Sometimes texture images do not load properly when opening other people's Blender projects. You'll need to create your own, review this lesson on image textures and you'll be on your way! https://cgcookie.com/lesson/creating-an-image-texture/
Kent Trammell
replied
Whoops I forgot to pack the checker file in the start version of that .blend. I've updated the "Project Source Files" download to fix it.
