Being the all around ninja that I am doing everything myself is a big concern for me. I don’t have many assets besides time, and even this resource is not the biggest. Cutting back online time has been a big issue for me, and I have succeeded to reduce the amount of time I spend in front of a computer significantly. I try to get outside as often as possible, fill one canvas after the other, even though I am a concept artist, and do a lot of other fun things.

But what do you do when you reduce your time in front of the computer? How do you get stuff done, especially when you create websites or things like that? There are easy answers: Freebies! & Stock items! Those are great time savers.

Free stuff for your needs

Ever wondered where you can find great stuff for free?

My favorite resource for Web Design
My first stop for everything related to web design would be smashing magazine, as they offer plenty of freebies ranging from icons to wordpress designs. Usually very high quality designs that are free to use for every project you create, only resale and redistribution is forbidden. So those are extremely sexy and can be very useful for people who need neat themes for blogs or affiliate sites.

Tools to create digital art
In case you love to create things from scratch, but lack textures or brushes, bittbox is your place to go. Here you find all that stuff you need when you are creating stuff, and the best thing, it’s free.

Dirty Textures
Another texture site is Texture King, there you find loads of dirty textures, simply awesome for grunge designs.

Icons & Wordpress Themes
Icon design is nice, but actually, I think there are enough icons on this planet already, you can find another great set of icons at wefunction. Otherwise they wefunction has loads of cool stuff for free, characters, themes, and more.

Do you write a lot of blog posts want to illustrate them with pictures?
Try the creative commons at flickr. The important thing here is to be very selective. Don’t use images that are probably not owned by the guy who put them there, don’t use images where are visible faces on commercial projects, as you’d need a model release from the model. There are a lot legal obstacles in case you decide to pick pictures from flickr, that should not stop you from using it! It’s a great resource, you just have to be aware of the risks, and are probably best of to directly ask the photographer for permission.