Seven quick notes

  1. I’m moving to Pittsburgh by end of 2018 and will try very hard, to have all my files backed up in at least two places [hard copy] and ideally three [cloud backup]. That does, unfortunately, require some extra hard drives to be obtained, so any purchases you can make from my shops in the next 30 days would be super helpful in ensuring that 100% of my project data is safe. I do not have unlimited internet in Houston right now, so although I’ve got cloud backup the monthly caps on my internet, will mean only 60% of my data will be saved in the cloud, by the time I move. So if you wish to minimize risks of loss on some of my key offline project files, like the Panoramic Worlds or Isola stuff, or video projects I’m attempting to complete/revise, etc, buying something from me would be extremely useful in ensuring I don’t lose random segments of my work!

2. To that end, you’ve probably noticed that I have a new Pinterest account I’m shifting to, here, as well as a DeviantArt account, trying to promote and sell my eBay art stuff. And there’ll be a lot more eBay listings posted in a week or so. So just keep an eye on that.

3. House Trek revisions on eps. 6-8 are essentially done, save the ep. 7 intro clip which is rendering now, and some scattered editing on the House Trek DVD edition. You should expect a major update to content on HornbostelVideos.com in the next 2-4 weeks… one which even goes a bit beyond merely additional House Trek and vlog content to include several other classic videos. (By classic, I mostly mean old… though several of these are really surprisingly good regardless of how long ago they were originally recorded.)

4. I’m hoping for additional momentum to develop relating to Twitter / FB feeds – so if you’re curious about what I’m up to creatively, please feel free to follow me on my Facebook page or on Twitter.    One cool note is that I’m posting some scattered visual material there relating to the upcoming video content and other imminent releases so if you’re interested in what, exactly, I’ll be putting online this month… please follow my social-media feeds in addition to bookmarking this blog! For example:

House Trek episode 6 space battle still image
House Trek episode 6 space battle still image.

5. Comics are inbound soon too. Finally, Another Road Taken chapter 1, along with a bunch of additional Troop 4 material, will go online. That should happen soon, and it’s long overdue.

6. A big ad campaign will begin soon on no fewer than four different platforms, and it should result in a major influx of web traffic directed here, good quality web traffic, between July 12 and July 20, 2018. There’ll be a ton of people probably trying to bid on my eBay listings during that span but right now traffic’s in a lull and there’s one handmade-art listing in particular there that is still at a $1.09 opening bid with only a relatively little time left before the auction ends. So if you want to win a pretty personalized artwork at a minimal cost, you should consider bidding on that! Or the stock media DVD, $1.99, an auction which is ending in 48 hrs. So yeah, this is a good time for people following my work to place orders, before the mad rush of public attention kicks in… and, hopefully, results in enough sales that I can thoroughly overhaul & back up all my data.

7. My decal pack is being updated with normal maps and a few extra things, both for the stock media DVD buyers and for those who buy it on the Unity Asset Store. Yes, I’m planning to try submitting the decal pack there as an asset for game developers using the Unity 3D game engine. There’s also some cool stuff I’m doing with my ‘virtual museum’ – it’s never sold well as an item in the past, maybe due to privacy concerns and maybe due to lack of awareness/interest. But I’m going to release an updated and heavily redesigned version on https://matthornb.itch.io/ – my Itch.IO page before long, which will allow buyers there to load the museum and load their own images into the 3D gallery, then gift the saved modified gallery to a family member/friend on a special occasion. The plan is that the licenses will cost $1 / computer for the authoring system that lets you load your own images into the gallery. The link to download the viewer would, by contrast, be free. So a person can simply buy the authoring app, use it to create a custom gallery commemorating an event like a birthday, wedding, holiday, memorial, vacation, etc, and then save the file that results from this, and it can then be sent to a family member and opened with the viewer app. There are still bugs to solve on this but… I’m working on it and I still think it could turn out really well.

 

That’s the news I’ve got for now. Keep an eye out for some amazing things in the next month!

Windfall

I’ve been given a large batch of old art books by my grandparents; they’d been owned by my grandfather Daniel, and after he passed away they were handed down to me by his wife Sharlene.

