Latest news with #creatives

Yahoo

8 hours ago

Business
Yahoo

DesignRush Invites Submissions for September 2025 Design Awards

Brands and agencies are invited to submit their best web, logo, print, app, packaging, or video design - for a chance to be featured among the industry's top creatives. New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - July 23, 2025) - DesignRush, a leading B2B marketplace that connects brands with top agencies, is now accepting submissions for its August 2025 Design now through August 22, agencies and creatives from around the world are invited to submit their best work for a chance to gain industry recognition, build social proof, and strengthen credibility - all crucial for winning future clients and are now open - from July 23 through August 22 - across six major categories: Website Design Logo Design Print Design App Design Packaging Design Video Design Each submission is carefully reviewed by DesignRush's esteemed international jury of design experts, using a transparent evaluation framework built around six core metrics: impact, creativity, functionality, execution, branding, and user experience. Over a dedicated one-week judging period, each juror scores entries on a 1 to 10 scale, with the average score determining the winners. Award-winning projects and agencies are showcased on DesignRush's website, newsletter, and social media channels, putting them in front of thousands of industry decision-makers and potential business partners. To see the level of work that earns acclaim, you can check out our latest roster of Design Award winners featuring standout projects across all categories. Join these award-winning agencies and get the recognition you deserve. Here's what past winners have to say: "The Award brought around 200 users to our site within a month and got us a project worth USD 25k." - Jean Massad, Lift Agency Design Lead and Founder "The process of applying for the Award was quick and easy without any hassle and the Awards Manager was fantastic throughout." - Charlotte Burrows, Slice Design Senior Account Manager "Being featured in the Awards has grown our online traffic considerably and given us further credentials when talking to our clients." - Terry Cole, Graphic Brands Creative DirectorRight now, designers, studios, and creative teams looking to showcase their best work can submit their designs for consideration in any of the six categories. About DesignRush is a B2B marketplace and media platform connecting businesses with agencies through expert reviews and agency ranking lists, awards, knowledge resources, and personalized agency recommendations for vetted projects. Media Contact Lensey Etcubañas lensey@ +1 305-370-1017 To view the source version of this press release, please visit Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

‘You're going to see this flood of new stories': Why African animators are excited about AI

CNN

14 hours ago

Entertainment
CNN

‘You're going to see this flood of new stories': Why African animators are excited about AI

