. At €300 retail (or €150 wholesale), the patches won’t be cheap. But Vital3D claims they could slash treatment costs for pet owners from €3,000 to €1,500. Production at scale is expected to bring prices down further.  After strong results in rats, trials on dogs will begin this summer in clinics in Lithuania and the UK — Vital3D’s pilot markets. If all goes to plan, a non-degradable patch will launch in Europe next year. The company will then progress to a biodegradable version. From there, the company plans to adapt the tech for humans. The initial focus will be wound care for people with diabetes, 25% of whom suffer from impaired healing. Future versions could support burn victims, injured soldiers, and others in need of advanced skin restoration. Freshly printed fluids in a bio-ink droplet. Credit: Vital3D Vital3D is also exploring other medical frontiers. In partnership with Lithuania’s National Cancer Institute, the startup is building organoids — mini versions of organs — for cancer drug testing. Another project involves bioprinted stents, which are showing promise in early animal trials. But all these efforts serve a bigger mission. “Our final target is to move to organ printing for transplants,” says Šakalys. Bioprinting organs A computer engineer by training, Šakalys has worked with photonic innovations for over 10 years.  At his previous startup, Femtika, he harnessed lasers to produce tiny components for microelectronics, medical devices, and aerospace engineering. He realised they could also enable precise bioprinting.  In 2021, he co-founded Vital3D to advance the concept. The company’s printing system directs light towards a photosensitive bio-ink. The material is hardened and formed into a structure, with living cells and biomaterials moulded into intricate 3D patterns. The shape of the laser beam can be adjusted to replicate complex biological forms — potentially even entire organs. But there are still major scientific hurdles to overcome. One is vascularisation, the formation of blood vessels in intricate networks. Another is the diverse variety of cell types in many organs. Replicating these sophisticated natural structures will be challenging. “First of all, we want to solve the vasculature. Then we will go into the differentiation of cells,” Šakalys says. “Our target is to see if we can print from fewer cells, but try to differentiate them while printing into different types of cells.”  If successful, Vital3D could help ease the global shortage of transplantable organs. Fewer than 10% of patients who need a transplant receive one each year, according to the World Health Organisation. In the US alone, around 90,000 people are waiting for a kidney — a shortfall that’s fuelling a thriving black market. Šakalys believes that could be just the start. He envisions bioprinting not just creating organs, but also advancing a new era of personalised medicine. “It can bring a lot of benefits to society,” he says. “Not just bioprinting for transplants, but also tissue engineering as well.” Want to discover the next big thing in tech? Then take a trip to TNW Conference, where thousands of founders, investors, and corporate innovators will share their ideas. The event takes place on June 19–20 in Amsterdam and tickets are on sale now. Use the code TNWXMEDIA2025 at the checkout to get 30% off. Story by Thomas Macaulay Managing editor Thomas is the managing editor of TNW. He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers. Away from work, he e (show all) Thomas is the managing editor of TNW. He leads our coverage of European tech and oversees our talented team of writers. Away from work, he enjoys playing chess (badly) and the guitar (even worse). Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week. Also tagged with

© Sergey Omelchenko via Unsplash Older buildings possess irreplaceable quality, architectural value, and history that new buildings may lack. However, they are often neglected due to perceived renovation costs or structural integrity. With the right plan, these buildings can be transformed into valuable investments. Below are seven of the best strategies for making good investments in aging buildings. 1. Assess Structural Stability Thoroughly Even if you have not yet enrolled in a project, it is critical to understand the building’s structural integrity. Have a structural inspector or engineer examine any major foundation issues, load wall defects, roof, or plumbing issues. The report will tell you how much you need to repair and the estimated renovation cost. Consider also a building’s listings as historic, zoning codes, and compliance. There will be buildings under preservation or heritage statutes, which can be very restrictive in what can or cannot be modified. Knowing about such constraints upfront can allow you to plan better and spend your budget more appropriately. 2. Consider Adaptive Reuse This is an innovative way to transform existing building structures, such as old churches, schools, or textile mills, into thriving business offices or community spaces. The adaptive reuse supports the concept of sustainable architecture. Besides preserving the uniqueness of a building, it provides several economic and environmental advantages. Innovative reuse of older buildings, like redeveloping an aging warehouse as a hip loft space or an unused church as a shared workplace. This will tap into marketplace niches, reinterpret former designs for new purposes, and reduce demolition waste expense since existing infrastructure can be used. It will also likely be tax-credit qualified in most instances, making it a worthwhile investment. 