Media Trove

Here at Double Down we specialise in creating fun multimedia for enter-tainment or business. We produce a free web cartoon series' viewable on this site and create cartoons, animations, video and web designs for companies and individuals. Check out the cartoons, videos and web designs around the site and please get in touch with any queries. Alternatively, leave a message on the guestbook. There's nothing we like more than a nice bit of feedback!

 

Our Range

Animation

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  • Cartoon Series'
  • Banner/TV ads
  • Site decoration

Web Design

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  • E-commerce
  • Personal
  • Promotional

Illustration

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  • For web sites
  • For books
  • For magazines

For Print

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  • Logo Design
  • Flyers
  • Posters
 

News Archive

Merry Christmas!

Wednesday, 20th December 2006.

Just thought we'd send a festive greeting to everyone that's been following the Dubdown news. Merry Christmas one and all! Enjoy our festive Christmas animation. Dance Santa, dance!

Feel free to download Santa and send him on to your friends as a Christmas card. Just right click here and select Save Target or Save Link to get Santa!

When Worlds Collide Cartoon

Wednesday, 6th December 2006.

It's finally here! The first episode of our independent Web Cartoon "When Worlds Collide" is finished at last. It's been created fully in Macromedia/Adobe Flash with all the elements hand drawn by Colin on a Nisis Graphics tablet. The first episode sets the scene for the coming series so check it out on the animation pages.

Video Editing and DVD Production

Tuesday, 28th November 2006.

We've been doing some more work with the most excellent Maximillion lately, this time involving video editing and DVD production. Maximillion run an event called Take One in which teams take the role of a Film Production company and produce a short movie to a given theme. The teams naturally want a copy of their efforts at the end and Double Down Media edit and produce a compilation DVD that Maximillion then hand out. If you are looking for video editing or DVD production services then get in touch with us here at Double Down via the contact page and we can quote you for any job.

Atom Films cartoons and video

Friday, 17th November 2006.

We've been looking at ways to distribute our cartoons and videos in the future and have come accross a great resource in the form of Atom Films. Atom Films have a massive database of independently produced cartoons and videos which they distribute free of charge. Have a look if you have a spare minute and check out their quality range of media.

New Illustrations

Thursday, 19th October 2006.

We've updated our illustration section to show some of the cartoon illustrations we've been doing. We can create illustrations for any purpose with our unique toon style. Check them out on the illustration page.

First cartoon episode!

Monday, 16th October 2006.

It's been a long time coming but the first episode of the When Worlds Collide animation is now underway! It will be released in a series of mini-cartoons, probably a few minutes at a time. Check here for news on the first release!

Beginner's Web Design

Monday, 25th September 2006.

One of the Double Down Media staff has taken on a weekly evening class in Beginner's Web Design at a local Edinburgh college. We wish Colin good luck in bringing HTML to the masses! Anyone interested in learning HTML and CSS can contact him at our contact page and see about enrolling.

New sites on-line

Wednesday, 20th September 2006.

Double Down Media has completed work on two sites, for Female Independent and for Mobile Aqua Valet. They can now be seen on the Web Design page.

Mobile Aqua Valet

Friday, 8th September 2006.

An independent car valet company has asked Double Down Media to design a small site to advertise their company. It's a common application for the web these days, creating a site that acts simply as an on-line flyer. A lot of companies don't have the funds or the expertise to maintain a large site, and their needs can be met with 3 or 4 pages of concise information which leads to a phone number or an email. These days more and more people are using google rather than the phone book and so this is an essential point of contact even for a one man business. The priorities are good search engine optimisation in order to get the site seen, and snappy, efficient design to get the information over to the customer in minimum time. Add in some work on usability and accessibility and you end up with a reasonably priced, small but perfect package.

Female Independent

Tuesday, 29th August 2006.

Female Independent are an independant mortgage advisor based in Edinburgh who asked Double Down Media to design a new web site for them. The brief was short and concise: create a snappy but informative site which promotes the company and utilises the company colour scheme. The site is almost finished and will be entering our web design portfolio pages soon.

Edinburgh International Entertainment Festival

Monday, 14th August 2006.

The Edinburgh International Entertainment Festival, or the plain old EIEF, is one of the saner, more useful parts of the insanity and annoyance that is the Edinburgh Festival. It may make me sound grouchy, and old before my time, but every August us locals of Edinburgh groan with exasperation as suddenly walking times are doubled and the constitution of a battering ram is required to cross the royal mile. Even walking up Princes Street, which isn't normally an easy task, becomes about the same level of exertion as swimming up the Amazon with a hippo on your back. But anyway, as I was saying, the EIEF comes along with the festival and brings together a lot of the top names in interactive entertainment development. There's a series of lectures for the more serious attendees and a whole lot of new game demos in full cinema-screen-o-vision for the not so serious. And topping it all off is the Edge video game awards, one of the more prestigious gaming magazine awards, the edge readership being considered more discerning members of the gaming public than most. Double Down Media will be there at the EIEF keeping up with industry developments and enjoying the Edge awards, so hopefully we'll see you there!

Fringe Sunday Karaoke

Tuesday, 1st August 2006.

Leading on from the successful Rock Karaoke at T in the Park, Double Down Media have been asked to design another version of their Flash designed Karaoke Song Picker for the Bank of Scotland entertainment tent at Edinburgh's highly popular Fringe Sunday. There's also more air guitar lessons going on and this time there's also a ceilidh to join in with. We're giving the Flash application a new look and new songs for this event and it's all free to join in, so if you're in town come on down to the meadows and check out our work!

T in the Park Success

Friday, 14th July 2006.

