Here is a good source by Antonio Campos of how to UV Map in blender, it even uses the GIMP, rather than photoshop. Also contains how to reduce polys in Blender.
http://otothecleaner.free.fr/tutoria...t1/gimpit.html
and here is a pretty good tut on animation in Blender. It has all the modern stuff in it.
http://otothecleaner.free.fr/tutorials/Flor/flor.html
The site of 'Otto the Cleaner' has some other good modelling and animation tuts. the others tend to be kinda out of date now.