Drawn characters are usually cute and they can make us laugh. Nowadays, designers can turn their pencil sketches into beautiful digital art with lot of beautiful effects. You can use striking vector character as a mascot for your business or website.

This article contains 50 best Photoshop and Illustrator character designing tutorials. Most of these tutorials require a hand drawn sketch, so don't forget about your pencil and paper.

1. Create a Cute Little Tiger in Illustrator

In this tutorial, you will be drawing the tiger, but you will be doing it a little bit different. Instead of portraying the tiger as a savage and mean creature, author will teach you how to draw a cute little tiger that you will be able to use in your projects, as a desktop wallpaper, etc. You will also learn lots of Illustrator techniques as well. This is the perfect tutorial for year 2010, the year of the tiger.

2. Create a Cute Baby Monster Character in Illustrator

Vector monster tutorial for all you designers learning Illustrator to get stuck into! Use Illustrator's basic shapes to form the outline and structure of a cute baby monster character, before adding colour, gradients and effects to bring the design to life.

3. Draw an Angry Little Samurai in Illustrator

This tutorial will show you how to draw a samurai in Illustrator using shapes, free time and desire.

4. Create a Character Mascot with Adobe Illustrator CS4

In this intermediate Illustrator tutorial you will be shown how to create a vector character mascot from a sketch in Adobe Illustrator CS4. The techniques in this tutorial can easily be applied to other illustrations, icons, and design elements; as well as legacy versions of Illustrator.

5. How to Create a Curious Owl in Illustrator CS4

Learn how to create non-spooky scene set at dusk, with a curious owl sitting on a branch and some scenery in the background.

6. Create a Cute Panda Bear Face Icon

In the following easy tutorial, you will be shown how to create a cute panda bear face icon all from ellipses (well, actually there is one rectangle for the background). The great part about this tutorial, is that you can easily apply the techniques to other icons, illustrations, logos, or other projects.

7. Create a Cute Furry Vector Monster in Illustrator

Follow these steps in Adobe Illustrator to create your very own super cute fuzzy monster character. You'll be working with the basic shapes to start, then use a variety of gradients to add depth. You can then finish it off with some detailed fur effects to really lift the design from the screen.

8. How to Turn a Sketch into a Fat Cat Vector Illustration

This tutorial aims to guide you from sketchbook to screen; a "Fat Cat" doodled with biro translated into a neat vector caricature. Intermediate knowledge of Adobe Illustrator is advised.

9. Create the Face of a Greedy Monkey

This tutorial will help you create a simple illustration of a monkey face. It uses the Ellipse Tool, the Pen Tool, the Rectangle Tool, the Crystallize Tool or the Gradient Tool. For the shadow effects you'll use some classic effects like the Inner Glow or the Gaussian Blur.

10. How to Create a Slick Anime Character in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to draw an Anime Style character. To start, you'll rely on basic shapes and the Brush Tool. Also, you'll learn one of author's personal techniques he calls "The Front Mirror" which he uses for almost any of his animation projects. This technique will save you lots of time, and will help you to draw many characters for your projects in a very fast way.

11. Creating Vector Characters in Illustrator

This character was created to be a mascot of sorts, and aimed at all ages. It is usable at a variety of sizes, and in both print and animation. See detailed PDF walk-through tutorial how to create it.

12. Create a Happy Sun Character

This intermediate tutorial is great for logos, children illustrations, and other projects relating to climate change. Moreover, you can easily apply this tutorial to other illustrations, logos, and projects.

13. Create a Student Character Mascot with Adobe Illustrator

This is an intermediate Illustrator tutorial level where you can learn how to create a vector student character mascot from a sketch in Adobe Illustrator. The techniques can easily be applied to other character design, illustrations or icons.

14. Create a Character Illustration Wallpaper

Following this tutorial you will be able to create a character illustration wallpaper in Photoshop just like in image below.. In this tutorial you will be focusing more on the shapes, scaling and using group layers.

