Bloodcider
June 20th, 2009, 09:37 PM
I copied this verbatim from a stickied thread of great resources in the SomethingAwful Creative Convention, I figured maybe there's something here that someone could use.
--------------------------------------------
Full list from posts as of 1/7/09
--------------------------------------------
Design
http://thegridsystem.org (http://thegridsystem.org/) - A new site dedicated to all things Grid. Very nicely done and even has photoshop website grid templates.
http://www.compfight.com (http://www.compfight.com/) - An awesome resource for searching flickr and finding images for comping etc. It has options for Creative Commons and such.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ - a great conglomerate of resources such as best free templates, free fonts, great tutorials etc.
Toxel.com (http://www.toxel.com/)- Design, Inspiration, Tech
PSDTUTS (Photoshop) (http://psdtuts.com/)
Grid Builder for Websites (http://gridr.atomeye.com/)
VECTORTUTS (Illustrator) (http://vectortuts.com/)
NETTUTS (Web Development) (http://nettuts.com/)
PSLover (http://www.pslover.com/) links to a bunch of different photoshop tutorials from all over the web.
Freelance Switch (http://freelanceswitch.com/) - packed full of information for freelancers http://fi.somethingawful.com/images/smilies/smile.gif
Theme Forest (http://themeforest.net/) - Another nicety from the Envato (Freelance Switch) guys - you can upload site templates and shit and get paid for it.
stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/) - Free stock photos. The quality is sometimes great, sometimes not so great, but extremely helpful for use in mockup/presentation situations.
Best Brands of the World (http://brandsoftheworld.com/) - Large library of free vector downloads for corporate identities.
iStockphoto (http://www.istockphoto.com/) - Cheap, quality stock photography, illustrations, flash, and video.
lipsum.com (http://www.lipsum.com/) - Lorem ipsum (greek) text generator.
Morgue File (http://www.morguefile.com/) - Free stock photography resource. Be sure to check the usage license!
ffffound.com (http://www.ffffound.com/) - An image bookmarking site that is a great resource for inspiration, mostly design-oriented, but there are other neat things as well. Unfortunately, membership is invitation only, but it's a great website to check out if you're blocked.
http://tineye.com (http://tineye.com/) - Image search with image identification; you give it an image, it searches its ever-growing index of websites for the image. Idea being you can see if your artwork is being used/stolen without permission.
http://www.sachagreif.com/drse/ - Resource search engine - enter a keyword and it searches a bunch of sites for free resources with that keyword (vectors, brushes, etc)
http://graphic-exhange.com (http://graphic-exhange.com/) -- bunch of really cool design crap, updated not often enough
http://ilovetypography.com (http://ilovetypography.com/) -- really neat site if you're a dork for typography like I am.
FormFiftyFive (http://www.formfiftyfive.com/)
This blog showcases awesome examples of design - mostly illustration, typography, photography, but really not limited to anything. The cool thing that sets it apart is a lot of the posts are links to recently updated portfolios of designers and design studios.
http://abduzeedo.com (http://abduzeedo.com/) -- Lots of nice resources, some inspiration stuff as well.
TheDieLine (http://www.thedieline.com/) - This is a package design blog/community. Awesome inspiration from professionals and students around the world.
Design Guy Show (http://designguyshow.blogspot.com/) - sweet graphic design podcast (iTunes link) (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=261789246)
Web Dev & Design
Styleboost (http://styleboost.com/) - Regularly updated blog that catalogs interesting designs. Not all are just FWA winners either, so you get a good mix.
A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/) - Magazine with great articles re: design, coding, etc.
Adobe Kuler (http://kuler.adobe.com/) - Helpful color schemer from Adobe with the added benefit of being able to laugh at the crappy combinations created by various community members (note: non-functional in FF3).
Grid Builder for Websites (http://gridr.atomeye.com/)
sIFR (http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/) - The often used text replacement tool (used for inserting non-standard fonts into pages)
MooTools (http://demos.mootools.net/) - A load of handy javascript functions for tweening, navigating, etc, in one package.
Multiple versions of IE (http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE) - Just what it sounds like, allows you to install multiple versions of Internet Explorer on your computer so that you can test without needing to switch computers/using BrowserCam or some alternative.
Web Creme (http://www.webcreme.com/) - Web design inspiration
BgPatterns (http://bgpatterns.com/) - Comprehensive, web-based, tiled background generator.
browsershots.org (http://browsershots.org/) - Generates screenshots of an URL in pretty much every web browser ever.
