The Phoenix bird has always been known as the symbol of resurrection, rebirth and immortality. A Phoenix is born from the ashes of its predecessor, so it never really dies. I decided to draw the birth scene of a Phoenix, in somewhat a cutesy cartoon style, which is perfect to illustrate the word “Beginning”.

BUT…!! Since I missed the deadline, I might as well submit this one for “Disguise”. Hey, this can also be about an ugly bird disguising itself by transforming into a beautiful bird! (Cheating, I know… but at least it’s still a little bit relevant).

Done in Photoshop, including the sketch. I restricted myself to only use a hard pastel oil brush and nothing else.

Tried another style, this time it’s digital conte crayon on canvas. Still using Corel Painter to do the painting, with final touch-ups in Photoshop.

Expressive lines are all over the place, but turned out okay in the end. Did the coloring, shading and highlight on a single layer – something I’ve never done before.

Definitely loving the conte crayon effect, might do more like this in the future.

Created this illustration to experiment with Corel Painter. Did everything using one of the stock brushes. Was quite impressed with this software, it’s just a lot smoother and really geared towards digital painting compared to Photoshop.  I think I will use it more often from now on.

For some reason I immediately thought about the rabbit character from “Alice In Wonderland”. Decided to paint him right away.

This time it’s a full scene painting. I really wanted to try practicing my color technique after reading and watching some online tutorials, so I came up with this night scene with several light sources.

Had a blast painting the background. I should do more cartoon landscape paintings.

The drawing process in simple GIF animation is attached.

Came up with this cute dino character and decided to paint her in a Pixar-ish style. Didn’t turn out as well as I expected, but at least it’s something.

Process is also attached.

Second try ‘painting’ this piece instead of ‘vectorizing’ it. Spent too much time in doing unnecessary details instead of focusing more on composition, color, etc. Not 100% satisfied with the end result, but learnt a few tricks along the way.

So far I’ve been having a blast painting stuff digitally. Let’s just see where this will take me.

I have decided to paint everything digitally, without doing any vector shapes as usual. Figured I want to sharpen my digital drawing skills. Pretty satisfied with the end result, although can be better.

So here’s the first one I did. The word is “Refrain”.  

It’s been quite a while since we posted a downloadable content. With all our projects and internal stuff, it’s always been really hectic and we just couldn’t find the time to create one. But…! We managed to slip in a few days to make this one for you: a cartoon business man mascot creator! By using this pack, you can create your very own unique business man mascot. We have provided several selections of mix-and-match elements such as different eyes, mouths, accessories, facial hair, suits, shirts, pants and shoes!

Several different hand poses are also available for you to choose. Since everything is neatly layered, you can just show / hide layers to ‘build’ your mascot.

Included in the ZIP file: EPS and AI vector files in CS / CS4 version.

As usual, you can use this item freely for your personal use or share it among friends. However, please note that we still own all the copyright for this illustration so no reselling is allowed. If you want to host this file on your own server to share, we would really appreciate it if you could provide a back link to our site and mention Wizmaya.

By downloading our files, you agree to our terms and conditions as well as our privacy policy.

If you find this freebie useful, we would really appreciate it if you can share this post via the social network icons below. Cheers!

It’s the perfect time to share our newest freebie vector characters: a frantic mummy and a sweet witch. And yep, you’ve guessed it: they are both devoted bloggers! We figured that these two characters can spice up your Halloween-themed projects, online or offline.

Included in the ZIP file: EPS and AI files in CS version, along with hi-res transparent PNGs.

As usual, you can use this item freely for your personal use or share it among friends. However, please note that we still own all the copyright for this illustration so no reselling is allowed. If you want to host this file on your own server to share, we would really appreciate it if you could provide a back link to our site and mention Wizmaya.

Before downloading the file, you need to register to our site first. This is our way to expand our business connection and build traffic to our site. By downloading our files, you agree to our terms and conditions as well as our privacy policy.

If you find this freebie useful, we would really appreciate it if you can share this post via the social network icons below. Cheers!

Since then we have created 8 charity logos for different foundations and organizations, each with its own vision and mission.