3. Go Smart with Technology Integration With smart thermostats, lights, security systems, and energy monitoring systems included, the performance and appeal of your newly renovated building can be significantly enhanced. Upgrades help consumers be more practical, increase operational efficiency, lower energy expenses, and provide the high-tech benefit that distinguishes your building. Upscale renters willing to pay more for smart living experiences can also find smart features appealing. One example is the remote management features, such as the HVAC, which add more functionality to a property. Smart locks at the entry points also increase safety levels. 4. Going Green to Draw Modern Tenants © Pedro Miguel Aires via Unsplash Green restoration might give the structure more appeal to environmentally sensitive residents and lower future energy bills. When renters choose to live or rent, sustainability becomes a consideration, so green facilities are a significant advantage.  Use green materials, including insulation, and install energy-efficient appliances. Having those properties green-certified by LEED or ENERGY STAR will make those buildings even more marketable. Not only does that give your project respectability, but it will also make you a beneficiary of government incentives. 5. Mixed-Use and Flexible Occupancy Design Flexible, mixed-use design is one way to de-risk revenues and maximize rental yield. Split your building into office suites, co-living, pop-up event spaces, and retail storefronts. Modular furniture, movable partitions, and plug-and-play utility infrastructure facilitate flexible build-outs. It helps tenants arrange space to fit their needs, providing more opportunities. For example, ground floor cafe space can generate spill-over foot traffic for upstairs shared office tenants, and weekend community workshops that generate buzz and additional revenues. Diversification minimizes vacancy risk and allows you to re-mix tenants based on shifting market demand. 6. Emphasize Unique Architectural Elements Older homes possess unique design elements not found in new homes, like arched windows, detailing, ornamentation, or exposed brick. Rather than concealing these elements, emphasize them as part of restoring your property. This will make interested individuals see the building as one with great sentimental value, especially when you capture the historic relevance of the design. Emphasizing a property’s unique architectural elements can differentiate your property from the rest in an oversaturated housing market. The architectural elements give a property character and individuality that cannot be achieved in newer homes. 7. Involve the Community and Build Local Support Engaging residents, owners, and heritage organizations early in the conversion process can create goodwill among residents and ownership about the project’s success. Community support is especially helpful in getting permits, zoning variances, or adjustments because local backing carries much weight with city planning measures. Open a forum to provide regular social media updates or even a poll to engage people and their input to inform the stakeholders and become informed themselves in the process. If people feel heard and considered, they are more apt to be ambassadors for your work and spread good word-of-mouth. Endnote Transforming aging buildings into successful investments requires vision, planning, and respect for their heritage. Revealing structural integrity, location, sustainability, and visionary reuse, buried value in older structures can be unleashed. You need to plan the project well and work closely with competent contractors who will make the re-creation excellent. Adaptive Reuse by ArchEyes Team Leave a comment

Disruption has become a popular brand strategy as start-ups, challengers and even established brands seek to stand out in crowded categories. Disruptive brand building subverts a consumer’s perceptions through narrative and tone. But, while disruption is often associated with boldness and audacity, its true power lies in challenging category norms in unexpected ways. This is achieved not only through striking visuals or provocative messaging, but by fundamentally redefining what a category can mean, and the experience a brand can deliver. One newly launched brand that’s aiming to defy its category conventions is mud, an emerging petcare company that is setting itself apart by embracing mess, mud and natural animal instincts. The brand’s Everyday Wash for Dirty Dogs is marketed for “dogs who were meant to get dirty”. The brand’s brown, grey and black colour palette is inspired by different shades of dirt, and its founders describe it as “a small act of rebellion against the sanitised world of modern pet care.” Angelina Pischikova and Karina Zhukovskaya’s identity for their mud pet care brand. While it’s too early to predict mud’s ability to disrupt its category, its mission is certainly thought-provoking. If successful, disruptor brands can not only capture market share from established competitors, they can shift industry dynamics and open up a new market for consumers seeking alternatives. Think Liquid Death, the US brand which made canned water cool with its irreverence and punk/heavy metal aesthetics. Or Oatly, which turned oat milk into a cultural statement