This is an ever-growing text-based list of things I find useful. Hopefully you’ll benefit from it as well. This list will grow as I clean out my browser tabs, so keep coming back for more. Please let me know your favorite tools too!
(Please recognize that due to the nature of the internet, at some point most of these links will go dead, but hopefully this will serve as a useful resource. If the links do die, let me know, and also check out the WayBackMachine to see if you can get at them that way.)
Art and Illustration
2d Design
Programs
- Clip Studio Paint: This is a paid program, but has so many features specialized to comics that you can’t get elsewhere in this quality. CSP’s brush stabilization is a million times better than Krita’s allowing you to draw the smoothest of lines on your tablet in a way that feels completely natural. (I honestly didn’t know the Krita stabilization was lacking until I tried CSP and saw how much better it was!) While it’s a great program I deeply recommend, they changed approaches at one point and modified the perpetual license to one which was perpetual for version 1 and immediately released version 2 which was a subscription model. Thankfully there was a big enough reaction to this greasy corporate bullshit that the company has since provided version-specific licenses as an alternative to forcing you to only use the subscription, but they also try to update versions as quickly as possible to get as much money as they can out of you, even with small changes in the versions (and you have to purchase sequential upgrades, if you want to upgrade from version 1 to 4, you have to pay to upgrade to version 2, then 3, then 4, albiet at a bit of a discount. I wouldn’t be surprised if this changes at one point and they return to the subscription-only model as the company wants to be the next Adobe, evilness and all. Also, you need an active internet connection to use the program which is annoying to those of us who only have data at home. Still, if you do comics, this is as good as it gets.
- Aesprite: A cheap program for creating and animating sprites for games. I’ve not used it, but have seen it come up a lot on several tutorials. There’s also a Udemy course available.
Brushes
- RetroSupplyCo: Fantastic tools for that do exactly what they claim to. They have a free comic pack which requires a free email signup, but this is a great resource, so I think it is the rare company worth signing up for to watch out for sales and discounts. I love their Duotone, Risograph, and ColorLab products and hope to try more.
- TrueGrit: I haven’t used it yet, looks similar to RetroSupplyCo and I’ve heard good things about their products.
3d
Addons and Extensions
(Some addons that fit better elsewhere may be placed there, for example Human Generator is an addon for Blender, but there’s a specific Character Creator entry where it’s found.)
Fluid Simulation
- Dynamic Real Water: I haven’t used this yet as it costs between $99.99-149.99, but this may be my holy grail! It’s a plugin for Unreal which looks to do a lot of realistic looking ocean simulation, but here’s what gets me excited: according to them, it features “physically accurate asynchronous CPU buoyancy physics”! In a YouTube reply from FlipFluids, they said they have no plans to ever integrate buoyancy into their otherwise excellent project, and the Realtime Ship Simulator addon hasn’t received an update, this is what I–and my future pirate animation–have been looking for! If it does what it claims, the high price tag will be worth every penny and I wouldn’t mind throwing some money to the developers to help keep this program alive, especially in the absence of alternatives. My biggest hope is that it’s possible to bake they physics from Unreal to FBX for import into Blender or iClone, but I’ll take what I can get when it comes to accurate buoyancy with a good ocean shader.
Model Libraries
Clothing
- Clo-Set Connect: I’m mad a Clo right now for not just moving Marvelous Designer to a subscription-only model but also removing the install file of the version I purchased from their website. That said, their website features tens of thousands of high-quality clothing assets ready to be downloaded with around 7k for free. These are top-of-the-line models and presented in multiple formats. This means, if you want to quickly add fantastic clothes to your characters without needing a career in couture, you can just come here and download them for Marvelous Designer, but also in thick and thin FBX versions! This is a gift to the 3d community, and enough to make me less mad at MD.
Photogrammetry (and stuff like Guassian Splatting)
- KiriEngine: This is my go-to for quickly capturing an object in the real world and transforming it into a 3d model. You’ll never hear me say a negative word about PolyCam, but Kiri has a few options that I prefer (or at least weren’t in PolyCam last I used it). Kiri updates often, adding fantastic new features such as Gaussian splatting which improves model accuracy. It has a great list of formats available and is just a great and easy-to-use program all around.
Production
Expense Tracking
Project Tracking
- Blender 3d Projects Tracker: I have not used this, and don’t think it’s quite what I’m looking for, but it’s a template for Notion which helps you project manage what you’re working on in Blender. Could be useful! There’s a $3 version and an $8, I’m not sure what the difference is.
Programs
Character Creators
- Reallusion Character Creator: It doesn’t get better than this…or but at a literal cost. This program is fantastic in all the ways in simplifies creating characters and animating them with the equally expensive companion software iClone. Is it worth it? Yeah, but see if you have other options first.