What is Wizmaya Logo For Charity program? Well, you can find more details by reading our previous blog post via this link. In short, Wizmaya Design Studio is offering a free logo / mascot design (or redesign) service for any charitable, non-profit or fund raising organizations, communities, groups and services each month. You’ve heard it, we will do this free of charge!

Anyway, below are all the charity logos that we have created for the past 8 months:

It has been a great joy and pleasure working on these projects, and we really appreciate all the support, compliment and sharing along the way. We sure hope our design will help creating a better world, one logo at a time.

If you’re interested in working with us on a logo for your charity organization, just click here to get started!

LogoNest 02 showcases some of the best logo design of 2011 from top designers from all over the world, as well as really well-written articles about branding and design from the pros. We are so psyched that 10 of our logos have made it to the book, it’s surely an honor. If you are interested, go ahead and check out their site.

Thanks LogoNest! Really happy to be featured, and can’t wait to contribute more for the next volumes!

If you are interested, here’s how we play:

1. You have to be a spectator on Dribbble first.
2. Obviously, you have to show us your best design pieces. Create a shot (400×300 pixels) that you would post on Dribbble. Leave a comment below this post or send a tweet mentioning @Wizmaya with a link to the shot, and preferably along with a link to your online design portfolio as well.
3. We are accepting all entries until Saturday, March 10 2012, 00:00 Jakarta time (+7:00 GMT). All updates / changes will be announced via our Twitter account, so feel free to follow us.
4. Invitation will be sent out to one ‘winner’ on Monday, March 12 2012.

Several tips:

• We’re suckers for beautiful illustrations, killer logos and great design process.
• You can play around with your shot, but the link to your online portfolio is very essential.

So let’s get this game started! Thank you for participating, we’re looking forward to seeing your beautiful works!

Edit:

Turns out that finding the ‘right’ Dribbble draftee is harder than we thought. So we’re lifting up the deadline for this contest and it will stay open until we choose one worthy designer. Anyone interested, post and tweet us your best works!

It’s another cool freebie from us! This time it’s a superhero-kids vector illustration pack! There are several sets of different heads for both the boy and girl versions, as well as some various standing and flying poses. If you’re handy with AI, you’ll have a blast mixing-and-matching the elements to create you very own, unique superkid mascot!

Included in the ZIP file: EPS and AI files in CS version.

As usual, you can use this item freely for your personal use or share it among friends. However, please note that we still own all the copyright for this illustration so no reselling is allowed. If you want to host this file on your own server to share, we would really appreciate it if you could provide a back link to our site and mention Wizmaya.

Before downloading the file, you need to register to our site first. This is our way to expand our business connection and build traffic to our site. By downloading our files, you agree to our terms and conditions as well as our privacy policy.

If you find this freebie useful, we would really appreciate it if you can share this post via the social network icons below. Cheers!

We have seen so many non-profit organizations, charitable communities, fund raising services and charity events without visually-appealing logos. For us, this is quite unfortunate because we know a good logo can really make a difference in communicating their goodwill to the public. A great logo design will make the organization appear more professional, well-managed and dedicated to their cause. This will eventually result in gaining more trust from the public.

At Wizmaya, we believe that the more you give, the more meaningful your life is going to be. This is why we want to start contributing our skills to the community by offering a free logo design service each month for any charitable organization out there. From green peace to pets, from health-related to social awareness, we will consider all.

Interested? Read our Logo for Charity terms and conditions first and head straight to this page to start submitting the questionnaire!

For me, sketching is the most enjoyable part in doing any logo project.

Just thought I would put this up on our blog. This is a real fun logo design project done for a music mobile app, specializing in electronica – pop genre. We have done quite a bunch of doodles for this one, ultimately ended up using a retro robot mascot for the logo as it really symbolizes the pop culture of that particular genre’s era.

The sketches shown here are just a small part of all the doodles we did. Since robots and characters are ‘easier’ to the eyes, I didn’t include our shapes and form exploration for this logo. Anyway… final design can be seen below, with short animated GIF to show the ideation process. This was also a shot for Dribbble a couple days ago.

We are sharing two illustrative iPad wallpapers for you! These ethnic-modern illustrations were done for a client’s desktop calendar project but were eventually unused, so we are giving them out for free as iPad wallpapers.