Pattern Tap (http://patterntap.com/) - Inspiration for common web elements (tabs, comments, breadcrumbs, etc.).
Typester (http://www.typetester.org/) - Core web font comparison tool.
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (http://webtypography.net/) - Typographic consideration for the web, in the style of Robert Bringhurst's famous book.
Useful Cheat Sheets for Web Designers (http://sixrevisions.com/resources/cheat_sheets_for_web_designers/) - Keyboard shortcuts, color codes, CSS tips, point/pixels/em conversion chart, OS common fonts, html special characters, etc.
http://www.noupe.com/ - Lots of good design type resources
http://designm.ag/ - is a new site that is aimed at providing a wide variety of resources for web designers and developers.
http://scriptandstyle.com/ - Lots of good code resources/blog
Writing
http://www.duotrope.com (http://www.duotrope.com/)- A searchable database of literary magazines with Writers' Market-like info (what genres they take, how much they pay, when they're reading submissions, etc)
http://www.newpages.com (http://www.newpages.com/)-Helps you find new and exciting literary journals, but it's more on the reading end than the submitting one
http://www.mediabistro.com (http://www.mediabistro.com/)- Mediabistro has a lot of resources including a job board for media industry positions and advice for freelance writers
http://www.ed2010.com (http://www.ed2010.com/) - Ed2010 is for magazine job leads and career advice.
Television Tropes (http://tvtropes.org/) - is a catalogue of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction. Users dissect movies, television shows, anime and literature so that you can harvest inspiration, ideas and learn how these things are put apa
http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html http://www.sfwa.org/writing/vonda/vonda.htm - Two really good guides to Standard Manuscript Format (99% of magazines/publishers will literally toss your story in the trash if it doesn't follow Standard Manuscript Format)
Write or Die. (http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html) It's a tool to, essentially, FORCE you to write. You input your word goal and timeframe and then start writing. If you begin to fall behind, it will either gently remind, play in extremely unpleasant sound or begin deleting your writing, depending on what mode you're using. A bit off-the-wall, but sometimes it's just what you need.
Video & Motion Graphics
http://motionographer.com/ - This is a great blog for seeing the latest and greatest motion graphics and 3d projects. Definitely check out the "Cream" section which is a "best of" list for agencies and solo designers
http://www.videocopilot.net/ - Large collection of high quality video tutorials for After Effects.
http://www.creativecow.net (http://www.creativecow.net/) - Great video tutorials for After Effects and misc other stuff.
http://www.ayatoweb.com (http://www.ayatoweb.com/) - Another good AE tutorial site. No vids though.
http://www.maltaannon.com/ - Excellent After Effects tutorials and scripts. This guy is good friends with Andrew Kramer from Video Copilot.
3D
http://motionographer.com/ - This is a great blog for seeing the latest and greatest motion graphics and 3d projects. Definitely check out the "Cream" section which is a "best of" list for agencies and solo designers
http://www.3d-palace.com (http://www.3d-palace.com/) - over 900 video tutorials covering all of the major 3d applications with over 70% of them completely free to download. (Yeah its mine - if that counts as spam I apologise)
Art & Illustration
Posemaniacs (http://www.posemaniacs.com/)! - This is a web site with literally hundreds of poses to practice figure drawing from (literally) all angles
Conceptart.org (http://www.conceptart.org/) - Essential site if you want to challenge yourself with inspiration from some of the best contemporary artists in the world.
Startdrawing.org (http://www.startdrawing.org/browse/) - Drawings by Asians. ..racist jerks can't add some American shit in there? Nevertheless, amazing site for inspiration.
ImagineFX Magazine (http://www.imaginefx.com/) - Magazine published in Europe for a smörgåsbord of contemporary artists. Same thing as CA.org, buy this fucking magazine it's worth it for just the magazine itself. The DVD it always comes with is priceless in addition.
Alchemy (http://al.chemy.org/download) - Simple art program which is very useful for doing conceptual artwork and pre-planning. It has a unique tool that lets you draw in shapes to create silhouettes. Great cure for artist's block!
http://www.conceptart.org (http://www.conceptart.org/) an awesome site with tons of tutorials and lots of great artists
http://www.characterdesigns.com/ a site with lots of refs, textures ect.
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm lighting tutorial
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm giant tutorial covering a lot of the basics
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2...es-of-face.html (http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2008/05/color-zones-of-face.html) color zones of the face
Typography
http://www.stcassociates.com/lab/fontbrowser.html - Flash-based font browser that allows you to quickly view custom text previews of your installed fonts, faster than most management programs.
