In this tutorial I’m going to write about how to prepare nice cartoon, based on simple shapes with gradient fills.
Although it’s hard to make detailed graphics this way, the cartoons have one strong advantage - you can scale it downto a very small size and it’s still clear - that’s why it’s perfect for logos and icons.

First we start with a sketch - in our example I’ve made a very nice bear - his name is Teodore.

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We’ve created another design for our finnish frieds.

Cafekismus.fi is a religious organization for kids and youth.

The design is little grungy, as it should resamble noticeboard.

visit Cafekismus.fi (more…)

Adobe launched service that was mentioned long time ago - a free, online version of Photoshop.

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We have two brand new wallpapers with BlackMoons’ cutle little fellow - Al.
Please feel free to use those wallpaper in any way you like.
There are source files (.fla) also aviable for download.
There’s also a GIMP Splash image with BlackMoon theme for you.

Normal size wallpaper (1280 x 1024)

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We’ve made a website for translation company called Germanicon.

Website is very content oriented - it features blog as a main way to communicate with users, but also have strong content management based on Joomla.

From visual side - we tried to depicted the Germanicon as it really is - small translators company, passionate about language and communication. That’s why we’ve designed very friendly and “think-out-of-the-box” layout.

We’ve also designed a logo - with bright, orange color and distinct gray.

Visit Germanicon website

Site screenshot

Germanicon logo close-up

If you would like to learn more about how to draw cartoons, or would just like to get inspired - here are some books fror you.

Ben Caldwell (check his official site btw.) is great and very experienced cartoon designer. He share his knowledge in two tutorial-type books called “Action Cartooning” and “Fantasy Cartooning”.

There are descirbed examples of great cartoon sketches, the whole design process is shown step by step.

You can also find some design tips, commonly made mistakes - and a lot of more.

Those two books helped me a lot in my work - check them yourself, you won’t regret it.

When you’ll have to handle multiple tasks with different priorities, and the clock is running - you need to have something more than yellows stickies to help you.
RememberTheMilk comes in to help.

It’s a web application to handle to-do list.

It’s simple and easy to use - yet extremly effective and flexible.
You can setup different priorities for tasks, add tags, notes - and at top of all - you can share them with others (it’s great with such small business like ours - communication between client, project menager, designer and programmer is much faster - everybody knows what should be done and when).
The only small disadvantage is that you can group tasks in project (not directly - you can add the same tag to all project’s tasks - and than browse tasks by this tag).

Our overall experience with RememberTheMilk is very good - it’s much easier to have the things done with a tool like this.

We’ve created visual theme and indentity for Finnish site Valtikka.fi.

Site is targeted for young people interested in politics and democracy. The idea behind the site is quite serious, but we definitely didn’t want the site to be boring and dull.

We’ve chosen vibrant colors and tried to make the site energetic and fun - just like the people who’ll visit it now.

Click here to visit Valtikka.fi

I’ve made another goodie for you - few very nice vector characters, which you can use  freely in any project - private or commercial (just drop us a email with the info - we’re curious what you can do with those characters).

click here to download AI version

click here to download FLA version

We’ve create a visual identity package for our Finnish friends at Hexagon IT.

The white-red-black logo fits perfectly for modern IT company. It’s also very clear on stationary (cards&envelopes) as well as on printed marketing materials (which were also designed by us).

Hexagon IT logo

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