General Resources you couldn't live without

[Cowie]

As the title says, post some art resources you couldn't live without! I'll start:

People's Graphic Design Archive & DesignReviewed

Amazing scans of magazines and general art stuff, where I get my inspiration from.

Retro Game Adverts

1000+ scans of retro video game adverts.

Blkmarket

You've probably already heard of this, but this is in an excellent site for grunge textures. The plugins they sell, (especially Reactor), make working in photoshop so much easier. If you catch a big sale, you can get a ton of stuff for cheap.

Texturelabs

Again, most of you have probably heard of this site, but if not, this is gonna be your bible for textures. I use them every single day, haven't been able to find another site with the quality that this one has. The patreon has exclusive photoshop actions that are pretty sick too.

YT-DLP

Download Youtube videos using the command line. None of the bullshit you see on those ad infested "100% Legit Free Youtube MP3 MP4 Download Now" sites. Also works on soundcloud and some others.

Archive.org Downloader

Lets you download PDFs straight from the Internet archive without needing to borrow. Great for obscure art books and magazines.

 

[tee]

Oh man I wish this thread got more attention!!
I'm planning on doing a big collaboration event with some folks, so I started hoarding a whole bunch of resources to use in one huge list.
Stuff in here varies from images and textures, to fonts and even software! Best of all most of it is completely royalty free!
Check it out if you're curious and want to snag a bunch of goodies ~(‾▿‾~)

▰ SWANMAG RESOURCES REPOSITORY ▰​

 

[GlitchyPSI]

I'd like to also introduce cobalt as an alternative to yt-dlp right in the browser for when you're in a phone or want to just quickdownload a link
It's literally the antithesis to those ad riddled sites but with zero program downloads and it's also open source!

 

[charlynne]

Oh man I wish this thread got more attention!!
I'm planning on doing a big collaboration event with some folks, so I started hoarding a whole bunch of resources to use in one huge list.
Stuff in here varies from images and textures, to fonts and even software! Best of all most of it is completely royalty free!
Check it out if you're curious and want to snag a bunch of goodies ~(‾▿‾~)

▰ SWANMAG RESOURCES REPOSITORY ▰​

A lot of these resources are very useful! The tech brushes lead to a dead link though since it's a wetransfer link, and the blender metalheart tutorial is missing due to it being a discord link. Still, it's a good resource list.


I also want to show some of my recommendations on the software I like:

• ntsc-rs is a really good and pretty fast NTSC/VHS video emulator with tons of features and power more than ntscQT. It also works as a Vegas and After Effects plugin! I'm very happy this was made and still updating because I wanted to have an authentic looking VHS effect that doesn't take too long to render. https://github.com/valadaptive/ntsc-rs
• Furnace Tracker is a great chiptune tracker that covers many soundchips, including obscure ones! https://github.com/tildearrow/furnace
• OpenMPT is like a general music tracker software that supports .mod/.xm/.it chiptune music files and is also good for making music with samples too! https://openmpt.org/
• Reaper is my most favorite DAW. Not only it's very supportive of VSTs, scripts and such custom things, its trial evaluation is also very forgiving! I've been using a trial version for years and all of my features are still useable. It's only the window popup message I can wait shortly to close and that's just it. Besides, it's even cheap to buy for personal use. https://www.reaper.fm/

 

[Kodus]

I'd like to also introduce cobalt as an alternative to yt-dlp right in the browser for when you're in a phone or want to just quickdownload a link
It's literally the antithesis to those ad riddled sites but with zero program downloads and it's also open source!

+1 to Cobalt, been using it for a while and its a great tool for downloading videos

 

[tee]

The tech brushes lead to a dead link though since it's a wetransfer link

oh no!! whats the time limit on wetransfer? i could still access them at the time and that link was almost a year long at the time of me putting it into the list..

edit: Fixed the link to Metalheart tutorial, you can view it in its full glory now! I've also added the other resources you have mentioned, thank you!

 

[charlynne]

oh no!! whats the time limit on wetransfer? i could still access them at the time and that link was almost a year long at the time of me putting it into the list..

edit: Fixed the link to Metalheart tutorial, you can view it in its full glory now! I've also added the other resources you have mentioned, thank you!

I guess the time limit on wetransfer is a week.

 

[Andrew]

@tee good lawd that's perfect. incredible doc and incredible styling

 

[Term]

• Reaper is my most favorite DAW. Not only it's very supportive of VSTs, scripts and such custom things, its trial evaluation is also very forgiving! I've been using a trial version for years and all of my features are still useable. It's only the window popup message I can wait shortly to close and that's just it. Besides, it's even cheap to buy for personal use. https://www.reaper.fm/

Can confirm

 

[KeplerElectronics]

This is an awesome thread!

Adding to this from a Blender/video editing POV:

AmbientCG:

Tons of CC0 textures, HDRIs, and a few models. All Photorealistic PBR stuff. I love these for hyper detail work.

Polyhaven:

Even more cc0 textures and models, this one is my go-to for HDRI lighting.

Unsplash:

Tons of free stock photos. It used to be better before they started paywalling so much stuff, but there's still a wealth of images that I love for backgrounds and stuff.

Pixabay:

More stock photos, they also have videos and vectors as well!

DaFont:

Tons of fonts, just have to pay attention to the license. They have classics like Neuropol and DeFonte and some new weird stuff.

 

[ChunkOfWax]

Also becoming aware of this thread for the first time, lots of really cool stuff here, very awesome :)

I don't have too much to add that hasn't already been shared, but I can share a few things:

Fontshare
I know there's tons of other places online where you can get fonts for free, and while Fontshare does have a much smaller selection, everything here is 100% free for personal and commercial use. Font licensing can be pain, so I appreciate the guaranteed free licensing

8mb.video
Not necessarily a resource, but I thought I'd share it while we're here. Discord file size limits suck my ass, and this quickly compresses videos to be able to be sent through discord. Pretty convenient and totally ad free :)

 

[KeplerElectronics]

Fontshare
I know there's tons of other places online where you can get fonts for free, and while Fontshare does have a much smaller selection, everything here is 100% free for personal and commercial use. Font licensing can be pain, so I appreciate the guaranteed free licensing

Woah Fontshare is awesome! A lot of those fonts look really nice, I always have trouble finding simple, readable fonts that also look premium, they look like they have a ton of those from my quick skim through just now. Thanks for sharing!