Fontcubes (http://www.fontcubes.com/) - Again, a whole load of fonts. Organized alphabetically, so helpful if you already know a font's name.
Identifont (http://www.identifont.com/) - Don't know a font's name, but have a specimen? This site asks you several questions about the font's structure to help you figure out what the hell it's called. Extreeeemely useful if you deal with idiotic freelancers who continually forget which fonts they use (not personal experience at all, I swear).
Abstract Fonts (http://www.abstractfonts.com/) - A bunch of free fonts. No big name fonts (ie. Emigre caliber), but there are a lot to choose from, and has excellent organization/searchability.
dafont (http://www.dafont.com/) - Great collection of free-fonts.
WhatTheFont (http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/) - Font recognition from an uploaded image.
Typography by Friedrich Friedl (http://www.amazon.com/Typography-Friedrich-Friedl/dp/1579120237) - A very good book on typography.
Photography
PDN Magazine Online (http://www.pdnonline.com/) - A great magazine, with a pretty good online presence. News, blog, equipment, tips. Subscribe to the magazine for full access to the site.
Strobist (http://www.strobist.com/) - Lighting Blog. Great for beginners who want to learn how to use their hot shoe flash units off camera.
Photo.net (http://www.photo.net/) - Forums, Equipment reviews, tips, tricks, blog and gallery. A frequently recommended resource.
Multicolr (http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=bb1907,654ff9;)- You can search Flickr images by color.
Portfolio
http://www.blurb.com (http://www.blurb.com/) - Use this store to make a professional looking portfolio/book, prices are decent too.
Misc
http://www.pixel2life.com (http://www.pixel2life.com/) - Used to be better, but still a generally ok site with tutorials for just about any mainstream design application out there.
http://www.gomediazine.com (http://www.gomediazine.com/) - A great resource for a) insight from people in the biz, b) awesome tutorials and c) free application resources, like illustrator brushes and vector packs.
Zapplication (https://www.zapplication.org/index.php) - Digital jury system for applying to multiple art shows. They index over 200 of the largest shows in America.
Berman Graphics (http://bermangraphics.com/) - Collection of articles discussing the application process. (for zapp, etc)
Art Fair Sourcebook Forums (http://artfairsourcebook.com/cgibin/gforum/gforum.cgi) - Community of artists who discuss tips, tricks, and news about the art show circuit. (free registration)
--------------------------------------------
Full list from posts as of 1/7/09
--------------------------------------------
Design
http://thegridsystem.org (http://thegridsystem.org/) - A new site dedicated to all things Grid. Very nicely done and even has photoshop website grid templates.
http://www.compfight.com (http://www.compfight.com/) - An awesome resource for searching flickr and finding images for comping etc. It has options for Creative Commons and such.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ - a great conglomerate of resources such as best free templates, free fonts, great tutorials etc.
Toxel.com (http://www.toxel.com/)- Design, Inspiration, Tech
PSDTUTS (Photoshop) (http://psdtuts.com/)
Grid Builder for Websites (http://gridr.atomeye.com/)
VECTORTUTS (Illustrator) (http://vectortuts.com/)
NETTUTS (Web Development) (http://nettuts.com/)
PSLover (http://www.pslover.com/) links to a bunch of different photoshop tutorials from all over the web.
Freelance Switch (http://freelanceswitch.com/) - packed full of information for freelancers http://fi.somethingawful.com/images/smilies/smile.gif
Theme Forest (http://themeforest.net/) - Another nicety from the Envato (Freelance Switch) guys - you can upload site templates and shit and get paid for it.
stock.xchng (http://www.sxc.hu/) - Free stock photos. The quality is sometimes great, sometimes not so great, but extremely helpful for use in mockup/presentation situations.
Best Brands of the World (http://brandsoftheworld.com/) - Large library of free vector downloads for corporate identities.
iStockphoto (http://www.istockphoto.com/) - Cheap, quality stock photography, illustrations, flash, and video.
lipsum.com (http://www.lipsum.com/) - Lorem ipsum (greek) text generator.
Morgue File (http://www.morguefile.com/) - Free stock photography resource. Be sure to check the usage license!
ffffound.com (http://www.ffffound.com/) - An image bookmarking site that is a great resource for inspiration, mostly design-oriented, but there are other neat things as well. Unfortunately, membership is invitation only, but it's a great website to check out if you're blocked.
http://tineye.com (http://tineye.com/) - Image search with image identification; you give it an image, it searches its ever-growing index of websites for the image. Idea being you can see if your artwork is being used/stolen without permission.
http://www.sachagreif.com/drse/ - Resource search engine - enter a keyword and it searches a bunch of sites for free resources with that keyword (vectors, brushes, etc)
http://graphic-exhange.com (http://graphic-exhange.com/) -- bunch of really cool design crap, updated not often enough
http://ilovetypography.com (http://ilovetypography.com/) -- really neat site if you're a dork for typography like I am.
