Dirk Leys, the man behind the kick-ass logo inspiration website Logomoose is very generously offering an xhtml/css portfolio template as free download this week. It is called Medifolio.  The portfolio template is light and minimalistic, easily editable and customizable and will have your nifty portfolio up and live within the hour with just a few basic changes. Download and share it as you wish and please keep it free. Don’t forget to head on over to Dirk’s post and tell him how much you love the template!

I have been working on a series of vector cartoon characters recently and thought "How cool would it be if I had a few ready color palettes handy for when I needed to do a quick character?". Then I started worrying about color combinations and which would work the best. But then you see, half the work has already been done before by all those brilliant guys who came up with fictional characters that rocked everyone’s boat …. I am talking superheroes here! Well, the same principal applies to any character that has become popular in history, be it Mickey Mouse or Shrek … The cat in the Hat or Garfield. If the characters stick in your minds then apart from the fact that they are beautifully crafted, color is the most vital feature of their being. Can you imagine a black Nemo? or a blue Homer? [well, he'd be a smurf then wouldn't he?]. I doubt those weird colors would work on those characters.

I decided to do a set of Superheroes Palettes. If it worked for them, then the combinations would have to be perfect. So I picked up a few of my favorites from the top of my head and picked a color palette of 12 colors for each, saved them as .ase [Adobe Swatch Exchange] files and Voila!! I have a zip file of 8 palettes for you to download. These are pretty strong and striking colors, doing justice to the strong characters they represent. Used with a bit of imagination they could really work well for any kind of character … ranging from powerful to cute. Take your pick from Optimus Prime, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman And Wolverine. The blues and reds do stand out. They are the most widely used followed by yellows and grays. My personal favorite palette would have to be Batman followed by Optimus Prime & Wonder Woman. There is so much that you can do with those colors.

Download lboi_palettes1.zip [8 .ase files with 12 color swatches each]