A Day in the Life
We caught up with Henrik Eklundh, who talks us through his typical day as VFX supervisor at Goodbye Kansas Studios in Stockholm
Henrik Eklundh talks us through his typical day as VFX supervisor at Goodbye Kansas Studios
“IF YOU’RE NOT HAVING FUN WHILE WORKING IN VFX THEN YOU ARE NOT DOING IT RIGHT; YOU NEED TO HAVE THE PASSION FOR THE JOB”
Henrik Eklundh has worked in the industry for over 15 years, and specifically with cinematics for the last ten. He has had a hand in most of the cinematic trailers coming out of Goodbye Kansas Studios, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Cyberpunk 2077. Eklundh has a great passion for his work and is a firm believer in teamwork, having everyone pitch in with as little hierarchy as possible in projects to gives artists a sense of ownership over what they do. Here Eklundh breaks down a typical day working at the Stockholm-based studio.
08:00am Hopefully(!) the kids are off to school and I'm on my way to our office in Stockholm. When I first arrive at the office I’ll grab myself a coffee and check in on any renders that have been left overnight. If I have some time, I’ll work on some of the outstanding tasks that I have assigned myself on certain projects.
09:30am By now we should have everyone in the production team at the office, so we would usually have a quick check-in to see if there is anything to discuss, edits or changes that need to be made, and create the schedule. This consists of everyone’s tasks for the day, any smaller catchups that are needed and if we have any client calls.
11:00am By this point it is most likely that something other than my usual workload has come up, so I will need to reroute my attention to that task. I might need to gather a few artists together to discuss the matter at hand before returning to my usual schedule.
13:00pm Now there is another daily to be had, usually around 13:30 since people tend to be late going to lunch, and we want everyone to have at least an hour
break if possible; yes, some artists including myself tend to shorten this to get more work done, which is not ideal.
15:00pm If I’m lucky, there will be no impromptu meetings during the afternoon so I can focus on some personal tasks. Otherwise, I will stretch my legs and walk around to visit my team and check on how they’re progressing with their tasks. By this point, some of our clients are now awake so we may have a dailies meeting.
17:00pm The rest of the day consists of focusing on the tasks outlined during our morning meeting and some impromptu meetings with various departments. We tend to have meetings towards the day as the rest of our global clients are awake so we know what to do when the day starts all over again tomorrow.
17:30pm By now I would hopefully be at home ‘relaxing’ with my kids and family, but there are times when I’m still working at the office. This usually depends on the day or if we’re close to final delivery to a client.