Digital technology may have led to the decline of hand-drawn animation, but it still required legions of creatives and technicians to feed into the process. Now some fear that artificial intelligence (AI) could push the human touch further still out of the equation. But in Africa, animation professionals see AI as a means to unlock new creative possibilities, while getting their projects off the ground with greater ease. Stuart Forrest, CEO of BAFTA and Emmy-winning Triggerfish Animation Studio, which has its headquarters in South Africa, is one of them. 'Africa has quite a unique position globally,' he told CNN. 'Of the 1.4 billion people that live on the continent, there's such a tiny amount that are actually active in the animation industry.' Given the limited number of professional animators, Forrest believes that by integrating AI, some creatives will have a route to realize their projects for the first time – 'that's really exciting for the continent.' Ebele Okoye, an award-winning Nigerian filmmaker affectionately known as the 'Mother of African animation,' also sees plenty of upsides. 'We now have the opportunity to tell our stories without having to wait for somebody to give us $20 million,' she told CNN during the Cannes Film Festival in May, where she hosted a masterclass on AI in animation at the Pavilion Afriques. Africa's animation sector was valued at $13.3 billion in one 2023 report but historically, there has been a lack of funding for African animated projects, said Forrest. 'There's a general rule that African stories don't generate income. But the African stories that are made are such low budget that, yes, they don't generate income. So it's a self-fulfilling thing,' he explained. Soon, he projects, a feature film that might have cost $10-20 million to make, may cost $50,000 with AI, and require just two or three creatives. 'You're going to see this flood of new stories that have never been heard before, from countries that no one would ever invest (in),' he added. 'Eventually the playing field between Hollywood and Kinshasa (in the Democratic Republic of Congo) will be levelled in terms of the quality of storytelling.' There are many outstanding questions. For one: What might AI do to the jobs market? Opinions differ. 'You're going to empower people working for you,' Okoye said. 'You're not going to replace them; you're going to make their jobs easier.' But that's assuming you have a job in the first place. AI is already taking on many mundane, repetitive tasks – tasks that might be done by entry level staff and trainees. 'If those jobs then become obsolete, at some point this makes the industry a bit elitist … you don't have the same entry window that you do now,' argued Masilakhe Njomane, a junior research fellow at the South African Cultural Observatory and co-author of a recent report on AI's impact on South Africa's creative industries. 'In an economy like South Africa it's detrimental, as we already have a lot of trouble with job security as a whole, especially in the creative and cultural industry,' she added. While Triggerfish has not used AI-generated art, Forrest said, employees have used GitHub Copilot, an AI-powered coding assistant, to help them generate code for the past couple of years, noticeably speeding up their output. He conceded 'AI initially might eliminate some roles, but it will enable other roles.' On the other hand, Njomane pointed to AI creating opportunities for independent studios to play a bigger role in content creation. Aside from the impact on jobs, most reservations with integrating AI – particularly generative AI – in the creative industries involve ethics and the law. There is an ongoing murkiness surrounding where and how some AI companies acquire the datasets used to train algorithms which generate imagery. AI companies have been hit with dozens of lawsuits, largely based on copyright infringement. Just last month, Midjourney was sued by Disney and Universal, who alleged the generative AI company trained its model on their intellectual property, and generated images in violation of copyright law. In July, the European Union proposed new rules that would force companies to make publicly available summaries of the content used to train their algorithms. In January the US Copyright Office concluded that the output of generative AI could be copyright protected, but only when a human had contributed 'sufficient expressive elements' – and that inputting prompts alone did not meet the criteria. The African Union is a few paces behind forming concrete policy, but the issue featured prominently its 2024 AI strategy report. A creative with no copyright on their work has few routes to make money from it. Okoye believes, for this reason and more, African animators should avoid web browser-based generative AIs and instead use AI in a localized workflow. Okoye uses software ComfyUI, into which she has fed drawings of her characters in different poses. 'You can train an AI model based on your character, so that the moment you connect this model to your local workflow, you say exactly what you want your character to do and it's doing it,' she explained. 'You just get back what you gave it – and it's your IP (intellectual property).' Forrest says Triggerfish is looking to develop an ethical 'AI-assisted pipeline,' though he can still find some sympathy for algorithms. 'If we have to brutally honest with ourselves, we were inspired by Disney, Pixar,' he said. 'I think art is always assimilating – I mean, Raphael was assimilating Michelangelo and Leonardo. It's always been about looking at what people are doing and saying, 'How can I being my perspective to this?' 'It's acceptable if humans do it. But the question is how acceptable is it when it's done by machines? Ultimately, I think the controversy will wear off.' Having creative control over your data inputs could have other benefits: namely, helping eliminate bias. Racial bias in AIs is well documented, from facial recognition technology recording much higher error rates among dark-skinned people than light-skinned, to large language models perpetuating negative stereotypes against speakers of African American English. Such 'techno-racism' extends into generative AI: artist Stephanie Dinkins even produced an exhibition out of AI's inability to accurately depict Black women. Okoye says in the past, some AIs have generated either generic or inaccurate imagery when prompted to create African characters. 'The only solution is to go local, create your characters, train your own model,' she reiterated. As for why AIs fall short, Forrest said that 'there is so little existing African content – especially in animation – that there is a lot less for (an AI) to understand.' Njomane pointed to AIs performing better in English and other Western languages, adding many often generate generic imagery of Africa. 'It's not being programmed with (Africans) in mind or even consulting them at all. And that's a huge problem.' Okoye outlined a dream scenario in which development funds or angel investors back studios to create diverse African characters and culturally specific assets to train an AI model. That would generate a library of accurate, free-to-access imagery, which can serve as a foundation for animators to build on in a way that allows them to assert their copyright. Amid a boom in African animation, animators will need all the tools they can get, as studios look to replicate the success of series like 'Iwájú' and 'Iyanu' – Nigerian projects streaming on Disney+ and HBO Max respectively, signposting growing international appetite for Afro-centric storytelling. Despite the ongoing ethical kinks, Okoye remains optimistic. But as someone who once worked as a typesetter alongside colleagues worried for their careers with the arrival of the personal computer, she also understands people's concerns. 'Coming from (being) a typesetter to somebody who's training AI models – how beautiful,' she said. 'What a great time to be alive.'