Houston, Texas residents take note!

LOCAL SERVICES & EVENTS RELATED TO MY ART/VIDEO WORK:

If you’re in the Houston area, especially somewhere near the Eastwood neighborhood or University of Houston, the downtown area, etc…

SPECIAL LOCAL EVENT VIDEOGRAPHY

Well, I’m going to begin offering local services like videography [low-cost event videography for weddings and other special events] fairly soon.  My fees are around minimum wage and in practice more like $4.80/hour when measured accurately, so really super affordable compared to many other services, and I offer multicamera coverage of events so if one camera has a problem, for any reason, none of the events that are taking place are lost.  Price is $7.50/event hour plus an extra $4 per DVD or Blu Ray delivered the week afterward, and these are DVDs/Blu Rays with disc art, cover art, and a few basic nice features like that.  But while I will do this work for cheap, I won’t do it for nothing, or as has often been requested, for a loss.  (Incidentally – I’ve still got ten batches of video from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer closing ceremony lingering on my desktop PC – I recorded all that for free – but I won’t deliver it on discs unless somebody actually covers the cost of that!  That stuff is *still* just sitting in a folder on my hard drive years after the fact all due to the church members’ unwillingness to pay $4/disc for it!  Kind of a dumb stalemate there, and doubly dumb given that for another $150 I’d be willing to make a realtime 3D tour of the entire church building as it was a decade ago, in Unity 5, and include that on the discs.  1/3 of the building is already sculpted in 3D, but that too is stalled because nobody will cover the cost of completing it [even though I have 14-mp photos of pretty much every surface of the structure inside & out, hundreds of them, and the skills/tools to generate a full realistic 3D version of the structure that players can walk around in on Windows and Mac.)  The worst part is that many of the church members are senile tech-illiterate dodos who probably will never even realize this blog exists or what they could have had very cheaply.  Sorry, but I refuse to coddle you anymore or continue absorbing losses doing things as an unpaid volunteer for you all.

(I don’t believe in your ancient myths any more either and I’m agnostic, nearly atheist in practice and generally no longer willing to quietly accept idiocy and irrational wishful thinking that defies logic.)

 

LOCAL SCOUTING PROGRAM AND VIDEO SCREENINGS THERE:

Boy Scout Troop 4 meets at the Church of the Redeemer Lutheran and I’m still somewhat involved in the group as a sort of leader / Assistant Scoutmaster despite having turned 18 well over a decade ago.  This group is awesome with some great but aging leaders and a fascinatingly funny legacy dating back a century, which includes great events, parties, camping and hiking, road trips, video productions, even a flight to Hawaii for a week once in 2005! – but if there aren’t a few new scouts inbound (plus a parent or two volunteering) the group is likely to continue to deteriorate and will disband entirely at the end of 2017.  That’d be a shame but not a surprise.  The BSA – a largely bloated, inefficient and corrupt non-profit institution and not really adhering to its founding ethical principles anyway –  is not adapting adequately to changing demographics; when over 2/3 of young Americans [under 30] are non-religious* and the organization actively bars non-believers from being involved even if they’re idealists who truly are trying to be good to others [just without faith in a God] then it’s no surprise that the organization is going downhill and generally screwed in the long run.  Their efforts at inclusivity have been slow, confusing and mismanaged [the multi-stage acceptance of non-heterosexual scouts] and they’ve hit a bad stage where they are adopting policies which alienate both the conservative religious groups and the emerging secular culture.  It seems like they don’t know what the hell they’re doing.  The fragmented culture of America, to be fair, has become something of a minefield for this sort of organization and controversy is seemingly found everywhere.

So if the troop is headed for dissolution, at least it’ll have a legacy living on through the troop’s website, the comic books, videos and even the little T4 adventure game in development.  Some time this summer I want to set up a big HD projection/sound system and play all the T4 movies, remastered, for the group, both current and past scouts, complete with drinks & popcorn.  It’d be a great chance to see why the troop is amazing – a big party and local boys ages 10-17 and their parents are encouraged to drop in and watch when that takes place.  (TBD)

 

ART MARKET and VIDEO PRODUCTION GROUP:

Vineyard Church of Houston, had an Art Market last Christmas and likely that’ll be an annual event so keep that in mind for the end of the year, as I’ll almost surely have a booth there again at the end of 2017, and also there’s a Video Production / Movie Makers group there probably September-November 2017 (if pastor Michael Palandro approves it, which he might, given my Dad’s consistent and steadfast supportive position in the church and my undeniable credibility as far as relevant skills are concerned, or he might not, given some of my openness about not believing in God.)

