You can create buttons of almost any shape and size using Photoshop or Adobe Creative Suite.
What software was used to design the men and women?
Poser - Poser software has advanced far enough that it's becoming much easier to create character graphics and animations.
After a few days of practice with Poser you can create men or women, add clothes (or not), design, create and add hair. Many tools are included to help with posing the characters (hence the name poser). The software has a 30 day trial so if you are interested in creating men, women, space aliens, robots, children or even monsters you might want to give Poser a try.
We used Poser to create our "Big Head" avatars.
What software did you use to design your backgrounds?
This is a slightly more complicated question. We use a variety of programs for backgrounds. Included are CorelDraw, Photoshop and even Poser. However, one of the best products for background textures is an Alien Skin Software plug-in called "Eye Candy Textures".
The above background textures were created using Eye Candy. They are all seamless tiles. Remember, eye candy is a plug-in and requires a host application such as Photoshop or Lightroom. Be sure to check out the requirements before downloading. Eye Candy has a trial download that is a full working copy.
