Tobey Lindback is a visual effects supervisor at Carbon, a creative studio with offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. “We have a great collaborative environment across all three offices,” he says of the company. “I am personally involved in many more aspects of jobs that I’ve ever been before. New ideas are welcome, there’s a creative freedom here that we all love.”

Let’s find out more from this New York-based, self-taught artist…

Talk about what a VFX supervisor does.
In short, and I’m speaking from an advertising point of view, as a VFX supervisor you are working closely with agencies and directors, together with your producers/executive producers to plan and bid jobs to fit a vision, schedule and budget.

Part of the job is also to attend shoots to ensure that what has been previously agreed upon technically and creatively gets shot in the correct way. This allows for post to run as smoothly as possible and according to schedule.

Overseeing multiple projects and working closely with artists is part of the day to day. Being able to quickly adapt to creative changes, which of course happen fairly often, is a skillset you should hone to perfection.

Georgia Lottery

Depending on where you work and if it’s in film, TV or advertising, you may or may not be on the box a lot. I personally love making beautiful shots, and that’s something I wouldn’t want to be without. I’m lucky to be able to work as a VFX supervisor here at Carbon where I can collaborate in a creative environment with great artists, and at the same time be a big part in the communication between agencies and directors to ensure their vision can be realized in the best way possible.

What would surprise people the most about what falls under that title?
I don’t think the tasks of a VFX supervisor are surprising to people within the industry itself, but in general I think there’s a lot more to it than what can be described in a few sentences.

You truly need years of experience of having been in the trenches. There’s a lot of trial and error along the way, and you need to have the ability to adapt to situations especially on set and in post production. In my opinion, you should have a great understanding of all aspects of the pipeline, from concept to finished product, and a superb creative eye.

Having a sixth sense of what can possibly go wrong is a good thing, meaning having the ability to account for things that could derail the job and keep that in your back pocket for when/if this happens.

How long have you been working in VFX, and in what kind of roles?
I’m going on 20+ years now professionally. I started in the ‘90s learning all things 3D. Since graduating high school, I’ve worked nonstop doing computer graphics related things. I say “things,” because I’ve done everything from logos to web design, back in the early 2000s, to full CG animations for larger clients such as Ericsson. I was a curious generalist, with strong emphasis on CGI.

Verizon

I later felt I wanted to be more responsible for the final output on jobs, or at least be able to control it a lot more. I went from being a 3D artist mostly focused on lighting to basically doing compositing full time. Over the course of my career, I’ve worked in Sweden, the UK, and the US, where I currently reside.

How has the VFX industry changed in the time you’ve been working?
First and foremost is technology. For example, we’ve gone from having to light your shots by hand to being able to light the scene using HDR. This is not a bad thing at all, it’s great, and it’s something that has helped us move to a much more photorealistic end result much faster. I rendered absolute crap renders on my laptop 20 some years ago, and I didn’t even know what a renderfarm was then, so knowing that your output looked stellar (hrrrm) was absolutely crucial since the machine would crunch away for two days without you being able to even touch it. If you accidentally left an object hidden or vice versa, you had to cry a bit and render it all again.

That aside, there is so much that’s better these days, real-time renders in Unreal Engine that look incredible, plugins that do things you couldn’t even dream of decades ago, techniques, tools, people’s knowledge in general, it’s all so much better overall.

Do I feel we have less time to make the work look as good as it could? Yes. Deadlines have gotten tighter — obviously partly due to tech moving forward exponentially both in regard to hardware and software, but also because the market has changed a lot in the last two decades. It’s just how it is these days though, love it or hate it. We all adapt, but one thing I never want to do is settle for less in terms of final output.

OFFF Festival

How were you, and your work, affected by COVID?
Personally, I moved to Carbon from MPC during the pandemic. At first it was a bit strange to get to know people only through video sessions, but over time this became second nature. I never felt we had different offices, ranging from West Coast to East Coast, we were all just there. I had a difficult time knowing who lived where at first, because there was never really any reason to know. We were all available through all these chats, and this collaboration I’m speaking of makes my world both smaller and larger at the same time.