FormFiftyFive (http://www.formfiftyfive.com/)
This blog showcases awesome examples of design - mostly illustration, typography, photography, but really not limited to anything. The cool thing that sets it apart is a lot of the posts are links to recently updated portfolios of designers and design studios.
http://abduzeedo.com (http://abduzeedo.com/) -- Lots of nice resources, some inspiration stuff as well.
TheDieLine (http://www.thedieline.com/) - This is a package design blog/community. Awesome inspiration from professionals and students around the world.
Design Guy Show (http://designguyshow.blogspot.com/) - sweet graphic design podcast (iTunes link) (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=261789246)
Web Dev & Design
Styleboost (http://styleboost.com/) - Regularly updated blog that catalogs interesting designs. Not all are just FWA winners either, so you get a good mix.
A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/) - Magazine with great articles re: design, coding, etc.
Adobe Kuler (http://kuler.adobe.com/) - Helpful color schemer from Adobe with the added benefit of being able to laugh at the crappy combinations created by various community members (note: non-functional in FF3).
Grid Builder for Websites (http://gridr.atomeye.com/)
sIFR (http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/) - The often used text replacement tool (used for inserting non-standard fonts into pages)
MooTools (http://demos.mootools.net/) - A load of handy javascript functions for tweening, navigating, etc, in one package.
Multiple versions of IE (http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE) - Just what it sounds like, allows you to install multiple versions of Internet Explorer on your computer so that you can test without needing to switch computers/using BrowserCam or some alternative.
Web Creme (http://www.webcreme.com/) - Web design inspiration
BgPatterns (http://bgpatterns.com/) - Comprehensive, web-based, tiled background generator.
browsershots.org (http://browsershots.org/) - Generates screenshots of an URL in pretty much every web browser ever.
Pattern Tap (http://patterntap.com/) - Inspiration for common web elements (tabs, comments, breadcrumbs, etc.).
Typester (http://www.typetester.org/) - Core web font comparison tool.
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (http://webtypography.net/) - Typographic consideration for the web, in the style of Robert Bringhurst's famous book.
Useful Cheat Sheets for Web Designers (http://sixrevisions.com/resources/cheat_sheets_for_web_designers/) - Keyboard shortcuts, color codes, CSS tips, point/pixels/em conversion chart, OS common fonts, html special characters, etc.
http://www.noupe.com/ - Lots of good design type resources
http://designm.ag/ - is a new site that is aimed at providing a wide variety of resources for web designers and developers.
http://scriptandstyle.com/ - Lots of good code resources/blog
Writing
http://www.duotrope.com (http://www.duotrope.com/)- A searchable database of literary magazines with Writers' Market-like info (what genres they take, how much they pay, when they're reading submissions, etc)
http://www.newpages.com (http://www.newpages.com/)-Helps you find new and exciting literary journals, but it's more on the reading end than the submitting one
http://www.mediabistro.com (http://www.mediabistro.com/)- Mediabistro has a lot of resources including a job board for media industry positions and advice for freelance writers
http://www.ed2010.com (http://www.ed2010.com/) - Ed2010 is for magazine job leads and career advice.
Television Tropes (http://tvtropes.org/) - is a catalogue of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction. Users dissect movies, television shows, anime and literature so that you can harvest inspiration, ideas and learn how these things are put apa
http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html http://www.sfwa.org/writing/vonda/vonda.htm - Two really good guides to Standard Manuscript Format (99% of magazines/publishers will literally toss your story in the trash if it doesn't follow Standard Manuscript Format)
Write or Die. (http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html) It's a tool to, essentially, FORCE you to write. You input your word goal and timeframe and then start writing. If you begin to fall behind, it will either gently remind, play in extremely unpleasant sound or begin deleting your writing, depending on what mode you're using. A bit off-the-wall, but sometimes it's just what you need.
Video & Motion Graphics
http://motionographer.com/ - This is a great blog for seeing the latest and greatest motion graphics and 3d projects. Definitely check out the "Cream" section which is a "best of" list for agencies and solo designers
http://www.videocopilot.net/ - Large collection of high quality video tutorials for After Effects.
http://www.creativecow.net (http://www.creativecow.net/) - Great video tutorials for After Effects and misc other stuff.
http://www.ayatoweb.com (http://www.ayatoweb.com/) - Another good AE tutorial site. No vids though.
http://www.maltaannon.com/ - Excellent After Effects tutorials and scripts. This guy is good friends with Andrew Kramer from Video Copilot.
