Mug's Digital Creation Resources

Why does this list exist?

This file is a work in constant progress. I gather all the resources I can find for creative work. The goal is to create some kind of starter-pack for new and intermediate creatives who might not know where to look, though these might come in handy for experienced creatives too, who knows?

Sources & Tools:

Fonts

Sources: (All of these foundries provide free fonts licensed for commercial use.)
The League of Moveable Type One of the first free, open-source web font foundries, small library but well-crafted.
Collletttivo Open-source, collectively designed contemporary Italian typefaces.
Google Fonts Free, open-source web font library, huge but hit-or-miss on quality, also hosts Material Symbols, a solid icon set.
FontShare Curated free fonts from Indian Type Foundry, generally more polished than most free libraries.
Velvetyne French, community-run foundry, leans experimental and multilingual.
Bye Bye Binary French collective distributing inclusive, non-binary and post-binary typefaces.
Open Source Publishing Brussels-based collective building libre fonts and tools, DIY and workshop-driven.
Tools:
Wordmark Types your text out across every font installed on your system at once, for quick comparison.

Raster

Sources:
Mockups Design (Free, custom license) layered PSD mockups organized by category, packaging, business cards, apparel, outdoor signage, more realistic than generic template packs.
Poly Haven (CC0, paid options) Mainly for 3D work but they offer a wide range of textures that can be used for other purposes.
Ambient CG (CC0) PBR materials, more focused purely on textures than Poly Haven.
Texture Labs (Free, custom license) A wide range of high-quality textures, leaning grunge, paper, and print-decay, photographic overlays rather than the PBR materials Poly Haven and Ambient CG use.
Public Domain Image Archive (Free, CC0) Hand-picked collection of out-of-copyright works.
NYPL Digital Collections (Free, CC0) Collection of items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections.
Transparent Textures (Free) Collection of textures with css presets.
Tools:
Krita (GPL-3.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Free, open-source raster editor, focused on digital painting and illustration.
Photopea (Free) (Web-based) Photoshop alternative, opens PSD and other native formats.
RawTherapee (GPL-3.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Free, open-source RAW photo processor.
GIMP (GPL-3.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Free, open-source raster editor, similar to Photoshop.
Aseprite (custom license) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Pixel-art editor (This is the purchase link, you can either buy a one-time paid key to support the developer, or you can find the source code here and build it yourself for free, or you can download a Windows prebuilt version here although lags behind on updates.)
LibreSprite (GPL-2.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) fork of Aseprite. Less advanced but excellent if you're looking for a more straightforward alternative.
Snapseed (iOS link) (Mobile) Google's photo editing app, known for its powerful yet easy-to-use tools.
Affinity (Free, paid options) (Windows, MacOS) (Requires a Canva account) Professional creative suite for design and photo editing, free alternative to Photoshop, with Canva AI integration.

Vector

Sources:
theSVG (Free) One of the larger free brand-logo SVG libraries, multiple variants per brand (color, mono, light, dark, wordmark), no attribution required.
Vecteezy (Free, paid options, custom license) Stock images and vector assets/templates, free tier is limited but worth digging through.
Flaticon (Free, paid options, custom license) Mostly paid vector content, but they have a free high-quality collection of icons, including monochrome brand icons.
Tools:
FontForge (GPL-3.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Free, open-source editor for building or modifying typefaces at the point/curve level.
Graphite (Free) (Web-based) Early-stage open-source vector editor, node-based and non-destructive.
VectorPea (Free) (Web-based) Illustrator alternative from the same developer as Photopea, opens AI, SVG and PDF files.
Inkscape (GPL-2.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Free, open-source vector editor, similar to Illustrator.
Calligra Karbon (GPL-2.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Free, open-source vector editor, similar to Inkscape.
Canva (Free, paid options) (Web-based) (Requires an account) Simple and fast design tool with a vast library of templates and assets.
Affinity (Free, paid options) (Windows, MacOS) (Requires a Canva account) Professional creative suite for design and photo editing, free alternative to Illustrator & InDesign, with Canva AI integration.

Color

Adobe Color Palette generator and library with direct Creative Cloud export, plus a large community-submitted library.
Coolors Fast color palette generator, with a large library of user-submitted palettes.
Color Hunt Curated collection of color palettes, with a focus on modern and trendy color combinations.
Colormind AI palette generator trained on photography, film, and art datasets, lock in a color and it fills in the rest, or pull a palette straight from an uploaded image.
Color Hex All-in-one color tool, shades, tints, RGB/CMYK percentages, and ready-to-copy CSS for backgrounds, text, borders, and shadows.
Huemint Color palette generator with templates to visualize color combinations in real use-cases.
AnyGradient Universal gradient generator with OKLCH & Display-P3 support.
FeralUI's Gradient Builder palette preview software. gradient studies across shape, backdrop, and colour.

Moodboarding/Brainstorming

Sources:
are.na Algorithm-free platform for curating and sharing ideas.
Cosmos Visual moodboarding tool, built around a searchable image grid with a color-based search tool.
Behance Adobe's portfolio platform, full project case studies across every design discipline.
Pinterest The default moodboard tool, deep library but mid algorithm and ad-driven.
Branding Styleguides Archive of real brand guideline documents pulled from actual companies.
Fonts in Use Archive of typefaces spotted in real design work, searchable by font or by industry.
Savee Minimalist, ad-free image curation, another alternative to Pinterest, similar to Cosmos.
Tools:
PureRef (Free for personal use, custom license) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Lightweight reference board, keeps pinned images on top of other windows.
Anytype (Free, custom license) (Windows, Linux, MacOS, Web) Free knowledge management tool.
Logseq (GPL-3.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Another free, open-source knowledge management tool, self-hostable.

