Navigation
Reference
- Pinboard: Light grids: essential vaporwave aesthetic.
- Pinboard: VHS covers
- Pinboard: Skinned animatronics
- Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute
- Drive-In Movie Ads
- Another Gallery of Rotating Food GIFs
- Open Directories #interior
- Nickelodeon Scenes for Lowes
- Fixtures Close Up: Store displays
- Animal Photo Art References Search: Rotate a 3D skull to get photos of animals from that angle. A must-have for furry artists.
- Your Bike Photos: Photos of motorcycles. Not sure why I have this as I have never drawn a motorcycle in my life.
- Height/Weight Chart: Warnings - site has a flashy loading image, and also prominently lists BMI numbers on each page. Other than that, actually a great resource for people making natural poses.
Interiors
- Pinboard: Retro pizza
- Pizza Hut (closed)/La Fiesta Mexican Grill- Newport News, VA, 5000 West Mercury Boulevard
- Pizza Hut- Edenton, NC, 100 Claire Drive
How to draw...
- Anthro legs
- Anthro lip-sync: Lip sync reference for snouted animals, reptiles, and beaks.
- Robot hands
- Mecha design: Basic hinge joints
Design
- Lessons in Color Theory for Spyro the Dragon: This article singlehandedly taught me so much about like, everything ever. I feel like the best tutorial for me isn't a tutorial, but an examination of a pre-existing work.
- Wind Waker Graphics Analysis: Articles analyzing the art of one of my favorite games.
- The Ultimate Guide to Sonic Adventure DX Sins: A blog dedicated to comparing the graphics of Sonic Adventure to its inferior Gamecube port.
Art
2D
- just a quick video abt how i do eyes: An eye tutorial by my friend Rex.
- Using Clip Studio Paint + Modeler to paint textures
- Spot Healing Brush
3D
- Nekomatata: Armature rigging (making skeletons for animation)
- CGMatter: Mostly fun short-form videos for normies, "create ___ fast" type vids DefaultCube: CGMatter's longer and more serious tutorials
- KextNext: VFX
- DanielKrafft: lots of great fundamentals, including nodes (shading) and modifiers (ways to animate your model)
- Dedouze: Grease Pencil (2D drawing tools)
- Yansculpts: Sculpting
- SouthernShotty: Intermediate fundamentals
- CherylynnLima: low poly for beginners
- Royal Skies: Many Blender tutorials
- Introduction to Shading: A bit more comprehensive than you might need, but hey.
- Intro to Shaders
- Zig-zag cylinder: Low-poly cylinder method.
- Subsurface Scattering: Explanation of SSS, with examples.
- Modeling a Human Hand: Essential guide for hand topology.
- Grease Pencil Resources & Fundamentals
- Instant Meshes: Auto retopo
- Tip: hotkey G-G-C
- How to shrinkwrap eyes onto a character: Result was devastating.
- Lospec Blender Toolkit
Videos
- Blender Sculpting Tutorial: Full Advanced Creature Creation Workflow
- Blender - Glitching Effects in Eevee
- Blender 2.8 how to make apple: Simple tutorial, but shows how to use stencilling (painting an image onto a model).
- Stylized Low poly Vtuber 3D Modeling Time-lapse
- Blender for Beginners: Easy Froggy!
- Low poly Skye (Zootopia) - Speed Modeling
- Blender - Fill UV Islands in Texture Paint
Typography
- TYPE CRIMES THAT WILL GET YOU SENT TO THE “WEEKEND HOBBYIST” JAIL: But I'm a weekend hobbyist!
- Fonts In Use: An independent archive of typography.
- Typeset in the Future: Studies of typography in sci-fi movies.
- The Nickelodeon brand: Development of the Nickelodeon logo.
- BETTER LETTERER: Comic Lettering Tips
Sewing
- While She Naps: I have Abby Glassenberg to thank for me getting into sewing. Her Elements of Soft Toy Design series is amazing.
- How Is Soupy Formed: A unique-looking fursuit from start to finish. Taught me about EVA foam!
- Giant Yoshi Plush: It's Giant Yoshi Plush. What more can I say?
- Tutorials for Hand Embroidered Leaves & Flowers
- Displaying Embroidery in a Hoop
- Learn to Sew
Abby Glassenberg's Elements of Soft Toy Design
A wonderful series that also happens to be helpful for visualizing objects in 3D space; for example, it could help with figuring out where to place UV seams on a 3D model.
- #1: Introduction and the Importance of Stitch Length
- #2: Openings
- #3: Using Freezer Paper
- #4: Pattern Drafting for a Simple Outline Toy
- #5: Gussets Part 1
- #6: Turning
- #7: A Simple Jointed Toy
- #8: Turning a Long and Skinny Piece
- #9: Gussets Part 2
- #10: Stuffing
- #11: Pointed Ovals
- #12: Gusseted Button Joints
- #13: Attaching a Part by Cutting a Hole
- #14: An Animal in Motion
- #15: Triangular Darts
- #16: Baseball Head
Writing
- ConceptNet: Every time I'm looking for this I never find it. Fun and perplexing crowd-sourced thesaurus thingy. Absolutely look up your favorite animal and read what it's capable of.
- What is Texture?: Guide for making written spaces feel lived-in and believable.
- Blind Beta Reader: Blind sensitivity reader.
Assets
- THUNDERDOME Ultimate SamplePack
- FilmCow Royalty Free Sound Effects Library
- Varian's DreamTiles: Free-to-use tiling backgrounds.