15. Drunken Monkey Photoshop Tutorial

This article will explain yo you step-by-step how author's designed an attractive character in one of his recent projects, namely for the company "Drunken Monkey Collectibles". He will review the entire design process, from the first sketches and drafts to the final touches with Adobe Photoshop.

16. Create a Vector Pirate Cartoon Character from a Hand Drawn Sketch

By firstly using the power of pen and paper a character design is created, which is then scanned into the computer to use as a base for tracing with Adobe Illustrator. The final outcome is a colourful cartoon character in vector format.

17. Create a Blue Vector Character from Pencil Sketch to Coloring

Quick tutorial in which you will going to make a blue character illustration thing. You will be using Photoshop on this tutorial, but don't forget about pencil and a paper because you're going to start this with sketching.

18. How to Create a Stinking Zombie Flesh-Eater in Illustrator

In this tutorial, you will see how to create a cartoon zombie in Illustrator. Starting by creating a fresh corpse, you will then 'yuck' it up using a number of techniques.

19. Create Simple Cartoon Characters in Photoshop

You will be walked through the basics of colourful vector art to get you going on Photoshop CS and newer.

20. How to Create a Cute and Adorable Twitter Icon in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a cute and adorable Twitter icon. Throughout this tutorial, you will use some of the basic tools like Ellipse Tool, Pen Tool and Gradient Tool.

21. Create a Cool Vector Panda Character in Illustrator

Here's a step by step walk-through of the process used to create a cool Panda character, from the basic outlines through to the detailed final design.

22. How to Create a Cool Monkey Character in Illustrator

In this tutorial, yo're going to be creating a monkey character illustration using Adobe Illustrator. You'll be using basic Shape Tools, the Pen Tool and various other Illustrator techniques to create the illustration.

23. Create Lady Birds Insect Tutorial Using Adobe Illustrator

You can find these cute little bugs being almost anywhere and they won't ever cause anything but cheers. In this tutorial you will be shown how to create one cool lady bird using Adobe Illustrator.

24. How to Create a Cute Bunny Vector Character

In this Illustrator tutorial, you will see you how to create a cute bunny character. This tutorial uses simple shapes and gradients that are easy to apply to other character illustrations. The great thing about this tutorial is you don't have to be an amazing artist to be able to do this.

25. Create A Cute Creature Character From A Sketch

In this tutorial you will see how to create a cute creature from a sketch. This tutorial uses custom brushes, the Paintbrush tool, Pen tool, and the Live Paint Bucket tool. Even if you’re not a huge fan of the cuteness, you can use these techniques for other illustrations, logos, and vector elements.

26. Character Development Tutorial Series

This 5 part video tutorial series using a combination of images, video, and commentary will walk you through the process of creating a character from scratch. This tutorial does a great job of showing you how to loosen up, explore ideas, and develop concepts into finished artwork.

27. Character Design from Life

In a handful of over-the-shoulder video tutorials author, David Colman, shares some tips on using real-life inspiration to create unique characters. What makes this series really shine, however, is that is offers a glimpse at how you can take your drawings to the next level by implementing simple and effective design elements.

28. How to Create Typeface Characters

Learn how to take different sections of the characters of a specific font and put them together, giving birth to different kinds of creatures.

29. Drawing Homer Simpson

This tutorial will teach you how to draw the Simpson’s favorite character, Homer Simpson, from grounds up. Your drawing project will involve drawing the outline of the character, applying strokes to these outlines, and then using various selection tools to color Homer’s skin and clothing. You will then finish it off by adding shadows and highlights to make it look similar to the image below.

30. Character Creation in Adobe Illustrator

Simple tutorial where you can learn basic techniques of character creation.

31. How to Create a Vector Illustration and Prepare it for Micro-Stock Sale

There are numerous micro-stock websites that vector designers can design for and make consistent earnings through. This tutorial details a professional workflow for creating vector illustrations and prepping the artwork for these sites. There are also included a bunch of time-saving tools and tips as well.