with witty long copy and an anti-advertising aesthetic. “Being pioneering isn’t always about ripping it up and starting again.” When a disruptor brand is so successful that it brings about positive change, it’s often because that category is ripe for disruption. Prior to the arrival of disruptor brands like The Ordinary and Glossier, the beauty industry had thrived on creating a feeling of exclusivity, mystery and luxury, with glossy celebrity-fronted advertising and products making vague promises at inflated prices. The sector was entirely upended by the arrival of The Ordinary, which democratised skincare by championing science over celebrity and enabled a much wider group of consumers to access high-quality skincare. Stunts like selling “ordinarily-priced” eggs for $3.37 at the height of the American inflation crisis, or dumping a stack of dollar bills in a store window, cleverly highlighted its no-frills proposition and flew in the face of typical beauty marketing by taking swipes at influencer endorsement. Glossier was another hugely influential agent of change because it built its brand around user-generated content and real customer feedback, rather than top-down beauty ideals. But with disruption comes risk. A disruptor brand can seem inauthentic if its brash, bold branding doesn’t fully align with its ethos. WeWork’s tactics backfired massively when its “changing the world” narrative collapsed under scrutiny. Its demise also demonstrates that moving fast and breaking things isn’t necessarily the best approach to disruption. The company promised a variety of flexible office spaces catering to different needs, but ultimately failed to deliver because of its focus on global expansion at breakneck speed – a strategy that proved unsustainable. Also, disruption stops being disruptive when everyone’s doing it. When luxury fashion first shifted online and onto social media, many fashion houses pared back their logos, incorporating the clean, minimalist typefaces favoured by tech brands like Google and Microsoft. This minimalist branding style became so popular among brands, from Saint Laurent to Celine, they all started to look the same. Even Liquid Death’s success has had its limitations. Despite becoming a sensation in the US, it didn’t create any significant ripples in the UK water market and exited after less than two years – showing that disruptive brand activity can get lost in translation. What works in some markets and cultures, may fall flat in others. For legacy brands, the stakes are particularly high because a major identity shift can erode established brand equity. Old Spice successfully moved away from its “dad’s aftershave” image through ironic humour. By contrast, Aberdeen Group’s attempt to reach new audiences backfired dramatically after its rebrand to Abrdn in 2021 was met with a torrent of mockery. Earlier this year it announced it was reinstating the missing e’s. Being pioneering isn’t always about ripping it up and starting again. Brands don’t need to reinvent themselves or tear down the competition to make an impact. You can be just as innovative by quietly committing to long-term, incremental change. Sustainable fashion brands are a case in point here. Companies like Finisterre and Reformation are leading a slow fashion movement by committing to eco-friendly and ethical practices, offering consumers a high-quality alternative to fast fashion. To truly disrupt, a brand must have ambitions beyond being brash and attention-seeking. Disruptors need to stay true to their brand essence as well as strategically differentiated from rivals. Before adopting a disruptive stance, consider what consumers really want and analyse whether your rivals are delivering on that need. You must also ensure your branding resonates with your target audience and connects to a broader cultural shift. In this way, you can help ensure your disruption strategy gets people talking for all the right reasons. Polly Hopkins is managing director of FutureBrand London.

Posted on : May 29, 2025 By Tech World Times Technology  Rate this post Cat6 cables are a common choice for both office and home networks. They provide data transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps at a distance of nearly 55 meters. Cat6 has a bandwidth of 250 MHz and can manage important data loads. This makes them suitable for online gaming and HD video streaming. These cables are suitable for traditional Cat5e infrastructure. It provides a versatile option for updating networks without repairing current hardware. The main benefits include compatibility with previous standards, good for small and home office use, and cost-effectiveness. Cat8 shows the latest ethernet technology, providing important enhancements over their predecessors. They have a bandwidth of up to 2000 MHz and a data transfer speed reaching 25-40 Gbps. Cat8 cables are created for high-performance apps over small distances (up to 30 meters). These cables are immensely shielded to reduce interference, making them suitable for public settings, server rooms, data centers, and other commercial ecosystems where reliable and high-speed connections are important. The main benefits include that it is best for data centers and commercial apps, superior shielding for lesser interference, and ultra-fast speeds of up to 40 Gbps. Selecting the correct Ethernet cable, whether cat6 or cat8, leveraging a variety of factors entailing budget, environment, and performance requirements. Keeping