Blender Animation Contest Launches with $5,000 Prize Pool
RenderJuice is running a free Blender animation contest starting October 15, with $1,500 in cash awards and $3,500 in rendering credits split across nine categories. There's no entry fee—just your creativity and Blender skills.
Transform Character Identity Across Multiple Animation Styles
Animator Anna Huijun Wang explores how a single character can shift meaning and identity by moving between cel animation, 2D motion design, and 3D—each style revealing a different layer of the story.
Pushing Back When AI Becomes Your Only Job
Creative director Emily Foran describes clients sending her AI-generated mockups (from Claude or ChatGPT) and asking her to "clean it up"—a shift that's replacing original ideation with what she calls "pixel pushing," and it's demoralizing.
RenderJuice Speed Blender Animation Contest (Oct 15 Deadline)
Open call for animators to submit Blender work to a nine-category contest offering $1,500 cash and $3,500 in rendering credits—no entry fee, entry period starts October 15.
Redesign a Book Cover Like Penguin's Deluxe Editions
Penguin Young Readers is releasing special-edition classics this fall loaded with tactile surprises: embossing, gold foil, hand-drawn scribbles by fictional characters, hidden paper inserts, and edges that surprise you mid-read. *Charlie and the Chocolate Factory* now feels like an artifact, not just a story.
You’re done for today!
5 stories · under 10 minutes. See you tomorrow.
TODAY’S THREAD**The future of design isn't about replacing your thinking with AI—it's about *defending* your thinking, exploring unconventional mediums (animation across styles, physical books that surprise), and entering real competitions that fund your next move.** Stay original, stay curious, stay paid.