In Horoma's Head 04
Hi everyone,
Very intense month (for me at least), so glad to be at the end of it now. Let's have a quick look at some topics for this new installment of In Horoma's Head newsletter.
🐏🐏🐏
The Youtube channel monthly report 🎵🔈🧠
This past month I've released some videos on the channel.
First one was a bit messy, but was mainly discussing reasons why we shouldn't compare our work to what we simply see on social media too much. Even for those who get motivation by looking at cool stuff online, I still think it's better to get your drive from within and purchase your own goals and build your own style rather than rely too much on external factors. The full stance on the topic is available here.
I also did a Horoma Critique for my very first commissioned work. Plenty of things to learn from there even though the set of images is pretty bad. And it kind of ties back to the video above on how you can learn a lot just from your own work.
Last video I posted was a little workflow/project management with all the steps I personally go through at the end of a project. I'd suggest you check it out and double check that you do go through similar steps otherwise you'd be missing out. One comment raised one point I completely forgot : get an excel sheet and put down all the work you're doing. I personally have one with the number of contracts, number of images, and money I'm making for each month. That way I can keep track of how I'm doing compared with last year. And it also helps in reassuring you if for instance you're not making that much money for a couple of months and you see on your excel sheet that you can still compensate it if the rest of the year goes as previous years.
The world of avoiding burn out, keeping clients & making less money 🏃♂️🏃♂️😩💶💶💶
This past month has been extremely intense. Over the past 4 weeks I've been juggling between 6 contracts, crafting over 20 images, finalizing the masterclass, doing the live presentation over the weekend, taking a two day break in a city nearby (hello sunburns!) and some other stuff here and there.
Enter a very prestigious client that contacted me some month ago for potential collaboration in the future. Meeting went extremely well and we were both looking forward to an opportunity to work together in the future. The opportunity came this month on top of my schedule that was already busy with a deadline that was the same as another big project, and I always already quite exhausted from the intense past 4 weeks.
At first I said yes and said I'd take the job. I was psyched by the brief, psyched by the client, and it would have been an additional 10k on my bank account by the end of the month, which is definitely a nice plus when you almost made 0 over the first 3 months of the year and you kind of need to compensate.
And yet something felt wrong, and in the end I had to call the client and not take the commission.
Several reasons why, and I hope this will ring a bell to you if you ever find yourself in a similar position in the future.
1. I'm 100% sure I wouldn't have delivered my best work.
2. The other deadline I had was with an old client I've been working with for a long time and was really looking forward to working with them on a promising project. I didn't want to deliver them images that were not good because I was overworked. And also they contacted me months ago about that competition, so it would have been a dick move to not be properly available for their project. (We're talking producing about 10 images in 8 days... something that for some reason sounded reasonable in my head at the beginning)
3. It would have been the first time I'd work with this big client, and if I didn't deliver my best work, it would most probably have been the last.
4. You paradoxically look more professional and thoughtful when you tell a client you can't afford to take their project because you won't be able to find the time it deserves in your schedule, and would rather have another studio working on this project.
5. Money is fun, but it's better to make money regularly with a new client that trusts you, than only once with a client that is not happy and will never contact you again.
6. Considering 100% of my marketing for my services is based on organic growth, all my future clients depend on me being 100% respectful to my current clients so that they become referals for me.
So yep, tiny story that I hope can give you some clarity on how to manage your workload in the event that something similar happen to you. Of course if you feel like you can take on all the work and deliver properly, go ahead 😉 But always double check you're not just over confident. There's so much competition out there, clients won't forgive you this kind of unprofessional behavior.
The masterclass is now live!
Composition from the ground up, cohort #1 👁🧠👁
While I have high expectations for this course on the long term, I had very small expectations for the very short term. Seeing that all the seats got sold out on the first cohort was therefore a very unexpected positive news. It's only 10 seats, but it's a premium course, so it still means something!
I haven't received all the feedback yet, but so far attendees were happy and did learn a lot, so I'm very happy about that. Still plenty of finetuning to do on the live and prerecorded parts, and some one-on-one portfolio critique to do. Overall I can sense the direction I'm taking makes sense to people, and this is what matters for me. As some marketer would say, it seems like I have a MVP.
Competition is quite fierce in the field of training, but I still find my approach original and necessary, so I'll keep pushing it for the people who have a similar mindset as mine so that they can fasttrack their development as archviz artists and business owners.
Interestingly, this course is also a big step in my own self-development, even more so than I expected. I won't go too deep in this already long email, but I could clearly see many improvements in my own work on the many visuals I crafted this month and this I can entirely tie it to the content of the course and the clarity it gave me about my own workflow and philosophy of work.
Cohort #2 will most probably take place in June, if you're interested 😉 I'll update the landing page soon.
The world video games and atmosphere references 🎮🕹👧
Back in the days I used to play a lot of video games and probably got part of my interest in graphic, architectural and environment design from that area (Baldur's Gate 🥰).
One weird thing that I tend to do now is to just watch playthrough while working. And as graphics are getting better and better, environement designer now have a lot more leeway to convey their ideas, which ends up in amazing imagery... that we can use in archviz as well.
So here is a video of Red Dead Redemption that does a good job at depicting light and seasons, in order to potentially give you some nice atmosphere scenarios idea for a potential job.
Used to love video game but didn't have time much (recently finished GTA V though ... )
The world of video games that don't care about great graphics ⏰⏰⏰
My brother sent me this very cool and addictive game called Evolve. So if you want to waste time, give it a go : https://pmotschmann.github.io/Evolve/
The world of music and iconic steel architecture 👩💼👨💼🗼
Whether you like this type of music or not, I'm sure you'll love seeing such original point of views of the inside of the Gand Palais in Paris. I had the pleasure of visiting it several times for different types of exhibitions, and it is such a grandiose place I can only invite you to go there if you one day get the opportunity to. Here is the link to a concert by a French pop band in this amazing location : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sELxgrgaQUk
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