32. How to Create a Vector Character

This tutorial walks you through the creation of a vector character logo using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CS4.

33. Drawing Vector-Looking Cat Illustration Using Photoshop

If you are a beginner or an amateur, this tutorial in web-graphics would certainly be of a great use for you. The aim of this tutorial is to place in the clearest light the process of creating the chosen image. Step by step you will see the whole process and with the help of author's notes you will clarify all these stages.

34. Cartoon Character – Dexter

Dexter is probably one of those cartoon characters that don’t need an introduction, but anyway, for those who never heard about him, Dexter is boy genius that has a giant secret laboratory filled with his great inventions. In this simple tutorial I will show you how to draw this character inside Adobe Illustrator.

35. How to Make an Animated Paper Robot

In this tutorial you'll go through the steps of designing and making an animated paper robot character. Not just a picture, this is a moving character that will sit nicely on top of your computer monitor.

36. Make Colorful Bean Characters on Illustrator CS4

Learn how to draw these awesome looking characters using Pen Tool and Gradients.

37. Create the Face of a Grumpy Bear

In this tutorial you can learn to create a grumpy bear face. For the basic shapes you'll only need the Ellipse Tool and some Warp effects. Later, for some discrete details, you'll need the Inner Glow, the Gaussian Blur or the Drop Shadow.

38. How to Design a Cheeky Koala Mascot Head

This tutorial will show you how to combine basic shapes with some clever coloring and blending to make a fantastic looking koala character. You'll use some opacity masks, brushes, gradients and effects, in addition to an easy shading technique you'll find yourself using in plenty of other projects.

39. Create the Face of a Goofy Bunny

The following tutorial will help you create the face of a goofy bunny. You won't need the Pen Tool. Only the Ellipse Tool and the Rectangle Tool plus some basic effects like the Inner Glow, the Drop Shadow or the Warp effect.

40. Create Character Driven Book Cover Art Using Illustrator and Photoshop

This two-part tutorial on creating the "Let's Go To Monster School!" book cover, will show you a complete process from initial sketch to the final artwork, using an Illustrator to Photoshop integrated workflow. In Part 1 you will employ Illustrator to trace our hand drawn sketch, lay down the shapes and define the basic colors.

41. How to Create a Cute Vector Bear T-Shirt Design

Get busy with Adobe Illustrator and design a cute bear character and surrounding scenery in just two colours, ready for use as a cool t-shirt design.

42. How To Draw a Cute Vector Dog Character in Illustrator

Follow this step by step design process of the making of a vector character. You'll start with a hand drawn sketch of Chris Spooner's dog, Jake the labrador retriever, then add various lines, colour fills gradients and highlights to produce a cute cartoon representation.

43. Draw a Nice Punk Kid in Illustrator

This tutorial will take you through the process of drawing a nice punk kid in Illustrator. You'll be working with the basic shapes to start, then use a variety of gradients to add depth and details to our illustration.

44. How To Draw Ferb Step By Step

Phineas and Ferb is an animated television comedy series. They are also known as "Disney's Phineas and Ferb". This tutorial is about only Ferb where you will be guided how to draw Ferb step by step in Illustrator. It's a very basic tutorial where beginners can also practice this easily. You can also download the source file of Ferb at the end of this tutorial.

45. Create a Cute Pig Postcard from Sketch

This tutorial aims to guide you from sketchbook to screen; a “Cute Pig” drawn with pencil in just a couple of minutes translated into a vector postcard.

46. Creating Convincing Characters

In this tutorial, you'll learn some basic skills for converting your character from a pencil doodle to a complete, fully coloured image – learning some crucial Illustrator skills along the way.

47. Symmetrical Illustration: Thug Bunny!

This tutorial will go through the method of using symmetry in your artwork. Learn how to do half the work but still get the full benefit from your artwork.