3D
http://motionographer.com/ - This is a great blog for seeing the latest and greatest motion graphics and 3d projects. Definitely check out the "Cream" section which is a "best of" list for agencies and solo designers
http://www.3d-palace.com (http://www.3d-palace.com/) - over 900 video tutorials covering all of the major 3d applications with over 70% of them completely free to download. (Yeah its mine - if that counts as spam I apologise)
Art & Illustration
Posemaniacs (http://www.posemaniacs.com/)! - This is a web site with literally hundreds of poses to practice figure drawing from (literally) all angles
Conceptart.org (http://www.conceptart.org/) - Essential site if you want to challenge yourself with inspiration from some of the best contemporary artists in the world.
Startdrawing.org (http://www.startdrawing.org/browse/) - Drawings by Asians. ..racist jerks can't add some American shit in there? Nevertheless, amazing site for inspiration.
ImagineFX Magazine (http://www.imaginefx.com/) - Magazine published in Europe for a smörgåsbord of contemporary artists. Same thing as CA.org, buy this fucking magazine it's worth it for just the magazine itself. The DVD it always comes with is priceless in addition.
Alchemy (http://al.chemy.org/download) - Simple art program which is very useful for doing conceptual artwork and pre-planning. It has a unique tool that lets you draw in shapes to create silhouettes. Great cure for artist's block!
http://www.conceptart.org (http://www.conceptart.org/) an awesome site with tons of tutorials and lots of great artists
http://www.characterdesigns.com/ a site with lots of refs, textures ect.
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm lighting tutorial
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm giant tutorial covering a lot of the basics
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2...es-of-face.html (http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2008/05/color-zones-of-face.html) color zones of the face
Typography
http://www.stcassociates.com/lab/fontbrowser.html - Flash-based font browser that allows you to quickly view custom text previews of your installed fonts, faster than most management programs.
Fontcubes (http://www.fontcubes.com/) - Again, a whole load of fonts. Organized alphabetically, so helpful if you already know a font's name.
Identifont (http://www.identifont.com/) - Don't know a font's name, but have a specimen? This site asks you several questions about the font's structure to help you figure out what the hell it's called. Extreeeemely useful if you deal with idiotic freelancers who continually forget which fonts they use (not personal experience at all, I swear).
Abstract Fonts (http://www.abstractfonts.com/) - A bunch of free fonts. No big name fonts (ie. Emigre caliber), but there are a lot to choose from, and has excellent organization/searchability.
dafont (http://www.dafont.com/) - Great collection of free-fonts.
WhatTheFont (http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/) - Font recognition from an uploaded image.
Typography by Friedrich Friedl (http://www.amazon.com/Typography-Friedrich-Friedl/dp/1579120237) - A very good book on typography.
Photography
PDN Magazine Online (http://www.pdnonline.com/) - A great magazine, with a pretty good online presence. News, blog, equipment, tips. Subscribe to the magazine for full access to the site.
Strobist (http://www.strobist.com/) - Lighting Blog. Great for beginners who want to learn how to use their hot shoe flash units off camera.
Photo.net (http://www.photo.net/) - Forums, Equipment reviews, tips, tricks, blog and gallery. A frequently recommended resource.
Multicolr (http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/#colors=bb1907,654ff9;)- You can search Flickr images by color.
Portfolio
http://www.blurb.com (http://www.blurb.com/) - Use this store to make a professional looking portfolio/book, prices are decent too.
Misc
http://www.pixel2life.com (http://www.pixel2life.com/) - Used to be better, but still a generally ok site with tutorials for just about any mainstream design application out there.
http://www.gomediazine.com (http://www.gomediazine.com/) - A great resource for a) insight from people in the biz, b) awesome tutorials and c) free application resources, like illustrator brushes and vector packs.
Zapplication (https://www.zapplication.org/index.php) - Digital jury system for applying to multiple art shows. They index over 200 of the largest shows in America.
Berman Graphics (http://bermangraphics.com/) - Collection of articles discussing the application process. (for zapp, etc)
Art Fair Sourcebook Forums (http://artfairsourcebook.com/cgibin/gforum/gforum.cgi) - Community of artists who discuss tips, tricks, and news about the art show circuit. (free registration)