Matthew L. Hornbostel
@matthew_hornbostel

I'm an artist with high functioning autism, OCD, clinical depression. I am 34 years old now, have a degree from the University of Houston (Media Production, minor in Studio Art) and attained the rank of Eagle Scout at age 17.

I am working 12-14 hours daily but am nonetheless officially unemployed. Much of what I'm doing is paying below a dollar per hour. Some is paying nothing, but might pay off if finished and could turn my life around significantly.

That would include indie game projects such as 'Miniature Multiverse' on www.miniaturemultiverse.com and stock media packages on https:/matthornb.itch.io/

I also have some 100% freeware projects and content headed for release in spots such as triumphantartists.com, and crowdsourcedadventure.com [among other spots] but I cannot and will not claim that everything I do is non-commercial.

That said, if I could somehow, across disparate sources, put together a steady income of, say, $3000 annually, that would be amazing and would substantially accelerate a lot of things I'm working on, and many of them would be freeware. Those that aren't, would be very reasonably priced.

Right now I'm largely dependent on disability checks covering my medications, plus my parents who provide me with room in their home to this day. I would like to be able to build up some sort of success somewhere so that I can become less of a burden on them and instead contribute more.

I have attempted to gain normal minimum-wage jobs but never has that worked out - maybe it's the fact that I'mmentally ill and that that info's publicly accessible, or maybe it's the lack of a conventional job track record. HAving 380+ positive ratings on eBay making personalized art, selling items on Etsy, doing hours of tedious low-wage microtasks on mTurk... $2/hr transcription tasks through WorkMarket, these are not good resume material. They're red flags to normal employers. They're only appealing to people who wish to exploit me for short-term one-off freelance gigs that pay me around a dollar per hour. But even those, there aren't enough of them to reach my baseline earnings targets.

I can complain all day about how nothing's worked out but that's not going to be constructive at all. What I can tell you is that I've got over a hundred 3d assets, textured, in .OBJ and .FBX formats, over 150 compositable video stock elements of fire, smoke, water splashes, debris bursts, etc - plus over 150 overlay stills and seamless texture image files... on itch.IO, plus indie game stuff being posted soon, and it's worth about $15 normally but if you pledge any amount here ($1 or more) monthly you will be sent free download links to all of that, plus you'll be credited in every game project I release in the timeframe you're a supporter here, plus you'll be granted access to an exclusive backers-only area online, an encrypted, password-protected section of the web where you can issue requests and suggestions for things you want to see in projects like 'crowdsourced adventure' and also, for every $5 in support I'll create a free 3d asset along the lines of the existing Itch.IO paid collection assets, and add it to a completely free downloadable collection accessible to the entire world. If a lot of you jump in and secure a sort of income for me I may even begin to take some of my commercial content packages and projects and make them 100% freeware. Something substantial would go from commercial to free for every $25/month being raised here. And if I surpass $3000/year on this platform somehow, by some miracle?

Well, let's just say that my rate of creative development should at least double. A ton of the projects that have been slow-moving will speed up dramatically simply due to the act that I'd be able to step away from the mTurk and other microtasks, and focus on creative productions full time. That'd be pretty awesome, I think. And I hope you'll realize why too once you visit a few of the links I've posted above.