this scenario under consideration, we are presenting some factors that will help you select between cat6 and cat8. Performance Requirements The main factor when selecting between cat6 and cat8 is the performance of network requirements. Cat6 cables can manage routine tasks like file transfers, video streaming, and web browsing, with speeds of about 10 Gbps over a distance of 55 meters. This makes them sufficient for office or home setups. nevertheless, for data-intensive apps like server connections, huge data transfers, and 4k/8k video editing. Cat8 cables are best suited, providing speeds up to 40 Gbps with lesser latency. Jacket Materials Cat6 cables generally utilize PVC jackets for indoor environments. This is done by providing fundamental protection against wear and abrasion. LLDPE jackets for outdoor installations offer UV resistance and enhanced water resistance, nevertheless, cat8 cables typically feature low smoke zero Halogen (LSZH) or plenum-rated jackets. This provides superior fire resistance and decreased toxic emissions. This makes them ideal for commercial buildings where safety is important. Shielding Cat6 cables can be featured in basic shielded or unshielded. This makes them suitable for lesser interference environments like offices and homes. On the contrary, cat8 cables are completely shielded with advanced options like individually shielded pairs and foil shielding. This makes cat8 optimal for ecosystems with high EMI, like data centers or industrial settings, where signal integrity is important. Environment Consider the operating environment of the cable. Cat8 cables excel in high-interference ecosystems because of their superior shielding. This maintains signal integrity by safeguarding EMI. This makes it ideal for ecosystems with heavy electronic noise, like industrial spaces and data centers. On the contrary, Cat6 cables are suitable for traditional indoor environments where there is lesser interface. This offers a more economical solution. Budget Cat6 cables are very affordable. This makes them a popular choice for small businesses and homes where ultra-high speeds are not important. Cat8 cables, while providing superior performance, come with a higher price tag because of their advanced shielding and capabilities. For the majority of the users, the extra cost of operating in demanding conditions. Conclusion Cat8 is superior to cat6 in terms of shielding, bandwidth, and speed. Cat8 is best suited for data-heavy ecosystems, like high-performance set-ups and data centers. Nevertheless, cat6 is sufficient for the majority of network uses at a lesser cost. Finally, the choice between cat6 and cat8 must rely on your budget considerations and the network’s demands.  Tech World TimesTech World Times (TWT), a global collective focusing on the latest tech news and trends in blockchain, Fintech, Development & Testing, AI and Startups. If you are looking for the guest post then contact at techworldtimes@gmail.com

News Sapphire 2025: BASF evolves business with move to SAP S/4Hana Germany-based global chemical giant BASF has elected to move its SAP IT estate to S/4Hana private cloud to evolve its business in uncertain times By Brian McKenna, Enterprise Applications Editor Published: 29 May 2025 15:30 Chemical industry giant BASF is moving its SAP IT estate to the supplier’s S/4Hana enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as part of a business modernisation strategy, it was announced at the SAP Sapphire user and partner conference in Madrid. Petra Scheithe, senior vice-president of digitalization of services and ERP platforms at BASF Business Services, outlined the latest development in the company’s long-standing relationship with SAP. BASF, which employs around 112,000 people, has been an SAP customer for 40 years. Its headquarters in Ludwigshafen are a half-hour drive from SAP’s in Walldorf. According to a joint SAP/BASF statement, the chemical firm “adopted a hybrid system landscape to integrate SAP S/4Hana Cloud into BASF’s vast system and reduce the complexity of on-premise management. With a clean core strategy in place, any new customisations and functional extensions will be cloud-ready, allowing simplified system maintenance and operations in the long run.” BASF also intends to use SAP’s artificial intelligence (AI) and sustainability software.   The first of its new systems on S/4Hana, in its coatings business, is already live. BASF has four “core businesses”, in chemicals, materials, industrial solutions, and nutrition and care, and four standalone business units in agriculture and surface technologies, catalysts and metals, battery materials, and coatings. BASF is also using SAP’s Joule copilot for initial use cases in SAP’s SuccessFactors HR system, and is looking at other cases for core business processes. “We signed a new strategic partnership with SAP in December 2024,” said Scheithe, in an interview at Sapphire. “This includes Rise [with SAP], which we did not have before.” Rise is a so-called business transformation as a service programme that is fundamentally about cloud migration, and getting customers, new and existing, onto a cloud-delivered version of its S/4Hana ERP system based on its in-memory database, Hana. BASF’s existing SAP estate is one single global instance. “That has brought some challenges with it because over the last decade, we have really grown that system to a point where we said ‘this is difficult to manage’,” said Scheithe. “We have