- Makehuman
- Human Generator
- MBLab: This was my favorite by far when it was new and fresh. It really was the only game at the time and wasn’t just affordable, it was free. Then something happened to the creator, Manuel Bastioni where he released an angry message and quit the program.
- Vroid
Terrain Creation
- Gaea: We live in a blessed time when realistic 3d terrain generation programs aren’t just available, they’re affordable! Gaea isn’t free, nor is it exactly cheap, but it’s not super-expensive either and trust me it’s worth every penny. This is a fantastic program that is so fun to use! It’s not quite the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, but as close as you’ll get. I generally prefer to only use free and open source software, but Gaea is one worth buying. I haven’t purchased version 2 yet, but absolutely will.
- World Creator: I love me my Gaea, but this might be a competitor. It looks simply fantastic and has features my version of Gaea does not (though I don’t know about the new version). The price-point is similar to Gaea, and the promotional images look stunning. I worry I may have to buy this some day, but we’ll see what the overlap is with the newest Gaea.
Render Engines
Blender Octane
Textures & HDRI
Creation
- InstaMat: I don’t know why I never hear people talking about this one, but it appears to be like Substance Painter but free for people making less than $100k. I haven’t used it because it doesn’t work offline, sadly. Therefore, I’m not yet able to attest its quality and if it can serve as a replacement for Substance in the sought-after Adobe-free workflow.
Materials
- TextureCan: This is one of the best PBR material databases out there. It has almost everything you need in multiple options, providing texture maps and substance files for you. Around 650 different textures available in multiple sizes.
Stylized
- FreeStylized: Stylized 3d is having a renaissance right now and I’m all for it! While ultimately any hero elements we’re mostly going to want to illustrate ourselves for consistency, we don’t want to do that for thousands of props. This website features free assets, materials, and even skyboxes beautifully illustrated and ready for a PBR workflow! I hope to become a patron of this site, that’s how much I love it (feel free to support them yourself!).
- UE5 Toon Shader Plugin: A toon shader for Unreal. I’ve not tried it yet.
AI Generators
Disclaimer: Almost all of what we consider generative AI is immorally trained on other people’s artwork without permission or compensation and with evil capitalist goals of replacing the artist with slop as perfectly predicted in George Orwell’s 1984. So don’t view the inclusion of an app here as an endorsement. There are those who think there is no possible ethical use of AI, and I respect that far more than those who lean into the technology eagerly, even if I do make extremely limited and exploratory use of a few of them myself.
- Magnific AI: I haven’t used this, but saw it recommended in a lecture and am mostly storing it here so I can close the tab in my browser. It caught my eye because you can upload an original design you have created, and then it can give you alterations which can help you consider, implementing the changes as you see fit. To me this feels more artist-friendly rather than just stealing other people’s art.
Inspirations
Color
- LOSPEC: A website featuring color palettes for 2d sprites and other pixel art. I like this because it also shows examples of it being used rather than only presenting a palette.
Comic Artists
- Kim Jung Gi: This guy was ridiculously good at working with fisheye perspective. He never used references either, which is insane. Fantastic creator.
Style
- Character Design References: Literally what the name says. This website features countless resources for different ways to design your characters as well as portfolios from many great designers. It’s a good place to reference color, shape, form, anatomy, and come up with inspiration and ideas.
Photography
Alternative Processes
- Alternative Processes: This is a website that explores photographic methods beyond what most people think of. Many of these are tradition, just not common or common anymore. For example here is their page on Anthotypes for Everyone which is how I found them.
Screen Capture
- Lightshot: I haven’t used this yet, but it was recommended by my professor and looks decent, so you might check it out if the snipping tool isn’t meeting your needs. It supports multiple platforms and appears to be free, so that’s a good sign.
Benefits and Basic Living Needs (mostly Spokane, WA, USA)
- Spokane Resource Center: There’s a lot here, but I’ll warn you much is out of date as many programs have lost grant funding and gotten DOGEd.
Music
Celtic/Irish Traditional Music
- TradCharts.org: Features arrangements of Irish music.
Podcasts
Sciencey Shit
Cooking and Food
- Crystalverse: This presents a detailed guide on how to create salt pyramids. I never knew this was possible and it looks cool. I’ve not checked out the rest of the site, but it seems to present methods for growing other types of crystals, and if it’s detailed as the salt guide is, it’s worth bookmarking.
Websites
WordPress
- Tainacan: A fantastic museum-style cataloging system for archiving. It has a theme and a plugin. Unfortunately the website’s been down as I’ve tried to access it, so here’s a backup version.