Video/Animation

Kdenlive (Free, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Video editor, similar to Adobe Premiere.
Blender (FOSS, Quite a lot of licenses) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) 3D software at its core, but its node-based compositor and Grease Pencil tools make it a genuinely usable free alternative to After Effects for motion graphics.
DaVinci Resolve (Paid, free tier) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Closed-source video editor, similar to Adobe Premiere.
Glaxnimate (Free, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Vector animation tool built around the Lottie format, closer to a free After Effects plus Bodymovin workflow than to Adobe Animate.

Audio

Sources:
Freesound (Free, custom license) Collaborative collection of sound effects and field recordings, searchable by license type.
Free SFX (Free) Free sound effects for all situations, searchable by category.
Tools:
Audacity (Free, open-source) Audio recording & editing software.
8 Bit Composer (Web-based) 8-bit chiptune music tracker.
LMMS (Free, open-source) Digital audio workstation.
ChipTone (Free, outputs CC0) (Windows, MacOS, Web) Procedural retro sound effect generator.

Sources:
Poly Haven (CC0) Textures, normal maps, assets, blender addons and more.
Ambient CG (CC0) PBR materials, more focused purely on textures than Poly Haven.
Tools:
Blender (FOSS, Quite a lot of licenses) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) The reference in terms of 3D creation software.
Twinmotion (Free for revenue under $1M/year) (Windows, MacOS) (Requires Epic Games account) Real-time 3D visualization software powered by Unreal Engine.
Blockbench (GPL-3.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS, Web) 3D modeler for creating voxel art, suitable for Minecraft models.
Materialize (Free, open-source) (Windows only) Turns a single image into normal, height, and AO maps for PBR materials.

Game Making

Sources:
Kenney (Free, CC0) Over 30,000 game assets (sprites, UI, audio, fonts), about as close to a default starting point as free game asset libraries get.
OpenGameArt (Free, mixed licenses) Community-submitted game art and audio, check each asset's license individually since it isn't uniformly CC0 like Kenney.
Frameworks/Libraries:
LÖVE (zlib, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Lightweight 2D game framework built around Lua, code-only with no built-in editor, popular for jams and small prototypes thanks to its minimal learning curve.
Phaser (MIT, open-source) (Web-based, JS/TS) Free 2D framework for browser games, worth a look if you want a link-and-play web build instead of a native install.
Engines:
Godot (MIT, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Free general-purpose engine for 2D and 3D, node-based scene system, scriptable in GDScript or C#, closest free alternative to Unity.
Unity (Free under $200K/yr revenue or funding, paid tiers above) (Windows, MacOS, Linux) Closed-source industry-standard engine for 2D and 3D, C# scripting, huge asset store and community.
GameMaker (Free for non-commercial use, $99.99 one-time for commercial) (Windows, MacOS) 2D-focused engine with drag-and-drop plus its own GML scripting language, behind Undertale, Hotline Miami, and Hyper Light Drifter.
GDevelop (MIT, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS, Web) No-code, event-based 2D engine, a gentler starting point than Godot or GameMaker if you'd rather not write code yet.
Construct 3 (Free tier limited, paid options) (Web-based) Browser-based no-code 2D engine, drag-and-drop event sheets, free tier caps events and layers, full access needs a subscription.
Defold (Free, source-available) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Lightweight 2D-focused engine built by King, Lua scripting, tiny builds, strong for mobile.
Tools:
Tiled (Free, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Engine-agnostic tile map editor, worth having regardless of which engine you land on for room-based or tile-based level design.
LDtk (MIT, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Entity-driven level editor from the Dead Cells designer, complements Tiled rather than replacing it, better suited to placed objects than large tile grids.

Uncategorized/Unrelated

Completely unrelated to the goal of this page but since I'm dumping all the useful resources I got, I might as well add these.

Office:
WPS Office (Free, custom license) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) AI-powered office suite, available on all platforms.
LibreOffice (GPL-3.0) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Office suite.
Google Drive (Web-based) Slides, Docs, and Sheets are nice alternatives to Microsoft Office.
Browsers:
Zen Browser (Free, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Based on Firefox, workflow might seem a bit odd at first but once you get the hang of it, you don't go back from it (DRM support is broken on windows).
Firefox (Free, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Privacy and freedom first web browser, faster and lighter engine than chromium browsers.
Brave Browser (Free, open-source) (Windows, Linux, MacOS) Privacy-focused web browser, blocks ads and trackers by default.
Extensions:
uBlock Origin (Chromium) Content blocker, efficient and highly configurable. Chrome only gets uBlock Origin Lite since Google pulled the full version after the Manifest V3 switch, noticeably weaker filtering than the Firefox version.
Privacy Badger (Chromium) From the EFF, learns to block invisible trackers automatically based on their behavior rather than relying on a manual filter list.
Decentraleyes (Chromium) Serves common libraries (jQuery, etc.) locally instead of fetching them from third-party CDNs, blocking a common tracking vector without breaking sites that depend on those CDNs.
Don't track me Google (Chromium) Strips Google's click-tracking redirect wrapper from Search and Maps links, so clicking or copying a result gives you the real URL directly.