(none by me)
Blender resources:
-tutorial sites
http://www.blendercookie.com – (recently renamed to cgcookie.com) Oodles of good tutorials ranging from beginner to advanced. David Ward’s are my personal favorites, though Jonathan Williamson’s aren’t bad either. My “goto” site for tutorials.
http://www.blendtuts.com – Best overall intro to the blender interface I’ve seen. I’m not sure what sort of accent Oliver has, but it isn’t too difficult once you get used to it.
http://www.blenderguru.com
http://www.blendernerd.com – These are both by Aussies, FWIW. Good tutorials for specific topics.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ward7299 – David Ward’s Youtube channel – his Johnny Blender 2 and 3 series are pretty great stuff – complete projects from beginning to end without assuming _too_ much knowledge on the part of the viewer. Each series totals in the neighborhood of 10 hours all told.
wiki.blender.org – the most “official” documentation that exists. caveat: Not all docs have been converted to cover the 2.5 interface. 2.4 methodology is _mostly_ the same, but not always, and the interface layout differences can be confounding at times. (and many hotkey sequences aren’t the same)
It’s a vital resource, but more of a reference than a tutorial site, though there _are_ some tutorials there.
oh yeah, there is a decent blender 2.5 hotkey cheatsheet at http://www.blenderguru.com/blender-2-5-cheat-sheet
http://www.blenderartists.org – biggest blender-community I know of. Good place to search around on. Plus: lots of inspiring/humbling stuff in the artwork galleries.
-texture sites
http://www.cgtextures.com – this is my “goto” site when I need to find a texture for something. Some are really great, some are less so. The site wants you to register in order to download the hi-res versions. They’ve never spammed me, FWIW, and the preview-versions are useable for most purposes anyway, so right-click/save-image is our friend :^) .
-materials sites
http://matrep.parastudios.de/ – this is the Open Material Repository. Not something I use often, but it’s handy when looking for something sort of specific and can’t get the settings right yourself. Materials download as .blend files. “File/Append” into your own file and enjoy.
-reference images (gimp is _totally_ your friend for prepping [aligning, scaling, etc] references before using in blender)
http://www.the-blueprints.com – not bad, not great, but useful. Sorta heavy on cars.
http://www.3dreference.org – useful sometimes
-model sites
There are very many free model sites out there. When I’m looking for something I usually start with google ex:(helicopter model free 3d) and see where it takes me.
various formats:
http://artist-3d.com/free_3d_models/
http://archive3d.net/
http://thefree3dmodels.com/
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ – I don’t generally care for the models here, but they _do_ have a lot. Sketchup native format is not useful to blender, but (most?) can be downloaded in a blender-importable format.
blender format only:
http://www.blendswap.com/ – Everything is already in blender format, and has many pre-rigged characters. Some really nice stuff that’s ready to use.
other programs:
Gimp, of course
Makehuman http://makehuman.blogspot.com/ – really great program, but it is currently in alpha and _very_ fluid. May require some tweaking for Blender-native export to work right.
other:
How to Rig a Spider Leg in Blender 2.5
Powerclam 