WALL ART, MURALS, ART TUTORING, ART WORKSHOPS, 3D PREVIZ, all made affordable:

You can commission artworks – handmade wall art, murals, and similar – from me (again, quite affordably and a bit under minimum wage) locally as well.  I can also teach art and video skills locally, and I’m able to create virtul tours/previs cheaply for anyone needing to show a potential client what a redesigned or ccompletely new property or location could someday look like.

Try emailing me via matthornb@gmail.com if you need an actual creative job done in the Houston area and maybe we can work something out.  Please though, no more emails from scammers.  I’m tired of evil, pathetic brain-dead criminal morons trying to con me and failing miserably at it.  Don’t even try.  It’s a waste of my time and yours.

Launching new items on Etsy & ArtFire this week

If you’re at all interested, over the next week I am about to start posting a batch of new listings on Etsy and ArtFire.  Just FYI, there have been a number of people with bad experiences selling & buying on these platforms, so if something goes wrong and, for example, one of these shops runs into a glitch or the shop suddenly shuts down for no good reason, just know it’s the platform’s decision and their screw-up, not mine.  I’ll do my best to handle my shops here with integrity but realistically there are some things I cannot control, like the other sellers [who may cheat you in some cases, or sell shoddy knock-off items that are mass produced in China and not really artful or ‘handmade’] and the decisions of the venue owners.  So be careful to buy carefully from vendors within these markets who you know have some sort of good track record – either positive ratings right there or elsewhere.   In my case?  I do not yet have a clear track record on these shops but I DO HAVE A SOLID 170+ RATINGS ON eBay.  And they’re all positive, 100% of them.

You should expect similar outcomes on my other shops, great items, inexpensively priced, with good customer service.  And if I do somehow screw up, and overlook something, I’ll do what I can to rectify the mistake.  This – delays in shipping or other screw-ups – can happen once in a while due not to malicious intent but simply because I am busy with many customers and things occasionally fall through the cracks.

I have actually been rated negatively on eBay a handful of times but in each case I managed to resolve the complaints involved.  I ended up refunding the sale amount, apologizing profusely for the late/damaged item which had trouble in the shipping process… or in one case an item was not quite what the customer was looking for visually.  All of these were issues I did try my best to resolve and on these rare occasions, the customers ended up retracting their negative ratings of my shop, usually replacing them with positive ones.   The same willingness to exceed customer expectations, and resolve problems even if it means I lose money on the sale, will apply on every shop I run, whether it’s Etsy or ArtFire or eBay or my own shop here on this website.

Triumphant Artists eBay shop

HornbostelProductions.com Shop

Triumphant Artists Etsy Shop

Triumphant Artists ArtFire Shop

I am also aiming to post new stuff on my own shop the week after that. This should include some really cool things that I’ve put a ton of work into.  Watch for that.  Oh – and by the way – there are a couple of amazing eBay auction this week too and they end in a couple of days.

They’re for custom made to order art and the opening bids are under $3 on both listings.  You might want to jump in on that!

UPDATE: eBay auctions relisted and the first of the new art items has been posted on Etsy.

Fantasy beach landscape with colored pebbles
Fantasy beach landscape/seascape with colored pebbles.

Vineyard Church of Houston, video production group

On a lighter, campier note:

Vineyard Houston Texas video production group

There’s a video production leisure group tentatively planned for May-July 2017.

It’s led by my dad and I, we’re meeting at the Vineyard Church of Houston, in Texas, right after the second Sunday church service.

Many of you know I’m not a fan of faith in general, as religions generally seem to lack any clear basis in reality and, in my view don’t have any valid claim to moral superiority when compared to genuinely humanist forms of secular reason, but I’m doing this because it seems like fun, church setting or no.

I like the people who I expect will attend this group, and still want to maintain and improve those connections.  My dad (Scott) will be there and so will I… Salvador is likely to attend sometimes.  And a few other friends and church members.

We’ll discuss how to make video productions from concept to completion, from pre-production to post, from vague idea to final edit.

Should be fun.

 

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.