The right tools for the job!

As a beginner wishing to begin developing fabulous art to be displayed on the web, the only place to start is getting the right tools for the job. So, what are the right tools. For this article I'm going to suggest that a beginner has little to no budget to start. You might ask can anyone really develop professional quality modern web art with no money and the fact is absolutely! Allow me to share some great Free Open Source Software with you.

You may already have heard of Free Open Source Software, commonly referred to as FOSS, but have you tried any? Do you know that free software can be as high quality as you may need especially for a beginner. This means that you can do all of the fancy web art and more that you've wanted to do but without the high costs of the expensive proprietary software you've heard so much about.

So then, why is it free if it's so good? Because of the licences that require it to be free and stay that way. You may not know that there are computer programmers that like to write programs and want you to be able to use them without restrictions, so they will release them under many licenses that are designed to protect your privilege to do just that. I'm sure we have all downloaded an icon editor or ".gif" animator only to discover that although we are permitted to use the "free" program we actually have no rights and are reminded of the fact by the lengthy legal agreement we are forced to accept before using. I'm not going to tell you about any of those applications, you should have no trouble finding that HDD clutter on your own. In fact it is my intention to only list here for you the tools that I use, that are both "free" and safe to install on your computer.

By now you are likely wondering when I'm going to get on with it, right? Alright here it is, my list of free software that you are encouraged and legally entitled to copy, reinstall, modify and redistribute for yourself and your friends.

1. GIMP - GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Simply put GIMP is a photo editor similar in features to Photoshop.
2. Inkscape - Vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
3. Wings3D - Now with the next major browser releases will come WebGL for 3D artists. X3DOM already works beautifully in Firefox & Google Chrome.

I know it's a short list but for a beginner the last thing you need is to be overwhelmed with the long list. If you download and install these programs I assure you that you will have the right tools for the job of developing modern web art and it will cost you nothing but the time it takes to set them up on your computer.

You will find virtually endless tutorials and other resources to help you learn to use these fantastic applications.