a very broad product portfolio, from our agricultural business, our coatings business, catalysts, battery materials, and copper and metals,” she said. “Combining all of those requirements in one SAP system led to the point that we have more than 300,000 custom objects in the system, so it’s huge and monolithic. The transition to S/4Hana is a chance to clear that up.” The idea is to back up the BASF strategy, called Winning Ways, with a modernised ERP system. The overall corporate strategy has the goal of BASF being “the preferred chemical company to enable our customers’ green transformation”. It includes a €10bn investment in what the company calls a Verbund site in Zhanjiang in China. At these sites, production plants, energy and material flows, logistics, and site infrastructure are all integrated, according to the company. There are currently six worldwide. In relation to the SAP environment, Scheithe said they decided to split the one instance into several business-related ones. The new company strategy, minted in 2024, means there is a pillar dedicated to “differentiated steering with different market requirements”, she added. Read more about SAP customers Rise with SAP offers a path to the cloud for SAP customers, but adoption is still hindered by customer concerns over costs, flexibility and SAP's cloud-only innovation strategy. SAP sales tactic fuels IT disconnect. SAP customer unrest: How did we get here? BASF started to build an S/4Hana instance in 2022 for the coatings business, with “a greenfield approach using clean core strategy”. This went live in March of this year, “on time and on budget, which I am super proud of”, said Scheithe. The firm is now implementing S/4 for the battery materials division and piloting for the agricultural business. “Clean core” in an SAP context means keeping the core system as standard as possible, with minimal custom modifications.  They also opted for SAP’s Rise programme so that their systems are as close as possible to standard SAP and to leverage the IT supplier’s innovations in AI. Scheithe said she’s very interested to explore the use of the technology from SAP’s 2024 acquisition, WalkMe. This is a digital adoption platform technology that is increasingly associated with the use of SAP’s GenAI assistant, Joule. WalkMe sits on top of an organisation’s IT applications layer and determines where users might experience difficulties such as getting stuck when performing a process or task. WalkMe then provides guidance and automated processes that help the user complete the task. BASF is not using it as yet. It’s using Joule for HR tasks, in SuccessFactors, and Sheithe is especially interested in its use for developers. “We are not so naïve as to believe now that with implementing S/4 we will cover all our business requirements that we had in the past,” she said. “We have more than 300,000 custom objects in our system, and those were not done just because developers like to develop, but for business requirements. If we can’t get rid of those, we don’t want them in our core system, so it will be helpful if we have tools on hand that make our developers more efficient. This why I’m so excited about Joule for developers.” Thomas Saueressig, a member of the executive board of SAP for customer services and delivery, said: “We are proud to partner with BASF on this transformative journey. “By choosing SAP S/4Hana Cloud, BASF is laying a strong foundation for future growth and innovation,” he said. “The ability to leverage a clean core and standardised processes will provide BASF with the agility and resilience needed to thrive in today’s dynamic business environment.” In The Current Issue: UK government outlines plan to surveil migrants with eVisa data Why we must reform the Computer Misuse Act: A cyber pro speaks out Download Current Issue FinOps Foundation lays down 2025 Framework for Cloud+ cost control – Open Source Insider Bit Cloud offers Hope AI for developers  – CW Developer Network View All Blogs

Pentagram partners Jody Hudson-Powell and Luke Powell have created a dynamic equine identity for AI video company TwelveLabs. Based between San Francisco and Seoul, TwelveLabs describes itself as “the world’s most powerful video intelligence platform.” Unlike generative video tools which help users create videos from scratch, TwelveLabs uses AI analysis to help people understand their existing videos at a very granular level, which makes them more searchable. Co-founder and CEO Jae Lee explains that communicating this difference – between video generation and video understanding – was at the heart of their work with Pentagram. “In the middle of last year our models were improving pretty rapidly, and we thought we needed to up our game in terms of our storytelling, why we matter, and to match the design, the tone, and the messaging to our ambition,” he says. Lee described the previous branding as “straight out of Silicon Valley” and they chose Hudson–Powell and his team due to their tech-savvy design practice. In creating a new identity, it was important not to be “lumped in” with other generative AI video companies, Lee says, but also to differentiate themselves from other video analysis tools. “Our competitors essentially do frame-by-frame analysis, but we look at it temporally,” lead product designer Sean Barclay explains. “That’s what differentiates us, and we wanted to convey that secret sauce.” “On the first call, they had me at temporal reasoning,” Hudson-Powell laughs. His team had to avoid the visual cliches AI tools tend to embrace – “it’s a very noisy category with lots of sparkles.”  