All images are in (1024 x 1024) pxls, 72 dpi format, fully optimized for iPads.

As usual, you can use this item freely for your personal use or share it among friends. However, please note that we still own all the copyright for these illustrations so no reselling is allowed. If you want to host this file on your own server to share, we would really appreciate it if you could provide a back link to our site and mention Wizmaya.

No need to register to grab these ones. Download by clicking on the thumbnails below and save the bigger images on the pop up window. By downloading our files, you agree to our terms and conditions as well as our privacy policy.

If you like them, we would really appreciate it if you can share this post via the social network icons below. Cheers!

Thanksgiving is near, and to celebrate it we’re giving out this cute little turkey cartoon character set wearing a pilgrim hat. There are 4 poses available in this pack, all in vectors.

Included in the ZIP file: EPS and AI files in CS version. Transparent PNG files for each pose are also included.

As usual, you can use this item freely for your personal use or share it among friends. However, please note that we still own all the copyright for this illustration so no reselling is allowed. If you want to host this file on your own server to share, we would really appreciate it if you could provide a back link to our site and mention Wizmaya.

Before downloading the file, you need to register to our site first. This is our way to expand our business connection and build traffic to our site. By downloading our files, you agree to our terms and conditions as well as our privacy policy.

If you find this freebie useful, we would really appreciate it if you can share this post via the social network icons below. Cheers!

Then there’s Graphicriver’s ‘Logo Templates’. It has just been opened for public a few weeks ago, and it looks promising despite the limited logo licensing options. They only offer a flat $29 regular license for the stock logos and no exclusivity (a logo template can be bought several times by different clients). So why is it ‘promising’? Well, I said that based on my own experience. To test the water, I reluctantly put up 4 logos up for sale in the first week they open. To my surprise, some of them were sold rather quickly and a week later I have got 5 prospective clients contacting me, asking to buy our logos exclusively. I turned down 3 (because the logos they wanted were already sold at least once to some other guys), accepted 1 (removed the requested logo from the Graphicriver’s marketplace and sold it to him exclusively), and the other one ended up as a full custom logo job. Not bad at all!

Now we have 9 logo templates up, have generated 15 sales from them, and have got 3 custom logo design projects from prospective clients who contacted us from our Graphicriver’s profile page. Moral of the story so far: Graphicriver is worth it. Not for the $29 price tag, but for the longer run. Consider it as a logo portfolio showcase, your site will get a boost of traffic considerably. More traffic is always good. The others? I will skip them for now. It’s better to sell the unused logos via your own site.

So how about it, Envato? When will the exclusive license option will be available for the logo design category? I know we’ll definitely jump into the bandwagon!

Check out our Royalty-Free works on Graphicriver:

         

Hi again! Ready for our next freebie?

By popular requests, this time we are giving out a free vector mascot creation pack… with a robotic theme! Yes, with this pack you can create and customize your very own cartoon robot mascot / character! There are lots of parts that you can combine: heads, bodies, arms, eyes, mouths and accessories! You can easily edit the colors by clicking on each shape and choose a color from the color palette. For best results, don’t hesitate to resize those shapes!

Included in the ZIP file: EPS and AI files in both CS and CS5 versions. Please remember that you need at least Adobe CS version to open the vector files because there are lots of transparency effects used for the illustration.

As usual, you can use this item freely for your personal use or share it among friends. However, please note that we still own all the copyright for this illustration so no reselling is allowed. If you want to host this file on your own server to share, we would really appreciate it if you could provide a back link to our site and mention Wizmaya.

Before downloading the file, you need to register to our site first. This is our way to expand our business connection and build traffic to our site. By downloading our files, you agree to our terms and conditions as well as our privacy policy.

If you find this freebie useful, we would really appreciate it if you can share this post via the social network icons below. Cheers!

Fact is, there are so many different factors to be considered before selling a logo design as-is. When branding is involved, it’s just not that easy to decide.

Unused logo concepts: keep, discard or sell them?

