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Some weeks into its state of COVID-19 national emergency, Japan, along with the rest of the world, was suffering from cabin fever. Children in particular were scared and bored. It was at this point, said Toshio Suzuki, telling the story from the welled kotatsu bench of a sushi restaurant near his office, that the education board of his native Nagoya called Japan’s most famous animation producer and co-founder of Studio Ghibli and asked him to come up with an encouraging message. The request resonated. As an 11-year-old, Suzuki had lived through 1959’s devastating Isewan Typhoon and he recalled entertainers who were drafted in to divert children like him from the fearsome death toll. “The normal thing would be to send a message saying something like ‘don’t let corona win’, but I didn’t want to do that,” he said. His alternative offer to Nagoya was a short, grandfatherly video (now well and truly viral), in which he showed children with just a few simple pen strokes … [Read more...] about Meet the other man behind Studio Ghibli’s four decades of Totoro and anime magic

If you’ve been working from home for months and have concluded that this situation is unlikely to end anytime soon, you may be giving your makeshift work space a serious second look. You’re not alone. “We’ve been getting a lot of people asking about ways they can improve their home-office scenarios – both past clients and new inquiries,” said Keren Richter, a founder of the Brooklyn-based interior design firm White Arrow. “It’s definitely a topic right now.” Continuing to work from your bed or the dining table is unlikely to be very productive, or feel very professional, in the long term. But what should you do if you don’t have an extra room for a proper home office, or even an obvious space for desk? READ: The long, unhappy history of working from home “Sometimes it’s just about carving out a space within a space,” Richter said. Or it might involve finding leftover space – like the attic she recently converted into a home office at her house in Pound Ridge, NY. For … [Read more...] about Still working from your bed? Time to upgrade your home office

ViacomCBS has announced a new studio based entirely around Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra . Avatar Studios will create “original content spanning animated series and movies,” according to a press release. Avatar and Korra original creators, Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, are joining Nickelodeon as co-chief creative officers of Avatar Studios. The first project is an animated theatrical title set to begin production soon. More information will be announced soon, according to the company. Having exclusive Avatar and Korra content is pretty key for Nickelodeon and ViacomCBS’ new streaming service, Paramount Plus . While the company’s business strategy is to license out a number of its shows and films on a non-exclusive basis, by the time Avatar and The Legend of Korra returned to Netflix, subscribers may have associated the show specifically with the streaming platform. The show became the most watched title on Netflix around May 22nd, … [Read more...] about Nickelodeon creates Avatar Studios to create new Avatar, Legend of Korra content

Enclosed areas can sometimes make media professional David Chan feel a little claustrophobic. So he was looking to have a home that offers “lots of wide, open space that facilitates relaxation, laughter and expression”. But, at the same time, added the print producer who works from home: “It needed to be homely; I didn’t want a showroom.” So Chan set about transforming a nondescript-looking, 721 sq ft, three-room resale HDB flat into “just one big living space”. “What I told the interior designer was to knock everything down so there’s no walls, no doors,” he said. The result? Living, dining, work and sleeping zones occupy an open-plan, loft-like rectangular space. “I wanted a cafe kind of feel, so I had white brick walls. I also wanted an industrial chic look, so we had this all scraped and exposed,” Chan said, referring to the raw, exposed concrete structural beams and pillar that add character and texture to the space. Aside from white brick and grey … [Read more...] about Turning a 721 sq ft HDB flat into one big living space with no walls and doors

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries has announced the contours of carving out of its oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business into an independent unit with a USD 25 billion loan from the parent, as it looks to unlock value by selling stakes to global investors like Saudi Aramco. IMAGE: RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani. Photograph: ANI Photo. The reorganisation will enable the focused pursuit of opportunities across the O2C value chain, improve efficiencies through self-sustaining capital structure and a dedicated management team, and attract dedicated pools of investor capital, according to a company presentation filed with the stock exchanges. The O2C business unit holds Reliance's oil refinery and petrochemical assets and retail fuel business but not upstream oil and gas producing fields such as KG-D6 and textiles business. Once completed, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) -- the company founded by Dhirubhai Ambani in the late 1960s -- will house only the upstream oil and gas … [Read more...] about RIL to spin off oil-to-chemical biz into separate arm with $25bn loan