In Horoma's Head 03

The masterclass is now live!

Hi everyone,

Here we are, already at the end of March, ready for a new installement of In Horoma's Head newsletter

As usual, a short topic-centered email tackling stuff that happened to me this past month, whether regarding work or life in general. Hopefully some of these stories and links will pique your curiosity.

🐏🐏🐏

The world of building your own masterclass 👁🧠👁

The masterclass I've been working on for quite some time is now up for enrollment with a first cohort on the 24th and 25th of April : https://www.horoma.school

If you want to learn the ins and outs of composition applied to archviz and business environment, I can assure you this is the best class out there at the moment (I did (almost) all the paid ones available on the market until recently make sure my content was bringing something new). I can honestly say I'm starting to be really happy with the content, and will for sure have plenty of more detailed and in-depth stuff to add in the future. Luckily, any plan gives you lifetime access to all additional content in the future, so even if you buy it now, you're covered... forever.

I hope to see some of you in the next cohort. Also feel free to share the news around if you think some of your archviz pals could be interested in such a course!

The Youtube channel monthly report 🎵🔈🧠

This past month I've released 3 videos on the channel.

One was dedicated to explaining **why you need a proper folder structure** to work efficiently, giving some advice on how to build one (and including a small freebie with a photoshop action to build a quick but efficient folder structure).

The Horoma critique of the month was quite interesting because it dealt with a project I really didn't do a good job with. Revisiting it with more experienced eyes was really interesting and touched on several important topics I think are worth having in mind when working for a client. If time allows, I'll revisit the 3d model and do a set of images that I intend to send to the client. Could be a good way to spark some interest and potentially a new collaboration, who knows? But my first intent is actually to give them images they could proudly show on their website so that they can make the most out of this competition, because the project was good.

Last but not least, the video covering 5 common misconceptions archviz studios or freelancer have with their clients. Probably one of my favourite topics. This video is a condensed version of a longer article I wrote some months ago on cgarchitect and include common mistakes I did back when I started and that, once corrected, really helped my business relationship and overall mindset. I highly suggest you check it out if you haven't seen it already, or read the article some time ago.

Proper communication between clients and service provider is paramount. It will only happen once both sides aknowledge the misconceptions they often fall for, fix them, and work together towards a more collaborative approach to the practice of architectural visualization and its integration in the architecture or property developer world.

The world of reference building 📽🎬🎥

I know some people have a bad habit of not using references when working on any project. I spend a good deal of the masterclass explaining why you need references and how to use them. Building a proper repertoire of references is paramount to, paradoxically, build your own artistic style. So take this task seriously. Below are one software I found extremely powerful to manage references, and two platforms where I find daily inspirations for my own work. They are quite known, but maybe you don't know them yet, in which case I don't want you to miss out any longer

https://eagle.cool : I'll probably do a dedicated video on this software to show how I use it at some point this year, but it is quite straightforward and flexible.
https://beta.flim.ai : amazing platform with many stills from movies properly tagged, really helpful
https://artsandculture.google.com : and finally a nice archive of all the best paintings (famous or not) which helps in rediscovering in high res your favourite painters. My list won't be super original, but here are some painters that I particularly like : Canaletto, Lorrain, Monet, Constable and Caspar Friedrich.

The world of coffee ☕☕☕

Just recently discovered more in depth all the ways of making coffees and fell in love with this design principle called the vacuum pot method. This kind of alembic-like look really stuck to me and gave me some ideas of 3D scenes I'll try to model and experiment with in the future.

I mean, how cool is that?! https://www.stumptowncoffee.com/brew-guides/vacuum-pot

Inspiration can really come from anywhere!

The world of podcasts 🎤🎙🎧

Last time I told you about the podcast Wrong F-ing Question. Seems like there are no new episodes unfortunately, but I invite you to check the one called "why clients ruin my images" (can listen to it here : https://open.spotify.com/episode/4JNxVe71oJ56mZEScf6rRI?si=x_zSlsXuSOGFM_0fqGvVQw)..) It tackles one of the most common "issue" archviz artists tend to encounter with their clients and gives some interesting thoughts on it.

