Notable Projects

I was brought on at Adobe for my 3D expertise to design features for the After Effects 26.0 release.

I designed workflows and user experience for 3D primitives, materials, object import, rendering, and general supporting workflows. I also designed After Effects' new Unmult tool, and contributed to dozens more features and workflows across the After Effects ecosystem.

This is the one example on my page where I was an employee, not running the show, but I absolutely loved this job.

As the Technical Director at R/GA, the creative design team handed me drawings of music loops, and it was my job to decide the full pipeline, workflow, strategy, etc... to create Snapchat lenses out of them, to match with musical scores provided by some extremely talented contract musicians.

I took the job through Cinema 4D and After Effects, and produced lenses that were each under 4mb. (This was in 2018 when file sizes had to be far more optimized)

https://www.adweek.com/performance-marketing/verizon-wireless-is-giving-away-the-new-iphone-xs-in-an-ar-scavenger-hunt-snapchat-game/

If you want to see the loops up close, just click this link to open them in your browser. I animated the loops in Cinema 4D, and ported them to Unity for this demo.

I was brought on to help create live concert visuals for the popular artist Kygo, and to animate the case study video seen here.

https://pl.ai/portfolio/kygo/

I found myself with free time one summer, and just really wanted to make a game! I did this project to sharpen up on coding, while stepping away from my usual work.

I made this game from scratch in Unity using mostly C# and built-in engine tools. The only part of the entire production I didn't do was the illustration.

You can check out my process breakdown here: https://imgur.com/a/adqk4

You can give the game a try here right in your desktop browser! (Not supported on mobile).

The game was intended to play with two thumbs, it's admittedly much more difficult and clunky without a touch interface. But you can still get an idea for how it works.

I would not consider the subject matter of my book to be relevant to my professional portfolio, so I won't be talking about the stories in my life this book is based on. It's not the kind of thing I bring up at work, or in any professional setting. I even released it under a pen name to separate it from my professional life as much as possible.

That being said, one relevant part I'd like you to consider is I wrote and released a full graphic novel that has had fantastic reviews and feedback. which you can see in the image carousel below.

This project speaks to my ability to communicate effectively to the average reader, and not just to the tech audiences I usually do. I do come off as a little dry, but I can flip a switch and write humor when I need to, and write engaging and entertaining stories.

The second image carousel has some fun behind the scenes layout work. I am not an illustrator, so I tend to compose the image with 3D models, or dummy photos, then hand it off to the illustrator to polish up.

I got pretty deep into 3D printing to keep sane during the pandemic. It was a weird time... My friend Gavin Shapiro was making and selling NFTs, so we did a series of 3D printed zoetropes that could be seen through any camera with a fast enough shutter speed.

Gavin made the animation in Cinema 4D, I made some adjustments so it would be stable and sold enough to print. I printed it, trimmed and cleaned it, and handled the video shoot.

The gold one was very straight forward, but the white one had to spin nearly 700rpm. We asked a friend who's an aircraft engineer to rig up a speed controller and motor, and stood pretty far back.

In retrospect, I'm not a big fan of NFTs, but this one project paid my rent for years... Those were some wild times.

https://gavinshapiro.com/two-zoetropes