the melon stash

Last update: 7th September, 2026. Please alert me to any dead links!

This page contains links to all sorts of websites I've amassed over time.

You can use these links to jump to the sections that interest you:

• Art
• Pixel Art
• 3D Modelling
• Music & Sound
• Web Development
• Writing
• Reading
• FUN links
• Miscellaneous

Shoutouts

Somewhat like a web affiliates section, these are the websites of my friends, and some others I'm less familiar with.

• NomnomNami, who made my layout! But more importantly, makes games with Girls™ in them
• Strovi and their webcomic moirai!
• corru.observer, a browser game with a great narrative.
• snake (your text here)
• Cicada's Tezuka Fansite
• Melonland, Melonking's web revival project & webring. Despite the name, we are not related in any way.

Art

General stuff applicable to many mediums, such as anatomical references. More specific tools have their own subheadings.

• Bodies in Motion, a photo reference archive
• Gnomon Workshop, a long-running VFX workshop service (paid)
• UCreative, a graphic design resource site
• NaturePhoto, wildlife and nature photos
• Animal Photo Reference Repository, an explicitly AI-free animal photo site
• SaveLoomis, how-to-draw books by Andrew Loomis
• PoseManiacs, a figure drawing reference site
• Artist's Hospital, an art tutorial collation group on DeviantArt
• JaneMere painting tutorials
• Line-Of-Action figure drawing
• Photopea, browser-based photoshop
• Living Lines Library, a compilation of animation production art
• Cedarseed, miscellaneous anatomy and other tutorials.
• Webneel, aggregator of many art tutorials & inspirational works
• Empty Easel, general art advice
• CTRLpaint digital painting tutorials.
• Temple of the Seven Golden Camels, robust art advice blog
• LockStock, many reference photos of nude models
• Paletton and Adobe Color, palette creation & browsing websites
• Coolors palette library/generator
• AnatomicalArt reference tumblr
• FZD Design School
• AdorkaStock, formerly SenshiStock on DA, has many reference photos and a figure-drawing app.
• Cartoonist Co-operative, various resources for comic artists
• USA National Gallery of Art's creative commons collection of 130k+ artworks
• USA Library of Congress's similar digital collection of photos
• THe Smithsonian online collection of 2d and 3d museum items.
• image "glitcher" for creating glitchy animated gifs, etc..
• OpenGameArt.org free art assets
• CompressPNG is one of many PNG compressors.
• Spriter's Resource contains videogame art, not only for sprites but 3d models/textures, sounds, and other things. It's a great place to study assets from videogames you like.
• Draw a Box hosts a collection of art exercises, both free and paid, to help you practice art.

3D Modelling

I've also put various Textures here, though they also have uses in 2d art.

• Blender Guru, also runs the Poliigon website.
• ManyTextures, royalty-free textures
• Textures.com, also a good source of textures
• 3DTotal's free texture pack
• Lost and Taken textures/stock photos.
• CGcookie Blender tutorials.
• BlenderArtists, a forum for cutting-edge Blender works and support.
• Rigelatin paper textures. They also have some other fun toys on-site.
• sharetextures texture library
• ambientCG free textures and other assets.
• Blender 3D models
• Instant Meshes retopo tool
• Texture Ninja texture library
• Noggi's site, I have been learning about 3d stylisation here.

Pixel Art

• Black Golem Blog pixel art tutorial
• Pixel Joint, pixel artist gallery & forum. They also host tutorials.
• SA Pixel Art guide.
• Final Boss Blues' intro to pixel art
• drububu's pixel art guide
• gas13's pixel art and Photoshop tutorials
• Pixel Prospector pixel art & gamedev tutorials archive: at time of writing (Jan 2026) the site is being refurbished.
• Hongkiat pixel art (and tech) tutorials.
• 2D Will Never Die and their Intro to Pixel Art
• Sprite Database, a sprite ripping resource
• LoSpec, restricted colour palette database.
• Learning Pixel Art by tofupixel
• Pixel Art in Blender guide

Music & Sound

• Contrabass Compendium, your source for especially ridiculous musical instruments
• Musopen, provides royalty-free music
• Musipedia, and specifically its Contour Search is a life saver when you can't think of the name of that one tune.
• MyNoise and Ambient Mixer has mixes of music and ambient sounds to create atmospheres. 2nd is ostensibly a TTRPG tool, but general enough for other uses.
• Radio.garden, for listening to radio around the world
• Keygen Jukebox
• MusicMap, a website collating different musical genres. If you're curious, I live in the ceiling. On EveryNoise, I live in the basement
• Music for Programming, it's a bunch of chill, long playlists.
• Classical Midis
• BBC Sound Effects library.
• Yellowstone sound library.
• looking for software recs? i use Musescore for writing, Lilypond for engraving, and REAPER.fm if you aren't into that old timey "notation" stuff

Web Development

if you saw my shoddy site from before and thought "I can do better, probably, maybe" then don't ask me. Ask these links.

