Fesoes.net

This post is cross-posted at Fesoes.net and LiveJournal.com because I keep wanting to make the other blog aware of the other blog, even though I should be using the Fesoes.net one more than the LiveJournal one now.

Anyway, on to the list of resources that I find useful for people doing creative things. As some of my closest friends know, I want to do pretty much anything creative, although all the things I want to do can be summed up in the phrase ‘telling some stories’.

To do this, especially in the ways I would love to tell my stories (comics, cartoons, games(?)), you need the skills, and you need resources, and you need a good story.

Hmm, looking at that last paragraph, I can’t see where I’m going with it, so I probably just ought to get onto making these lists. I’m going to keep a focus on what is freely available as I like free, and there are indeed, a surprising amount of free things on the internet for the budding creative.

One last thing, this is just a general list, and by all means, doesn’t cover every site I’ve ever used (sites missed out might be due to link decay, or more likely, general forgetfulness from not bookmarking the place). Most likely I’ll keep updating this post or keep making smaller posts about sites and resources for more specific creative activities/genres.

World Creation

• Seventh Sanctum – Probably one of the most well known and largest generator sites known to the creative side of the internet. It’s useful for those times when you simply cannot come up with all those names and designs for attacks/locations/items/spells/characters/etc. and sometimes even forms a way to grab potential things for later use. Contains links to other high-quality generator sites, my favourites being Serendipity (Nine.Frenchboys.net), Majin Gajita’s Generators, and Namator. It also contains a link to an archive of (extremely good-quality) articles about World Building and what you should be thinking about when you make this world (if it’s not based on the current Earth of course).
• Wikipedia – Legendary Creatures – Should really be part of research resources, but fantasy worlds need fantasy creatures, and what better way to get an idea of what fantasy creatures would exist there would be to see what our predecessors have already come up with. This is already sorted into common catergories including the creatures based/associated with the animals of the world, artificial creatures and creatures associated with things like the sun, the moon, blood, etc.

Story Making

Sites

• Cool Bits Story Generator – Generates a brief outline of a story. Could be good for writing challenges, or if you suddenly cannot think of what happens.
• The Big List of RPG Plots – By S. John Ross (you should totally check out the rest of his website though – he is the creator of Risus and various other free things – he is a generous man! (PS: he is also very creative and has made lots of RPG campaigns that I’ll have to try one day)). Although this list was made for Game Masters of various Pen and Paper RPGs to have a base campaign, it can still be put to good use for either the base of a story, or perhaps a smaller story arc. Like the name suggests, it’s a list of plots.

Software

• Labyrinth – Supports relationship maps between anything (although characters are generally used), ‘annotations’ for ‘Elements’, which can be used to describe events, descriptions, or even to write brief notes about a possible idea for something, and has a timeline component. As its site says (probably better than I could at the moment); “Labyrinth is an integrated development environment for developing and recording storylines and plots”. I love this piece of software so much. Once you tackle the learning curve (the documentation is very very limited) it is incredible useful and efficient. The best thing about it; it’s free (Update: and it’s portable too!).
• FreeMind – Before I found Labyrinth, I used this to make notes on characters and individual elements of a story – rather than the story itself. It’s a mind-mapping program with potentially unlimited space (I haven’t quite written enough to see if there is a limit). It supports images and hyperlinks and is useful for splitting up components of your story into categorised sections (unlike Labyrinth which displays all the elements at once in alphabetical order).
• Ren’Py – Nothing like the previous two. Ren’Py is a free visual novel engine built upon Python. It’s akin to Blade Engine, which has a free, lighter version of its own engine, but the general consentus of the Visual Novel community is that Ren’Py offers more freedom thanks to the extendibility added with the Python programming language (which can turn Ren’Py from a mere visual novel engine to a game engine). Documentation for Ren’Py is adequate, with plenty of examples to learn from. Also, if you’re planning on writing a visual novel, you should take a look at the Lemma Soft website, which has a section dedicated entirely to Ren’Ai games.

Character Building

• NaNoFiMo – Although aimed at NaNoWriMo writers, the resource page contains a good number of plot sheets and character sheets, some with prompts, some without. Contains links to other useful sites for story making (including some of those linked here).

Artwork

Anatomy/Figure Drawing Reference

• Posemaniacs – A godsend for artists like me who didn’t take an art course/are self-taught, and thus, do not get the chance to draw from life. A site, constantly updated with models of the (average) human body. It shows the muscles to get a sense of why the body is shaped as so, which is good for getting the idea of the body’s structure – but not particularly good for learning how the body shadows with different light sources. The limited time feature is a really good way to hone your sketching skills with difficult poses though.
• Character Designs – Also another godsend, similar to Posemaniacs in that it is a really really good resource for anatomy and pose reference, but unlike Posemaniacs (which uses 3D models), Character Designs uploads high-res photosets of models (in various states of undress – so be warned if you’re offended by partial/full nudity) but under different lighting conditions. Plus benefits include artwork from industry professionals and upcoming artists, some tutorials, texture sets, and face shots of various emotions.

Other Reference

• Flickr – Amazing place for reference photos, it would be my best friend if I kept on remembering to go there. Remember to keep an eye out on the copyrights of each photo of course and be sure to drop a line to the photographer if you ever do use one.
• Kosta Trimovski – A photographer with plenty of beautiful photos that can be used for reference, but not to be used in work without permission.

Character Design

• Fashion sites, Catalogues, and even costume sites (there are far too many that I use to list here) are great resources for inspiring clothing design. Because people’s tastes differ, and the fashion style changes with the genre, I decided not to list the sites I am addicted to use. Places like eBay can be surprisingly useful, and Google is your best friend for this.

Programs

• GraphicsGale – Relatively unknown-esque, it’s a really really good graphics editor aimed mainly at animated sprite-making. There is a free version and a ‘shareware’ (you get a trial and then you have to pay for it) version. Naturally the shareware version supports more things, like .GIFs .ICOs, etc, but the free version, in my opinion, has enough features to aid sprite making (supports Alpha Channeled .PNGs) if you don’t mind doing a little bit of work yourself to convert things to .gifs.
• Blender – Open Source 3D modelling software that rivals the quality of many high-end commerical software (although is naturally, not as powerful as them). I’ve only just started to attempt using it again, but it’s free and is now well-documented, so that even people new to modelling can learn to use it.

Misc.

• Random Art Prompt Generator – From the same girl who brought you the Cool Bits Story Generator. Good for times when you’re feeling that lovely phenomena known as artists block.
• StumbleUpon – A plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that literally lets you stumble on to sites that you may have never ever seen before. A lot of the sites I use for reference, particularly the software sites, I have found thanks to StumbleUpon, so I guess I owe it this mention. You just tell it what categories you are interested in, then go Stumbling away!
• deviantART – It’s rare that I ever pick up on dA, it’s large community has pushed me away from the site. However, there is no denying that a site full of artists would have a category purely for resources. With some clever searching (or just patient browsing) you can find a treasure chest of resource delight, poses, anatomy references, even fashion designs to inspire your own fashions, not to mention plugins and addons for commonly used programs.
• TVTropes – An excellent site that records and explains various ideas or themes that are found not just on TV, but on the internet, in albums, movies, modern media, you get the idea. Not just a good site for information about tropes commonly used (which can spur ideas of your own) but also a good time waster (I can easily waste hours figuring out which tropes I’ve used in my own planned stories) and perhaps can even help strengthen your characters and story.

Remember to share the love with others (link them to this article, give me a stumble, etc), only feedback can make this article better!