Having seen this complaint in many forums it is on my list of youtube videos I need to make because I think it touches on a deeper issue that archviz artists don't seem to aknowledge properly

The world of not having time but trying to 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️

I wrote in one of the newsletter that I wanted to switch to Affinity Photo. This is still a work in progress, but one thing that I've been doing to sort of ease the conversion is to get back to my drawing tablet and take 30 minutes to redraw a simple image every other morning.

The result is of course terrible for now, but I'm hoping to keep this practice steady (3 to 4 mornings a week) and hopefully see some progress at the end of the year.

You can see some attempts I've done in the past days above.

The world of art conservation 🖼🎨🎭

One more youtube channel that I've found highly educating lately and that I wanted to share here is the one of Baumgartner Fine Art Restoration : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ

Dealing with art restoration, it is super diverse and in-depth, while highly entertaining. Perfect when having your lunch break 😃.
Hope you'll find it interesting.

The world of AI aesthetics 🎓💻🖱

Jeff Mottle released a fascinating article on how he tested his AI against his own jury for the last competition organized by cgarchitect : https://www.cgarchitect.com/features/articles/1f7bd95d-cgarchitect-uses-an-ai-judge-to-evaluate-the-3d-awards

Drawing from the findings of neuroesthetics, this AI managed to quite accurately see if an image was good or not in most cases, based off of, well, "objective" criteria stemming from neuroesthetics findings.

While the article itself was short in terms of details (after all it's a proprietary AI), it is endless in terms of possibilities and questioning (at least for me). So I've started doing what I usually like doing : gathering all the research papers on the subject and put them in a nice pile of "to read stuff". I don't have time now, but in May I'll definitely go back to it and hope to implement some principles back into the masterclass because I'm 99% sure there's a nice overlap.

The world of freelancing and anxiety 💶💼⏰

I'm already being quite open and honest on my youtube channel, but I'm taking another opportunity here to talk a little bit about the freedom and nightmare that freelancing is.

Since January I've had a single contract from a client. Meaning, I had around 5 days of paid work in about 90 days 😮 . This could seem a bit daunting, and interestingly it wasn't (that much) because after years of experience I've started to be more prepared psychologically for ups and downs that usually come in this industry (especially when you rely 100% on organic growth and zero active marketing like I do).

Also, I had this masterclass big project thingy sucking up all my time, so after all I was actually glad not to have too many clients calling me.

Two main reasons why this felt ok that I want to share with you, in order to reassure you if it ever happens to you, and also to help you prepare if it ever happens in the future :

- As mentioned earlier, work is rarely steady. Ups and downs are normal. Just do your best to keep yourself busy when you're in a down period. Either take time to do personal stuff, or do some marketing and refine your portfolio. But don't be too anxious about it.
- Build a proper safety cushion. One of the main reason that makes us anxious when we don't get work, generally, is that we don't get the money that comes with it. The best way to not get too stressed about it, is "simply" to build a proper safety cushion in the first place. It might be a bit harder for bigger studio, but for freelancer it is actually quite easy to build up proper savings. I personally can still run my business and live normally for more than a year without earning a single euro.
If you tend to live paycheck to paycheck, try to see where you can save money and where you can maybe charge a bit more for your work. Even saving a few hundred euros here and there will later down the road give you several months of peace of mind if downtime ever lasts longer than expected.
Pretty famous book on the topic but that is still worth reading when it comes to personal finances is The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. A simple read with actionable tips. Maybe not the most up to date, but the principles still apply.

After those 3 months of nearly nothing, I now have 6 competitions due for April, and a couple more for May. So yep, there are always nice ups after long downs. This will be a nice sprint.

I'll do a proper video on this topic I guess, even if there are probably enough content out there already, but it can't hurt to tackle this subject and center it more around the peculiarities of the archviz market.

That will be all for the moment. Hope this little overview of In Horoma's Head gave you some interesting pieces to think about.

If you find this utterly boring and useless, please let me know before unsubscribing 🎀. If on the other hand you do like it, then I'm glad, and feel free to share it with your archviz pals that would maybe like it too by sending them here : https://www.horoma.net/newsletter-subscription

Thank you

All the best for the upcoming month!

Cheers

Simon