We often collaborate with artists across the globe, which has widened the accessible talent pool a lot. That said, right now I don’t feel there’s a big difference in the day-to-day from how it used to be. In the beginning of COVID, it was eerie and quiet and just strange. But things started getting back on track fairly quickly, in my opinion, and I’ve been on-set during the pandemic multiple times. Actually, the biggest change as a VFX supervisor is being on-set. We still have strict guidelines to follow in regard to getting tested, maximum capacity while shooting in tight places, and the fact that nobody drives me around when I go to shoots anymore. I always have to get a rental. (Laughs)

Verizon

But as for working on projects, yes sometimes it’s better to be in the same room; you can interact quicker, and aside from that there’s the social aspect of working from home. People have the option of going in, and we do so from time to time. It’s nice to go to an office, and I think there’s a nice balance of going in and staying home and working from there.

Why do you like being on-set for shots? What are the benefits?
Attending shoots to me is crucial. It benefits everyone involved to set us up well for what happens after the shoot. Apart from that, going on-set has several upsides. You get a more personal connection with people from the agencies and the DPs and directors you’re working with, and hopefully you all work again, and again and again. You get a much better understanding of the job as a whole, even though you’ve been in many meetings, you still learn something about yourself during a shoot.

Apart from overseeing the VFX part of the shoot, you get to travel, you have dinners with the crew, and you bond. You also work crazy long hours in dark basements or hot deserts. I want to be a part of that because I like to know the people I’m working with.

Did a particular film inspire you along this path?
No, not really. For me, my inspiration was the Amiga 500 days, back in the early ‘90s. I was super into the old-school (it wasn’t old-school then, I guess,) graphics that were pixelated back then. One day I saw a render of a little mannequin holding a wine glass on his shoulder, and it was a review of a program called “Real 3D” on the Amiga. I never actually got my hands on a copy of it, but it was the first time I ever saw wireframes of a CG object, and it sparked my curiosity and I started exploring this field. I didn’t know what I would end up doing in the field, I just knew there and then that I would work with this, in whatever capacity.

Oscar Meyer

Did you go to film school?
No, I’m self-taught and, yes maybe I’ve learned some things the hard way, but I honestly think that has taught me a lot more.

What’s your favorite part of the job?
Flipping between the earliest version of a shot to the latest version. The difference it makes to keep pushing. My personal view on anything is you should totally forget your first three versions of a shot because they will suck looking back, but it’s the only way to move forward. There’s a certain feeling and relief knowing that a complex shot has come together looking really nice, especially after talking it through with agency and director.

If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
I’ve always joked about building boats. It’s not something I’d ever do, but I always use it as an example because somehow it seems the polar opposite of what I’m currently doing. I actually don’t know what I would be doing for money, but if money wasn’t an issue, I would make electronic music for fun and help out animals in need.

Can you name some recent work?
We did some great work for Samsung a while back, with director Henry Hobson, and we won some awards for the title design for the OFFF festival, directed by our very own Ian Bradley. Our ECD Liam Chapple has directed some really nice work as well for American Express, EA Sports, Verizon and others. We all put in great energy and love to make that work as cool as it could be.

Oscar Meyer

Oscar Mayer’s Keep It Oscar campaign and GoPuff’s Poof There It Is are more favorites.

What tools do you use day to day?
On a professional level, it’s Foundry Nuke for compositing, and Nuke Studio for running timelines. That is mostly it, but nobody is stopping me from running shots through DaVinci Resolve or using After Effects to do anything that can help the job. It’s optional of course; we have artists that do it much better, but if you’re like me and love all things creative, you could.

On a personal level I love doing stuff in Blender and various other tools such as World Creator, Gaea and EmberGen. I’m also trying to keep up with Unreal Engine, and there’s a lot there to learn.

Where do you find inspiration?
I find a lot of inspiration in other work done in the advertising industry because I also know what limitations they have since we are in the same boat. But mostly, I get inspiration from scrolling through Instagram posts related to what I do on a daily basis. There is so much work out there done by so many incredible artists.

What do you do to de-stress from it all?
I make electronic music and play in a band. I go out for food and drinks, and I watch TV shows and movies. I make my own little side projects for fun in 3D, and I love spending time with my wife and cuddling with the best kitty in the world, Myra.