With hundreds of rejected logo design concepts and proposals, we are having a hard time keeping track of them. We even have lost quite many of them because of fried hard drives, missing data CDs and DVDs etc. Every time a client hires us for a logo project, we usually end up collecting at least 5 unused design concepts in the end. Sometimes, if not all the time, I personally think those unused concepts were even better visually and conceptually than the final ones chosen by clients!

This really got me thinking. I want to make our rejected logo concepts useful somehow, and one reasonable option is to sell them ‘as-is’, as pre-made logos. Quality wise, they are definitely above average (yes, I’m being a bit subjective here, but some of them even made it to several logo design books and featured on several web sites, so they can’t be that bad right?) Furthermore, Wizmaya is quite well-known for its illustrative approach to logo designs, so they stand better chance in the competition against the generic, common, abstract logos. Definitely a niche market, but I’m after it. However, I do have my doubts and own concerns about selling ‘stock’ logos.

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1.  Will it hurt our reputation?

Last thing I want is to be branded ‘Cheap Logo Designer’ by the community. Usually, by selling cheap ready-made logos, people will judge that you are a second-rate designer who lives in one of those poor, third world country, who still lacks the experience and worship the dollar (well they mostly get the country part right though). This will eventually lead to many, MANY cases of me turning down (prospective) clients because they thought we can create them a fully customized logo for $50 or less!  I have worked hard in the past 2 years to build up Wizmaya’s reputation and convincing clients that we are worth our rates. I surely don’t want this stock-logo-selling decision throws me off-balance again.

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2.  Where to sell them?

There are plenty of web sites which you can join as a contributor and put your stock logos up for sale on their sites. Finding them is the easy part. It is a lot harder (edit: VERY HARD) to find out whether those sites are well-reputable, has fair pricing, offer decent commission cut for the designer, and offer exclusive license (one-time purchase) for the logos. I personally don’t want to join stock logo sites which are full with gazillions of clip-artsy, ugly logos. Again, we have a reputation to maintain. I have come up with a short list of sites that are worth experimenting (Brandstack, 99design Logo Store, Graphicriver), but I will discuss them in more details another time, in another article. Best solution for now in my opinion? Just sell the logos via your own web site. Less traffic, but your rules!

Some of our unused logo concepts. On sale on several sites.

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3.  How much?

Another hard-to-answer question. Selling ready-made logos is definitely different from creating a logo design from scratch, so logically the price tag for stock logos should be lower (cheaper). But how much cheaper? For me, it really depends on the logo concept / idea itself as well as the license involved. Great logo visual concept is not that easy to come up with, so they should be more expensive. Add a few more bucks when a ‘smart’ brand name is also provided, and domain name is still available. (This is why we always try to come up with a good, original brand name to complement our stock logos for sale). So how much? Roughly about $450 for exclusive license, and somewhere around $50 for non-exclusive license (multiple purchases possible) is decent. (Important note: I’m still not sure about this non-exclusive license for a logo, but apparently they exist).

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4.  Should the logos be editable for further customization?

Face it, people just love to customize. Especially when it involves their brands, business, products or companies. For this reason, I think it’s always best to offer stock logos with generic fonts so they can always replace the brand name with their own’s. (Yes, that means ‘stock logos’ are actually ‘half-a-logo’s because you don’t really need to design the typeface! Yay!) Aside from that, any more customization is too far of a stretch in my opinion, unless the client can afford to pay us extra.

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Those are the 4 main issues that I’m very concerned with in regards to selling our unused logo concepts as ‘stock logos’. At the moment I’m still experimenting a few things on different sites, targeting different markets. I’m being very cautious and always picky in selecting which logos to sell, with what license and where. I’ll keep track on the progress and hopefully I’ll be able to share some of the results with you guys in the future article.

So what about you? What’s your opinion? Do share!

Got plenty of spare time today, I did some doodles and ended up drawing this fun rendition of Tintin. Everything is done in Adobe Illustrator as usual, except the background lighting (Photoshop). I dedicate this one to the upcoming Tintin movie (can’t wait!)  Click the image if you want to see the larger version.

Anyway, here’s my fun rendition of Son Goku in his signature outfit. Everything is done in Adobe Illustrator, including the background effect. You can click the image for a bigger version. Hope you like it!

PS: Toriyama-sensei, you’re the BEST!