48. How to Draw a Funny Bee Illustration

Although they can be very dangerous, bees are loved around the world for honey they are producing. From this tutorial you will learn how to create a funny illustration of a bee inside Adobe Illustrator.

49. Design a Cute Hamster Avatar

Learn how to design cute hamster in Illustrator from scratch. There's also a soundtrack included in tutorial to help you work.

50. Draw a Beautiful Female Character

Office life would be very boring if there wouldn't be those hot and strict secretaries. This simple tutorial shows you how to create a beautiful female character using Illustrator.

As we realize that we are now living in the Brand Era, where everything is branded and labelled we are more concern to companies we believe can help us, shops where we can get our supplies, or websites we trust to keep our data or information securely. This is how a company’s logo appeal as the first thing costumer will consider to trust or not.

Among thousands of logos out there, some of them may look cheesy and cheap, and some visually give us confident. In order to grab our attention and get our trust, many companies even consider to re-brand/redesign their logo. As might be expected, the company will have to take the risk and be prepared of the pros and cons of this act. They should have really consider the reasons behind the redesign of their brand.

Below is a list, in no particular order of what I think to be famous and successful logo redesign from their old logo to the latest with explanations of what has been improved.

1. Toys R Us

Toys R Us has been the second largest overall toy retailer in the United States with many branch chain which located in Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, and Canada.

Old Logo History:

The yellow reverse “R” in quotation marks, which is similar to the Cyrillic letter Я, (ISO 9: Я), imitates a small child’s backward writing of “R”, which is short for “are”. The “R” is the most distinctive part of the retailer’s colorful kid-friendly logo. The current, modernized Toys “R” Us logo was introduced in 1969 as the first logo, then a blue star was added to the logo in late-1998/early-1999 during the Toys “R” Us “Concept 2000″ era.

New Logo – What has been improved:

On September 24, 2007 the logo was redesigned with alternating sized characters and a star in the middle of the reverse R. The letter R was changed from yellow to blue. In this new logo, the company achieve a better shape for the font character, leaving the “classic” feel behind and gives a bright and fun feel to it.

2. UPS

UPS, short for United Parcel Service, Inc. is the world’s largest package delivery company. Headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia, United States. UPS is well known for its brown trucks, internally known as package cars (hence the company nickname “The Big Brown Machine”).

Old Logo History:

The iconic package and shield originally designed in 1961 by Paul Rand. It became their original logo and first saw use in 1916 when the company was American Messenger Company. In 1935, the logo was redesigned to reflect the company’s new name United Parcel Service.

New Logo – What has been improved:

UPS decided to re-brand themselves in 2003, the new logo was designed by New York-based FutureBrand and it represents a strategic decision to emphasize UPS’s expanded business operations. All four designs for the logo shared the shield theme, but the new design clearly feels much more modern and and clean. Although the logo obviously doesn’t direct us to the shipping company, it gives the safe feel with the shield on the logo, knowing that our package will be protected.

3. Skittles

Skittles is a brand of fruit-flavored candies which were first made commercially in 1974 by a British company.

Old Logo History:

Candy brands are some of the most enduring brands in the market. Skittles have the excellent & long standing tag line 'Taste the Rainbow”, with this tag line the company only focus on the rainbow color for additional effect behind their “Skittles” text which in this case become their logo.

New Logo – What has been improved:

Miles Newlyn admitted that concept & design for the new Skittles logo is not his but that of Dragon Rouge. Nevertheless, The colorful ‘tongue’ he retouched has been blogged around the internet. This multi-colored tongue concept is a literal though stylized translation of the brand's slogan, "Taste the rainbow."

4. MTV

Easily recognized since it’s first launched on August 1, 1981 is an American cable television network based in New York City. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs. Today, MTV doesn’t play music videos, and primarily broadcasts a variety of popular culture and reality television shows targeted at adolescents and young adults.