But they also had to capture and communicate TwelveLabs’ offering in a way that was accessible and exciting, but not dumbed down. “We had a distinct stream of work that wasn’t strategic or creative – it was just understanding the technology,” Hudson-Powell says. “We kept asking them, could we imagine your technology to look something like this? Or this? “We were trying to put some kind of conceptual apparatus around the technology, to see if we could find a visual communication language that we could start to build on.” “Jody was very good at pulling out those threads about what video looks like in our brains,” Lee says. Pentagram’s Luke Powell and Jody Hudson Powell’s new identity palette for TwelveLabs The Pentagram team homed in on the core idea of “video as volume” rather than a timeline, and they built a series of thread-based diagrams to help explain how it works. This visual motif could be scaled across the touchpoints, from product pages to sales and branding. “You get this graphic stretch, so you’re speaking to different audiences with the same concept,” Hudson-Powell explains. The horse logo was grounded in what Hudson-Powell calls TwelveLabs’ existing “lore” – Lee says they were inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s famous 1887 animation of a horse, and he likes the metaphor of a user as a jockey steering their technology. The logo – which has 12 layers in a nod to the company’s name – is often used in motion, galloping across a screen. “We worked a lot of animation into the identity,” Hudson-Powell says. “Animation can be quite frivolous, but we did it really intentionally. The logo gives you this feeling of perpetual motion, this rhythm at the heart of the brand, which is really important.” https://d3faj0w6aqatyx.cloudfront.net/uploads/2025/05/01_TL_Logo_Gradient_16x9_60fps_10s_LOW.mp4 The team chose Milling for the typeface for its combination of “technicality and soft edges” and the visual identity uses the LCH colour system, which, compared to RGB, represents colour in a more similar way to how our eyes perceive colour. “You can match any two colours and they’ll be harmonious, which you don’t get with RGB,” Hudson-Powell says. “We can find infinite combinations.” There were also three colour subsets for TwelveLabs’ three key features – pink-purple for search, orange-yellow for generate and green-blue for embed. Pentagram’s Luke Powell and Jody Hudson Powell’s new colour palette for TwelveLabs Lee says the new identity has resonated with investors, employees and most importantly, customers. “It’s given them this confidence that they’re working with not only a super-technical team, but also a team that cares deeply about video,” he says. “So we can communicate with our science community, but also with the people who are building the content we love consuming. There’s a duality which feels really connected.” Barclay agrees, and adds that it helps people grasp what TwelveLabs does – and what it might do for them – more quickly. “It’s definitely improved our website tremendously in terms of telling a better story,” he says. “Before it took a lot of time to comprehend what TwelveLabs is, and what we’re offering. We have definitely shortened that.” Pentagram’s Luke Powell and Jody Hudson Powell’s new identity palette for TwelveLabs Pentagram’s Luke Powell and Jody Hudson Powell’s new logo for TwelveLabs Pentagram’s Luke Powell and Jody Hudson Powell’s new identity palette for TwelveLabs Pentagram’s Luke Powell and Jody Hudson Powell’s new icons for TwelveLabs Pentagram’s Luke Powell and Jody Hudson Powell’s new identity palette for TwelveLabs Pentagram’s Luke Powell and Jody Hudson Powell’s new identity palette for TwelveLabs

Interviews Mickey 17: Stuart Penn – VFX Supervisor – Framestore By Vincent Frei - 27/05/2025 When we last spoke with Stuart Penn in 2019, he walked us through Framestore’s work on Avengers: Endgame. He has since added The Aeronauts, Moon Knight, 1899, and Flite to his impressive list of credits. How did you get involved on this show? Soon after we had been awarded work, Director Bong visited our London Studio in May 2022 to meet us and share his vision with us. How was the sequences made by Framestore? Framestore was responsible for the development of the Baby and Mama Creepers. We worked on the shots of the Baby Creepers within the ship, and the Creepers in the caves and the ice crevasse. We developed the ice cave and crevasse environments, including a full-CG shot of Mickey falling into the crevasse. Within the ship we were also responsible for the cycler room with its lava pit, the human printer, a range of set extensions, Marshall’s beautiful rock and—one of my personal favourites—Pigeon Man’s spinning eyes. We also crafted the spacewalk sequence. All the work came out of our London and Mumbai studios. Bong Joon Ho has a very distinct visual storytelling style. How did you collaborate with him to ensure the VFX aligned with his vision, and were there any unexpected creative challenges that pushed the team in new directions? Director Bong was fun to work with, very collaborative and had a very clear vision of where the film was going. We had discussions before and during the shoot. While we were shooting, Director Bong would talk to us about the backstory of what the Creepers might be thinking that went beyond the scope of what we