Toby PAST

1.) What was your very first job?

Cleaning and maintaining my grandfather’s sailboat starting at age 11.

2.) Please describe, in your own words, what your job is and what work it entails.

I lead creative for SapientRazorfish in Los Angeles, overseeing creatives across our various client brands. My goal is to always inspire new ways to communicate in an emotional, relevant and impactful way suited to our clients tone and desired public image. I strive to create work that is authentic to my clients, my agency, and myself.

3.) How did you discover that the creative world was right for you? Was there a time in your life that you credit to this discovery? What was there train of events that brought you to where you are today?

Before my more regular job cleaning sailboats, I also made money as a youngster drawing posters of Garfield, Odie and various Smurfs and album covers for various business, including the local roller rink where I grew up - $25 a pop felt pretty good at age 9! I had always played drums and bass guitar growing up and throughout college, and later while studying Psychology in graduate school, a professor assigned our final term paper as a web page. Teaching myself coding and Flash, I rediscovered my latent passion for weaving visually creative stories. 19 years later that still hasn’t changed, though I’m more in tune these days with creative strategies and telling stories that touch a human chord through technology and experience.

4.) In your constantly growing and expanding industry, how do you find inspiration to keep your work fresh, innovative and relevant?

By constantly striving to see ahead of the curve - immersing myself across various storytelling mediums and approaches from film, online video, VR-AR, music video, live music, travel and it’s documentation, the many ways we can convey an experience creatively in an impactful, compelling way. Always asking “what moves me?” and never stopping that sense of wonderment and discovery.

5.) If you had to pick one piece of work or project that you are most proud of, more for the creative work and innovation it required, rather than its recognition or industry “success,” what would it be?

Probably the stop-motion video I created for an all-girl punk band back in the early aughts - blending stop-motion with 3D and motion graphics magic is one of the hardest things you can do, but it was so off the wall and fun it really didn’t matter!