Old Logo History:

Throughout MTV’s early days, the channel’s main logo was a large yellow “M” with red letters “TV,” but unlike most networks’ logos, the MTV logo constantly morphed and adapted with different colors, patterns, and images filling in the large block letter. The very first moments of MTV after the “moon landing,” as well as the top of every hour until at least the mid-1980s, featured a rapidly changing station ID logo that changed its appearance several times per second. The only constant aspects of MTV’s logo at the time were its general shape and proportions; everything else was dynamic.

New Logo – What has been improved:

MTV’s logo has been instantly recognizable for the last three decades. Up to this point, MTV revised their original 1981 logo by excluding the “Music Television” caption under the big “M” letter, and the trailing letter “V” that branched off to the side of the original logo. Their long-running tag line “Music Television” at this time has been officially dropped since they are not primarily broadcast music videos anymore.

5. Delta Air Lines

As it emerged from bankruptcy, Delta Air Lines wanted to signal to both customers and employees that the airline was "coming back new and better". In preparation for the momentous occasion, Delta engaged Lippincott to reposition the airline with a revitalized image and redesigned customer experience that would force reconsideration of the airline.

Old Logo History:

Delta's identity has been short-lived for the last decade or so. Throughout its history with a whopping 19 logos in 78 years — with two major identity changes. See Delta Logo Timeline.

New Logo – What has been improved:

Some people think of Delta’s redesigned logo is more to a realign than a redesign. In spite of that,  Delta’s new logo now looks sharp. The colors in are more subdued and the choice of a all caps sans serif typeface gives the modern look and feel as well. This 3-dimensional red widget logo successfully reflects Delta’s transformation into a highly-differentiated, customer-focused airline.

6. Starbucks

With the largest coffeehouse company in the world, we can hardly ignore this green logo from Starbucks.

Old Logo History:

The original Starbucks logo sported a wood cut type illustration of a siren from Greek mythology. The logo has been significantly streamlined over the years. In the first version, which was based on a 17th-century the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully visible double fish tail. In the second version, which was used from 1987 – 1992, her breasts were covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly.

New Logo – What has been improved:

Starbucks’ current logo is used since 1992, her navel and breasts are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. Today the current incarnation of the logo is much more streamlined and and memorable. It is a significant and unique logo for coffeehouse furthermore giving the impression of ‘one of a kind’.

7. Sprint

Sprint is a global Internet carrier and makes up a portion of the Internet backbone. In the United States, the company is the third largest long distance provider and also owns a majority of Clearwire, which operates the largest wireless broadband network.

Old Logo History:

The original Sprint logo was used from 1989 to 2005 with 4th variant used from 1995–2005.

New Logo – What has been improved:

When Sprint merged with Nextel a few years back they underwent massive re-branding campaign. Nextel's attention getting black and yellow color scheme was merged with The Sprint name. The new symbol is based on sprints signature 'pin drop'. The switch to a nice sans serif typeface also does wonders for making the logo look modern. This logo really shines when the symbol is set in motion.

8. KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken)

Old Logo History:

By the late 1990s, the stylized likeness of Colonel Sanders as the KFC logo had been modified and only used until November 2006.

New Logo – What has been improved:

With the colonel putting on his apron to replace his suit coat, this new KFC logo giving us the friendly and inviting feel. The new angled backdrop to the logo also adds a nice dynamic feel and implies quickness.

9. CBS Broadcasting Inc.

CBS Broadcasting Inc. (CBS) is a major American television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network’s former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the “Eye Network” in reference to the shape of the company’s logo.

Old Logo History:

CBS unveiled its Eye Device logo on October 17, 1951. Before that, from the 1940s through 1951, CBS Television used an oval spotlight on the block letters C-B-S.[16] The Eye device was conceived by William Golden based on aPennsylvania Dutch hex sign as well as a Shaker drawing and made its broadcasting debut on October 20, 1951. Since then the company insisted on keeping the Eye device and using it as much as possible.