I didn’t think much of it at the time but apparently these old 1960s publications – I Maestri del Colore – are fairly valuable.  Not extremely valuable, but there are a lot of them in my house [almost 90 issues] and they’re worth anywhere from $5 to $150 each.  Most are valued around $10-15, but some issues are worth more and some less.  So I’m selling them off on eBay right now in batches.  If you stumbled across this blog post by searching for I Maestre del Colore for your collection of antiquarian books or whatever, and are actually here actively looking for that Italian magazine, then by all means take a look at my eBay shop:

My eBay shop — also, if you are interested, please take a look at some of my other projects on my various websites, as they’re likely to benefit noticeably from the sale of these old art books.  I won’t be able to launch the stock footage I’d planned to, any time soon, but nonetheless my new video channel, new handmade art on Etsy, new comics/graphic novel content, and an update on my Spiral Skies game… all of those things are still on track for a release in mid April 2017.

Just to generate a bit of curiosity, maybe get you all a bit excited even, here’s a little .GIF pulled from one of my upcoming videos:

‘Storm 2’ animation, vfx shot

The unconventional work auction commences, and will run until midnight on the 23rd.

I’ve offered the winner of the auction I just posted, a chance to redirect five hours of my time on the morning of Friday, Feb. 24, 2017, to the project of their choice.

So this is a chance to ‘put your money where your mouth is’.

If you voted in the poll (see previous post) and you felt strongly about a particular project, you can get me to commit five hours of work to it this Friday for as little as $0.01.  (Seriously, the opening bid is actually a penny, for five hours of my time.)

You do not want to ignore this!

My morning of Friday, Feb. 24, 2017

Auction Image

My first five hours of personal work on Friday, February 24th, are on sale, and the winning bidder may choose what project I commit them to.

It has occurred to me that I not only have $7500 in funding to raise between all my unique projects, and that it'd take 3 1/2 years to fund them all at the current rate, but that I have an additional issue of time as a limited resource.

Think about your favorite highly anticipated project you've been waiting forever for me to finish.  The one that you probably ranked a '10' in my poll on Triumphant Artists.com.  You've seen that sit mostly on the backburner for months or years and want it done faster.  Now you can toss a few pennies in the ring as a bidder, and say, for example, for $0.01 (one freaking penny!) I could convince Matthew to put five more hours of work into the specific project I am actually excited about.

So you may have been waiting forever for 'Isola' to actually be done.  I hear you on that.  So you place a penny towards that.

But then, someone else wants to push for 'Vivid Minigolf', for example, and raises the bid to two cents.  And on and on it goes.  Some of you want me working heavily on other things altogether, maybe a particular video project, or what have you.  It could even turn into a small scale bidding war!

So the former scouts from Troop 4 who want me focused on the T4 comics and videos, might face off against the Missio Dei/Redeemer people who want me to resume work on the virtual tour of the old church which is now being sold off, and they in turn might face off against adventure gamers hoping for 'Panoramic Worlds' or a certain fangame, or fan-created world, versus some friends who want a movie like 'Eutopia' improved, and even they could get pitted against the family members who want '1999' done right NOW.

Heck, if the bidding goes above $4.95, or $0.99/hour, at that point I'll even open this up to a roster of tasks that are your project, not really at all mine* which might include:

-graphics elements for your web page

-a video vfx shot or two for your video project.

-photo editing of some pictures you want modified

-an online meetup, over an online voice/video chat, to discuss a topic that you want help with or are interested in.  (tutoring, interviews, whatever.)

-a 3D model for a game you're developing.

-general-purpose video editing and audio editing/clean up.

-editing passes on a written story/work/article offering proofreading and feedback.

-roughly a few seconds of cartoon animation or about a page of comic/graphic novel content based on your ideas.

and pretty much anything else creative work wise, that uses the 5 hours of time but does not use up physical materials [that] would cost me money.

IF THIS GENERATES ANY REASONABLE BURST OF BIDDING ACTIVITY, I WILL DO THIS AGAIN ONCE A WEEK.  If that occurs, it could amount to 20 hours sold a month, or 100 hours in the next five months, enough to make a major dent in even the biggest projects, assuming the same person keeps winning the auctions most of the time.

Note that you will be asked to - upon winning - pay the auction end amount using PayPal.

Starting at $0.01

Refresh Current Bid

  • Ending Date - 23rd Feb 2017 18:00:00
  • Ships to - nowhere - no shipping
  • Location - Houston, TX

Auction closed

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    PayPalAuction winner will get a PayPal payment link via email.