By all accounts the Flash application we designed in the form of a karaoke song picker roulette wheel for T in the Park was a big success! The event went off without a hitch and the roulette wheel was used all day to pick songs for festival goers to sing. The roulette wheel was a great example of the kind of small flash application that can create massive impact if used in the right way for your company. Project scotland had their logo on the roulette wheel and it was seen by tens of thousands of people during the day. This could be applicable to conferences, shows or just on your web site, but a little interactive application to let your prospective or current customers play with adds a massive amount of professionalism and polish to any presentation.

T in the Park Rock Karaoke

Monday, 3rd July 2006.

Double Down Media have been asked to produce an interactive song picker for a Rock Karaoke event that's going on at T in the Park. 19 songs have been chosen for the event and undoubtedly inebriated festival goers will be invited to come on stage and press the button to randomly select a song to sing. It promises to be a riotous session and Double Down Media's application will be at the centre of the action! Check out the new applications page to see a demo of the design.

When Worlds Collide - NEW Update

Friday, 26th May 2006.

The first teaser for When Worlds Collide has just been updated, the Orc is as close to buying the farm as makes no difference! Check it out on the animation page.

When Worlds Collide Cartoon is Resurrected

Wednesday, 24th May 2006.

A couple of years ago Colin Gray started work on a web cartoon series called When Worlds Collide. It was based on a story created by himself and a few friends (including Double Down's Matt Reid) which is still slowly developing. Think of it as a slightly tongue-in-cheek fantasy adventure where the main characters follow a slightly different path than your usual barbarian-wizard-thief lord. The good news is that it's now back in development and a couple of the original teasers are here on the site to whet your appetite! We've got master writer Joe Prince from Prince of Darkness Games on the script and Colin Gray on the visuals, and all the original story writers will be be making appearances as voices. Check out the animation section for a trailer and an introduction to one of the main characters.

Dubdown.com is Spoofed!

Sunday, 22nd May 2006.

Our web server succumbed to a spam mail robot yesterday and a large number of spam mails were sent out from our domain under various random names. It was a bog-standard spam offering cut price software but was very annoying all the same since to the casual observer it seemed that it was sent by people from our company! Initially we thought it was simply someone putting random addresses from our domain into their reply-to: but our host owned up and admitted that a robot mailer had taken residency on their servers. Luckily it was spotted reasonably quickly though and dubdowm.com is no longer contributing to the billions of spams flying around the wire right now!

Prince of Darkness Games software collection

Thursday, 11th May 2006.

Double Down Media has recently been contracted by our good friends over at Prince of Darkness Games to create a series of applications to be used with some of their unique gaming systems. PODG develop fun, modern versions of the classic role-playing game which are accessible to more than just the slightly worrying, ubiquitously male fan-boys that role playing is more often associated with. PODG games are ideal for kids and adults alike, especially when the latter has had more than one glass of their favoured poison. Our series of apps will make it even easier for new players to get into the games by allowing such things as automated character creation and customization of the games. Check out the first app to be released here: Link to Prince of Darkness applications, and check out Prince of Darkness Games.

The Becks Men Collectible Card game is near completion.

Tuesday, 11th April 2006.

Double Down Media is nearing completion on it's first foray into the world of collectible card game design. Never a company to rest on it's laurels and stick with what it knows, DDM have jumped in the deep end and went with a totally new idea and game mechanic which might surprise old card gamers and entice new players. Watch this space for the beta release of the cards which will be initially available for free so that we can get some research into how the game plays. If you want to be first on the list as a beta tester please drop us a line from our contact page.

Double Down Media Seeks Card Game designers

Tuesday, 28th March. 18:00.

We're looking at embarking on a new area here at DDM, the slightly seedy area of collectible card games. The reason for this is that a number of members of our team regularly come across these games and they seem to be a great outlet for cartooning and illustration while also being a fun pastime. Don't worry, we're not thinking of joining the legions of serious swords and sorcery card game producers out there. We're looking at the comedy versions; fast, funny games with great artwork that you can play with your friends on a quiet night, or turn into a quality drinking game in the way of most card games! The hardest part of this, however, is coming up with the game itself so we're looking for game designers out there that have a concept, but need the design and the artwork taken care of. We've got some ideas of our own too of course but we're looking at a number of ideas and if you have a game you'd like to collaborate with us on then please get in contact. Look forward to hearing from you!

Beelingua tasks Double Down Media for a new Educational Application project.

Tuesday, 21st March. 10:00.

Beelingua are starting work on a new language education project called Language Folks which Double Down Media have been asked to develop. This will involve creating all the illustrations and animations for the project as well as designing user-friendly, accessible interfaces for the whole application. This project will be distributed to schools around the country. We have also been tasked to provide the illustrations for a series of short stories which aim to provide a serious of quick lessons in language. Watch the animation section of the site for upcoming demonstrations.

Double Down Media launches new web site design.

Wednesday, 15th March. 11:00.

When you're running a web design company it's obviously pretty important to have a good, professional looking web site yourself in order to tempt the customers in. Well, when you're running a design business you're often pushed for time in which to complete paying customer's projects never mind working on an up-paid project like your own web site. Hence the fact that Double Down Media's site has been looking a little dated for the last couple of years in terms of both design and coding. Well, at long last, we've made the effort to bring our site up to date including a clean and clear new design and accessible, standards compliant coding. The site is fully laid out and styled in CSS and is made to comply with the w3c guidelines for accessibility and usability. We hope to see the compliance icons up here soon! It is also powered by php to give you slick performance and content delivery. Anyway, we hope you like it, feel free to give us any feedback, good or bad, from our contact page. Look forward to hearing from you!