New Logo – What has been improved:

Today the logo which is alternately known as theEyemark, has been slightly changed on the typography to get the modern and futuristic feel, keeping their classic long lasting Eye device logo (vaguely bigger) in the front of “CBS” characters.

10. Apple Inc.

Old Logo History:

Apple’s first logo, designed by Jobs and Wayne, depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. Almost immediately, though, this was replaced by Rob Janoff’s “rainbow Apple”, the now-familiar rainbow-colored silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. Janoff presented Jobs with several different monochromatic themes for the “bitten” logo. In 1998, with the roll-out of the new iMac, Apple discontinued the rainbow theme and began to use monochromatic themes, nearly identical in shape to its previous rainbow incarnation.

New Logo – What has been improved:

Entering the digital era, in 2007 Apple started to redesign their apple logo to give their customer a simple, minimal, yet modern look with the touch of chrome shade.

11. FedEx

Old Logo History:

The original Federal Express logo was designed by Richard Runyan in 1973.

New Logo – What has been improved:

The Fed is always purple and the Ex is in a different color for each division and grey for the overall corporation use. The original “FedEx” logo had the Ex in orange; it is now used as the FedEx Express wordmark. The FedEx wordmark is notable for containing a hidden right-pointing arrow in the negative space between the “E” and the “X”, which was achieved by designing a proprietary font, based on Univers and Futura, to emphasize the arrow shape. Other than giving the new and modern look, this new logo with the hidden arrow was a genius idea behind their new logo,  made it looks like it’s presenting the moving forward company as well.

12. City of Melbourne

The City of Melbourne is a Local Government Area in Victoria, Australia, located in the central city area of Melbourne.

Old Logo History:

City of Melbourne first logo M and leaf symbol was introduced in the early 1990s.

New Logo – What has been improved:

The new logo received many critiques for the cost of the big “M” research and design. Despite that, this dimensional colored “M” is different compared to the other city logos on earth. Unique and sophisticated.

13. Discovery Channel

Old Logo History:

The Discovery Channel’s very first logo was a television screen picturing a map of the World. In the mid-90s, the word “The” was dropped from the channel’s name. A globe became a permanent part of the logo and a strap was added to the bottom of the logo.

New Logo – What has been improved:

Discovery Channel started using a new logo on 2008. With new graphics and the new tagline “The World is Just Awesome”. The new logo has been designed by Viewpoint Creative in Boston and replaced Aurora Bold Condensed with Gotham. The globe has been merged with the “D” in “Discovery”. Their new logo now looks more simplified and less crowded.

14. MailChimp

MailChimp is a free and paid email marketing service started in the 2001.

Old Logo History:

Their first logo was the iconic monkey head used in the year of 2001 until 2005. In 2006, they decided to change the monkey-icon logo with using only typography “MailChimp”.

New Logo – What has been improved:

Since 2008, MailChimp with their third generation logo has become one of the best email marketing services. The new monkey logo gives us a warm, friendly feel and overall pleasant.

15. Target

Target Corporation, usually known simply as Target, is an American retailing company that was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1902 as the Dayton Dry Goods Company.

Old Logo History:

In 1968, Target changed its bullseye logo to a more modern look. Target script used from 1980 until 2004. Changes from the original logo are that its brandmark is a single red ring with a red dot in the middle, and its wordmark uses the Helvetica font.

New Logo – What has been improved:

Target’s latest logo are in red block letters using Helvetica font that the word “Target” uses in favor of a more streamlined red “Target Brand” look.  Over the survey, ninety-seven percent of American consumers recognize the Target Bullseye logo. Perhaps their logo redesign isn’t essential, but by making their Bullseye bigger that the “TARGET” characters, it obviously focusing more on their recognizable brand.

What are your thoughts about these logo redesigns? Feel free to share them with us.