- Varian's DreamModels: Free-to-use 3D models - mostly plants.
- Varian's DreamStationery: Digital stationery. Could be used as web page backgrounds.
- Creative Market: Weekly free assets in their free goods section.
- Kenney: Video game art assets
Photos
- Unsplash
- Pixabay
- Pexels: Please note, Pexels is NOT CC0. It has its own license.
- Openverse
- Foodiesfeed: Food photography
Clip art
- Clip Art by Walter Parenton: Only Boygraphics seems to still be up.
- Varian's DreamClips
- Public Domain Vectors
- Reshot
- The Noun Project
- Icons8
- Font Awesome: Name may be misleading - this is an icon library.
Emojis
- Unicode.org's Public Emoji List
- Noto Emoji
- Twemoji: These are the ones you think of when you think of Discord; Discord is currently using Jdecked's fork.
- FxEmoji
- Microsoft Segoe UI
- Mutant Standard
- Fluent Emoji
- OpenMoji
Fonts
- The League of Moveable Type: My personal favorite.
- Unblast
- awwwards
- Open Foundry
- Lost Type
- OH no Type Company: Free for personal study.
- Velvetyne Type Foundry: Warning, this site is VERY flashy.
- Varian's DreamFonts
- ACT SELECT: Recreated Sega fonts. Not for professional use, but cool to study.
Bases
- F2U Bull Terrier base: I was sent this specifically to make a Billy, but I never got around to it...
- F2U iDog base
- F2U Little Lonely Puppies base
Brushes
Tools & Programs
- Sprytile
- Silky Shark: FOSS mouse and tablet stabilizer.
- Hej Stylus! V3: Stabilizer for MacOS.
- Pixelated curve: Could be used for pixel art or Minecraft.
- PETSCII editor: Tool for making Commodore 64-era ASCII art
- Varian's DreamTools & Toys: Graphics programs, circa 2004.
- Stacked Sprite Viewer: "Stacked sprites are exactly as the name suggests - a stack of flat sprites piled on top of each other creating a 3-dimensional object."
- free-for.dev: A list of software with free tiers
Game development
- Interface in Game: Video game UI design
- Game UI Database: Video game UI design
- Game Accessibility Guidelines
Web development
- Free Frontend: HTML, CSS, Javascript (etc) samples
- Static Site Generators: List of SSGs, with usage statistics. (Here's a hint: use Eleventy)
- Sadgrl's Webmastery Links: Tons of links here for indie site building. I'll have to go through it later but that's for another day.
- lite-youtube-embed: Absolutely mandatory if you want to embed more than 5 videos on a single page. Trust me.
- Emmet: Quickly write HTML with abbreviation syntax. Comes as a plugin for many text editors.
Markup languages
- Markdown Cheat Sheet: General Markdown guide
- Discord's Markdown Text 101: Discord-specific Markdown guide
- Germs' BBCode School: Comprehensive guide to BBCode, mostly Flight Rising-specific but a lot of these apply to other sites too.
Animation
- Keyframe Animation
- Cubic Bezier
- Easing Functions Cheat Sheet: Appears to be for Fabric.js.
Code
- Glitch Text by Fabio: (not CC0, but cool to study)
CSS
- A Complete Guide to Flexbox: So essential, it even has a poster you can print out! (I might actually do this...)
- Flexbox Froggy: Learn flexboxes with a game
- CSS Flex for Speed Learners: Video showing expected flex behavior
- A Complete Guide to CSS Grid
- CSS Font Stack: Web safe fonts. Has statistics showing which fonts are accessible by Windows or Mac.
- Grabient: Some nice (if a bit modern) pre-made gradients
- CSS Gradient: Make your own gradient with a live preview
- CSS Background Patterns: Simple geometrical backgrounds. I think I referenced this (or a very similar site?) back in my interactive fiction days.
Design
- 404PageFound: Active "old web" websites
- Web Design Museum: History of web design
- W3C Accessibility Standards
Leaving the System
- Tartube: Offline downloader. My current favorite.
- YTMP3: Offline downloader.
- Offliberty: Offline downloader. Not sure if it still works, but I'm preserving it, especially since I used to use it daily.
- SpotX: Spotify ad-blocker.
- bulk-downloader-for-reddit: Reddit post archiver. Requires command line, but very worth it.
Alternatives
- Instead of Google, try DuckDuckGo.
- Instead of Adobe Photoshop, try Krita for art and Gimp for photos.
- Instead of Adobe Illustrator, try Inkscape.
- Instead of Aseprite, try Libresprite, a fork of the original code.
- Degoogle: Github repository of alternatives and privacy tools.
- LibRedirect: Firefox add-on that redirects YouTube, Twitter, TikTok (and more) to lightweight, privacy-friendly mirror websites.
Miscellaneous
- The Bezier Game: An interactive tutorial for bezier curves.
- Splatoon-themed Wrist Exercises
- Software for your references
- How Bogleech ships enamel pins as flats or letters
PS2 Modding
- GioGio PS2 Modding Tutorial #00 - Installing Mods Info on AFSExplorer, 1:18 onward
- Tutorial: ripping textures and 3D models from Playstation 2 games (part 1: textures)
Streaming
- Peer2Peer.Live: Discovery tool for marginalized Twitch streamers. I'm on here!
- Music for Streaming, Broadcasting, and Content Creation: Music you can use without getting killed by Twitch or YouTube. Not all of it is free.
CREDITS
Credits to starsystemerror, malf, adjobj, Feely, finsterhund, Freya, huckleton, Mortis Velasquez for contributing links.