• The Cave of Dragonflies HTML guide, shoutout to Butterfree/antialiasis for keeping this guide up since 2008.
• sadgrl.online has templates, freely available "snippets", and guides! Also tiled backgrounds.
• W3Schools, general glossary of HTML and CSS if you need a specific thing
• 32-Bit Cafe, which compiles many resources & helpful pages.
• Webguide on Neocities, a super-basic intro to HTML
• Neothemes themes for Neocities
• Pixel Moondust, an archive of retro web images & personal site.
• Phoenix Code, my current HTML/CSS wysiwyg editor of choice
• Field Guide to Web Accessibility
• Color Blender for hex codes is a fun way to pick layout colours.
• Colblindor colour blindness simulator.
• UserAgent, handy for including on install instruction pages.

Writing

This section also includes resources for roleplay and tabletop gaming. hey, don't forget my worldbuilding template either (left sidebar).

• WordHippo, my favourite thesaurus
• OneLook Thesaurus, reverse dictionary (search by definition) and dictionary aggregator
• donjon RPG tools has generators for names, maps, and too many other things to list
• Seventh Sanctum has all sorts of generators, and a stash far more robust than mine
• Fantasy Name Generators: if you're as bad at names as I am, this site will save your life
• Myth-Weavers Lethe host a few generators for TTRPGing.
• Red Blob Games has some interesting generation tools. I recommend the Polygonal Map Generator.
• Castle Learning Centre, information on castles & the times they were constructed in.
• Viabundus map and travel calculator for medieval to early modern times

Reading

• Classic literature: i use project gutenberg the most, but there's so many different websites that i struggle to list them all.
• Non-fiction: medical, physics, maths, sciences, technology, and various textbooks.
• Plays and musicals
• Historical books and audiobooks
• Various libraries. Mystery, and poems, many poems.
• Banned books, women authors, prize-winning books.

FUN links

Just websites I found cool or interesting.

• Draconika Dragons, a dragon info website
• The Useless Web, fun place to discover new websites
• CloudHiker, same as above
• Files Found, a dumpster-diving website for old storage media, such as clipart CDs. A great source of retro web imagery!
• Astronaut.io, which finds nigh-unseen youtube videos. Also PetitTube
• CheapShark and SteamDB, help you find deals on videogames
• Pepakura Designer, software for making paper dolls from 3d models
• Peter Blaškovič's Experiments, various games and javascript "simulators" for fluids, painting, and other things
• Free Rice, a trivia/study guide that donates rice each time you answer a question
• Curlie webring
• Classic MSPaint in-browser
• Classic MSWord WordArt generator
• Secondary WordArt generator (good for low effort memes)
• WeaveSilk, a "folding" digital paintbrush with rotational symmetry
• vidlii would be a really hilarious place to upload my amvs. remind me.
• Animation Factory, the home of well known 90s-era 3d gifs.
• Self-promo: my Diagnostic Wheel and less robust tech help wheel
• Flashpoint, the archive of old Flash games.
• NoClip that lets you fly through videogame maps in your browser.
• Nicky Case's site, a notable creator of educational games
• Your AI Slop Bores Me, where you can imitate an AI or ask questions to other "players" imitating AI.
• Melobytes Image-to-Music converter
• Speech Accent Archive (English)
• The Spork Homepage
• Weeping Witch cool games & generators. (the game pages can be saved to play offline!)
• Jenniverse: Did you play shareware as a kid? You might recognise BOPPIN', which you can play on the creator's website! She has a bunch of other goodies, and even her own comic.
• Pokémon stuff: The World of Pokémon and The Art of Pokémon
• URL expanders: CreepyLink and URL lengthener
• and finally Zombo.com. it's an old favourite i just got excited it's back up again. happy 20-something-th birthday, zombocom

Miscellaneous

• Darebee, lists at-home workout routines
• Color Hex, a hex colour and palette generation website
• Marginalia Search, an independent search engine geared towards finding obscure websites
• CARI (consumer aesthetics research institute) categorises aesthetic qualities in a neat way.
• Cheapskate's Guide to computers and the internet
• Spyware Watchdog, which documents spyware in popular modern software
• Wormhole, 10gb file sharing
• Defensive Computing Checklist to learn about online security risks.
• Ian's Shoelace Site has some efficient shoelace-tying tips.

Suggestions

If you'd like to suggest I add some handy links not mentioned here, I'd love to hear about them! Check out my About/Contact page to get in touch.