would see in the movie. This really helped with giving the creatures character. Can you walk us through the design and animation process for the baby and mother creepers? What references or inspirations helped shape their look and movement? Director Bong had been working with his creature designer, Heechul Jang, for many months before production started. We had kickoffs with Director Bong and Heechul that provided us with some of the best and most thought out concepts I think we’ve ever received. Director Bong set us the challenge of bringing them to life. We took the lead on the Baby and Mama Creepers and DNEG took on the Juniors. It’s fun to note that the energy and inquisitive nature of the Babies was inspired by reference footage of puppies. Were these creatures primarily CG, or was there any practical element involved? How did you ensure their integration into the live-action footage? They were all CG in the final film. On set we had a range of stuffies and mockups for actors to interact with and for lighting reference. People became quite attached to the baby creeper stuffies! For the Mama there was a head and large frame that was controlled by a team of puppeteers for eyeline and lighting reference. The ice cave has a very distinct visual style. How did you achieve the look of the ice, and what techniques were used to create the lighting and atmospheric effects inside the cave? I was sent to Iceland for a week to gather reference. I visited a range of ice cave locations—driving, hiking and being dropped by helicopter at various locations across a glacier. This reference provided the basis for the look of the caves. The ice was rendered fully refractive with interior volumes to create the structures. As it’s so computationally expensive to render we used tricks where we could reproject a limited number of fully rendered frames. This worked best on lock offs or small camera moves—others we just had to render full length. How were the scenes featuring multiple Mickeys filmed? Did you rely mostly on motion control, digital doubles, or a combination of techniques to seamlessly integrate the clones into the shots? For our shots it was mostly multiple plates relying on the skill of camera operators to match the framing and move and the comp work to either split frames or lift one of the Mickeys from a plate and replace the stand-in. Since Mickey’s clones are central to the story, what were the biggest VFX challenges in making them interact convincingly? Were there any specific techniques used to differentiate them visually or subtly show their progression over time? This really all came down to Robert Pattinson’s performances. He would usually be acting with his double for interaction and lighting. They would then switch positions and redo the performance. Robs could switch between the Mickey 17 and 18 characters with the assistance of quick hair and makeup changes. The prison environment seems to have a unique aesthetic and mood. How much of it was built practically, and how did VFX contribute to enhancing or extending the set? The foreground cells and storage containers were practical and everything beyond the fence was CG with a DMP overlay. The containers going off into the distance were carefully positioned and lit to enable you to feel the vast scale of the ship. We also replaced the fence in most shots with CG as it was easier than rotoing through the chain links. When Mickey is outside the ship, exposed to radiation, there are several extreme body effects, including his hand coming off. Can you discuss the challenges of creating these sequences, particularly in terms of digital prosthetics and damage simulations? Knocking Mickey’s hand off was quite straight forward due the speed of the impact. We started with a plate of the practical arm and glove and switch to a pre-sculpted CG glove and arm stump. The hand spinning off into the distance was hand animated to allow us to fully art direct the spin and trajectory. The final touch was to add and FX sim for the blood droplets. How did you balance realism and stylization in depicting the effects of radiation exposure? Were there real-world references or scientific studies that guided the look of the damage? Most of the radiation effects came from great make up and prosthetics—we just added some final touches such as an FX sim for a bursting blister. We tried a few different simulations based on work we had none on previous shows but ultimately dialed it back to something more subtle so it didn’t distract from the moment. Were there any memorable moments or scenes from the film that you found particularly rewarding or challenging to work on from a visual effects standpoint? There were a lot of quite diverse challenges. From creature work, environments, lava to a lot of ‘one off’ effects. The shot where the Creepers are pushing Mickey out into the snow was particularly challenging, with so many Creepers interacting with each other and Mickey, it took the combination of several animators and compositors to bring it together and integrate with the partial CG Mickey. Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of? The baby creeper and the Ice cave environment. How long have you worked on this show? I worked on it for about 18 months What’s the VFX shots count? Framestore worked on 405 shots. A big thanks for your time. WANT TO KNOW MORE?Framestore: Dedicated page about Mickey 17 on Framestore website. © Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025