Visual Art Resources
2D
Puccanoodles Masterdoc
A much more expansive list than I could ever compile myself
Learning
Devin Korwin
useful tools and knowledge for digital painting.
Sergey Kritskiy
fantastic Photoshop and Blender plugins that I use the majority of. Incredible workflow tools that can boost your productivity or give you access to things that Photoshop should have by default, like Layer Factory’s fantastic multilayer move and layer baking.
Marco Bucci
Skilled painter & teacher. If you love painterly work and want to learn how to improve, this is a great place to look.
Sathish Kumar
Environment design focused tutorials. Sathish is also the founder of Art Train Academy . You can find a link to the Art Train Academy discord server in some of his videos.
FZD School
Primarily consisting of videos from Feng Zhu, a youtube channel from a great concept art school. If your focus is concept art, this channel is a must watch.
Conceptual Ink Academy
A great youtube channel from a former FZD student. If you want to learn how FZD trains such amazing artists, she breaks down their entire curriculum.
This to That
site for finding ways to attach different materials together.
Drawabox
Fundamental drawing exercises through an analytical lens
Artstation Learning
One of the most popular places to host art, which also happens to have a fantastic learning resource. Plenty of general courses exist, but if you’re looking for something specific, look on the marketplace or other sites.
Gumroad
Marketplace for anything digital. Many fantastic artists selling brush packs, tutorials, assets, finished works and much much more.
Tools
PureRef
reference gathering organization tool
Eagle.Cool
File sorting and organization solution
Hundredrabbits
Various low power creative software and cool stuff in general.
Heavypaint
Cool drawing software made by Heavypoly. Incredibly unique and a fun way to do studies.
Reference
Wildlife Reference Photos for Artists
Wildlife-related photo reference, not free, typically $5 but royalty-free and high quality.
Photos 4 Artists
Landscape references primarily of Europe. Completely free to use. Terms and Conditions
Morguefile
one of the best free photo reference sites
Croquis Cafe
Figure drawing reference site, monthly subscription
Photobash.org
High-quality photobash asset packs
3D
Software
Blender
Highly acclaimed & community supported free and open source 3D software. A great starting point especially on a low budget. Not considered industry standard, but times are changing. Notably used in the making of Across the Spider Verse
Plasticity
“CAD for artists” Excellent independent hardsurface modeling software. Permanent license, 1 year of updates and no expiration. Free trial also available.
Maya
The industry standard for 3d. Not as much community support as Blender & more expensive. Great to have on a resume. If you're going into animation it is a must to familiarize yourself with it.
Nuke
Industry standard VFX software. Incredibly powerful, used by VFX, matte painters, and many other film related professions.
Gaea
One of the most powerful terrain generation programs on the market.
GeoGen
From JangaFX, creators of EmberGen and LiquiGen, a new contender on the terrain generation scene. Really fast, but lower fidelity than Gaea, at least right now. Can generate planets in addition to flat terrain
Learning
Blender Guru
Highly regarded Blender tutorial website
Blender Nation
Blender-related tutorials, assets, and other community material.
Josh Gambrell
Awesome hard surface tutorials for Blender.
Assets
Poly Haven
Community driven, high quality 3D asset library. HDRIs, Models & Textures
Kitbash3D
High quality kitbash asset packs. Worth the price, but also has occasional promotional free packs
Free3D
Free 3D model library
Sketchfab
Large marketplace for 3D assets, including free 3D assets
FreePBR
Free library of PBR assets
Turbosquid
Large marketplace for 3D models, including free models
Blender Addons
Hard Ops & Boxcutter
Essential tools for hard surface modeling. If there's one thing i'd recommend getting, it's this bundle. Makes Boolean workflows a breeze and is still helpful if you're not doing hard surface.
Kit Ops
Fantastic addon for kitbashing. Works great with boolean workflows.
Game Dev
Unreal Engine
great place to start with learning any side of game dev. Free to use unless you are already earning a good amount of money from it. Visual node-based systems make learning how to create code, shaders, and textures intuitive. If you are an aspiring 3D environment artist, having Unreal Engine work in your portfolio is a great way to get noticed.
Godot
Free and open-source game engine. A great engine if you already know how to code, and even a good starting point for non-coders due to the extensive resources and learning materials for GDScript.
Learn Code From Zero With GDScript
An amazing and free way to learn to code. I completed this recently, and it was the first time I really grasped how coding works.
Godot Tours 101
Gives you a tour of Godot, a great step after completing the course above, or to hop in right away.