A list of my favorite websites and services (and best kept secrets!) for everything from web design to drawing. I’ll be updating this list as I find new and exciting things. Send me an email at henry@henrynahurski.com if you think there’s something I should add!
Design + Typography Tools
Kuler — http://kuler.adobe.com/
An online tool for browsing and creating 5-color color palates. Great place to look for color inspiration!
Image to Text Converter — http://www.text-image.com/convert/
A simple online image to text converter that makes an image out of letters. You can specify if you want random or specific characters as well as the color of the characters and background.
QR Code Generator — http://goqr.me/
A simple online QR code generator with advanced features including changing the compression, error correction, colors, and border.
Photoshop Brushes
Out of all the Photoshop brushes I’ve downloaded, these are by far the best I’ve ever seen. I use them ALL the time. I especially love Goro and Barontieri’s brushes!
Mathias Verhasselt — http://mv.cgcommunity.com/echange/matbrushes07.zip
Goro Fujita — http://www.area-56.de/tutorials/goros_brushes.abr
Thierry Doizon (Barontieri) — http://www.mediafire.com/file/cmmcv7c9517q6rv/BARONTiERi.rar
Nicolas Ferrand (Viag) — http://redwhirlpool.blogspot.com/2010/05/tradibrush-2-revenge.html
Min Yum (Bumskee) — http://www.mediafire.com/file/wsjdef13a52c4kg/min_b_2010.rar
Maciej Kuciara (CptObvious) — http://maciejkuciara.blogspot.com/2010/03/ps-brushes.html
Jaime Jones — http://www.mediafire.com/file/hj1yl0143d4lwcs/Jaime%27s%20brushes.rar
Photos + Textures
Stock Exchange — http://www.sxc.hu/
Obviously a stock photo website. As much as I hate using stock photography, when I have no other choice, this is the place I go they have a wide variety of images to choose from with a decent search.
CG Textures — http://www.cgtextures.com/
This is really an amazing website when you are looking for a particular texture for a background or 3D model. You have to make an account to download things, but it’s all free!
Drawing
Posemaniacs — http://www.posemaniacs.com/
An amazing website with TONS of posed muscle figures for reference. You can even rotate the 3D poses to see a different angle. It also has a neat tool for short gesture drawings.
Free Art E-Books — http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=131117
This thread has a list of a bunch of free art e-books. Some of them aren’t available anymore, but there are plenty more that are. Topics range in everything from artist’s books to books about drawing in perspective.
Web
WordPress — http://wordpress.com/
WordPress is amazing. It’s what this site is built on. They’ve managed to make it so simple that you can have a site up in minutes, but complex enough that you are only limited by your imagination. And it’s totally free! Love it.
Lunarpages — http://www.lunarpages.com/id/henry24
Lunarpages is where I host my website. Basically it’s super affordable with amazing deals and awesome customer service. If you’re thinking about buying hosting space from them, make sure you do a quick Google search for coupon codes, they often have promotions to give you $50 off, 50% off, etc.
CSS Compressor — http://www.csscompressor.com/
Used to compress CSS to reduce code size and make your web pages load faster. You can select from four levels of compression, depending on how legible you want the compressed CSS to be versus degree of compression.
Web Font Packaging — http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator
A great online tool for making a simple, organized web font package that works across browsers.
Marketing + Social Media
Ping.FM — http://ping.fm/
A great service for managing many social networking services, especially the obscure ones that aren’t always included in other services such as Myspace, LinkedIn, etc.
Hootsuite — http://hootsuite.com/
An online service that allows you to post content to multiple social networking accounts at once. Saves so much time. They also have a free iPhone app!
Moo.com — http://www.moo.com/share/68bt5c
Words can’t express how much I love moo.com. They are a completely adorable service for printing business cards online. They’re print quality and paper stock is like nothing I’ve ever seen. But what is REALLY amazing about Moo is their ‘print-finity’ system that allows you to put a different image on the back of every business card you make. It’s really great for photographers and illustrators who want to show off their work.
Tutorials
After Effects Tutorial — http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/
Watching these 10 videos will teach you EVERYTHING you need to know about working in Adobe After Effects. The videos are well organized and presented and make learning the software ridiculously easy.