Woodblock Announces Tobias Stärk as Head of XR & Realtime
German creative studio Woodblock recently announced the addition of Tobias Stärk to spearhead their XR & Realtime Department.
As an early adopter of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, Tobias knows about the scope and possibilities of immersive storytelling. “We live in a three dimensional world, yet we are still designing most, if not all, content to be consumed on a flat medium such as a TV or a mobile phone”, Tobias explained. “While the immediate future is unlikely to contain lots of people casually going about their day while wearing VR headsets, there remains a curiosity to bring this reality closer. From all the projects that are coming our way now, I can’t wait to explore this topic further as well as the elephant in the room: the much talked about metaverse.” It’s certainly an expanding playground, where the rules continue to be written and unwritten.
Woodblock CEO, Ilija Brunck on the newest member of our team — “Tobi is a true innovator and natural leader, so we have always dreamed of bringing him on board to head our ambitions in the interactive and XR realm. He is highly respected in the industry and within our team for his depth of knowledge and for being a blast to work with.” Having worked as a VFX and compositing artist on commercials, episodics and feature films for many years, Tobias Stärk was drawn in by the growing potential of interactive and immersive storytelling, deciding to shift his focus to learning everything about Unreal and VR. A decision that quickly proved successful when London-based studio VFX studio Framestore snapped him up to work on their biggest virtual production project to date — Netflix’s groundbreaking 1899 — “I helped the crew of the Netflix episodic 1899 with scouting the sets in Virtual Reality and preparing for a massive In-Camera VFX production at Dark Bay.” Following this stint Tobias joined the Dark Bay team — worldwide one of the largest virtual production stages — as their Creative Tech Lead & Virtual Production supervisor. Having worked at Woodblock in the past as a freelancer, now it was time for Tobi to close the circle.
“Woodblock is a very special studio”, Tobias said. “They have a clear focus on making it as cool to work here as possible and really think about their most valuable asset: the people doing all of this amazing work. When you work here, you can often feel that the projects have not been selected for how much money they bring in”, Tobias continued, “but for all the right reasons: how much creative control Woodblock has, how much fun the process is going to be and what can we learn along the way.” Woodblock has and continues to curate a culture for creative thinkers, ambitious artists and big kids alike to find their nooks and grow.
“It’s an ambitious time for us and you can sense the excitement building in the studio”, said Ilija Brunck. “We’re setting up a Digital Avatar joint venture with industry leading partners, we have two animated series fully developed and the next Polynoid film is in production with its release date just around the corner.” Not only will Tobias lead the Woodblock team on all Realtime and XR projects, but he’ll be tasked with actively developing and growing the department. “The team’s focus will be on projects built with Unreal Engine for a wide range of mediums including VR, Web, Deepscreens and of course the Metaverse’’, said Ilija Brunck. This involves the development of a universal animation pipeline alongside a Metaverse Pipeline and Digital Character Pipeline alike. “Our shared goal is to lead the way in how technology is used to create true innovation in storytelling and entertainment”, Ilija said.
As Woodblock takes a bold step forward in the development of their IPs and Software Products, this new creative collaboration is set to deliver a new range of immersive content and experiences.
