I was contracted by It Factor Productions to create content for J Lo’s It’s My Party Tour in spring of 2019. This show was a joy to work on due to a few added tools in the Cinema 4D toolkit as of R20. Namely, having the power of multi-instancing, OpenVDB modeling, and fields to create lots of detail and procedural animation. I even managed to squeeze in a little sculpting by taking a stock low-poly carousel horse and shaping it into something much more detailed. The biggest challenges we faced were piecing together all of the different light sequences for the Medicine carousel into a cohesive edit in which the carousel spun constantly while the lights animated to the music, creating a convincing balloon pop reveal for the walk-in look, and controlling the reflections for the mirror room in Love Don’t Cost A Thing. I also modeled the birthday cake looks, did a little work on setting up a diamond studded subway train, and helped to put together the bank vault for Dinero.

I was contracted by It Factor Productions to create content for Gwen Stefani’s 2018 Vegas residency, Just A Girl. This show was a lot of fun to work on as the it ran the gamut from realistic set extensions to bold, stylized motion graphics. I was responsible for the opening stripes animation, the main show Art Deco metal work, the Moulin Rouge themed set, as well as a variety of other smaller pieces throughout.

I was contracted by It Factor Productions to create content for Paula Abdul’s Vegas Residency, Forever Your Girl. The most interesting parts of this show were the opportunity to build unconventionally shaped lighting configurations for The Way That You Love Me, create a more dimensional procedural diamond material to use in Vibeology, and spend some time working out a tileable desert landscape in World Creator to fly over infinite desert terrain.

I was contracted by The Zinman Company to create content for the Crazy Ex Girlfriend Live series finale. If you’re not familiar, the show is a musical comedy about a big shot lawyer in New York City who moves to West Covina, California on a whim to try and find happiness, and each episode has a couple of original musical numbers in it sung by the cast. For the series finale they did a live show where the cast sang a collection of the more popular songs throughout the show. The stage had a real proscenium but everything behind it was LED walls with virtual set dressing. This show was a lot of fun to work on because of the challenge of creating things that looked like actual stage props flying in. I was responsible for the main “backstage” show look, the West Covina signage and scrim, the Crazy Ex Girlfriend sign, and the Paula Proctor, Esquire gate.

I was contracted by The Zinman Company to create content for a CBS Special called Elton John - A Grammy Salute. The show had a string of performances of Elton John’s hits by a number of artists, as well as performances by Elton John himself. This show was an absolute blast to work on. I got to do everything from sketching “doodles" for Rocket Man, sculpting Elton’s face into a crescent moon for Your Song, as well as build an elaborate emerald city and a colorful forest for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I’m especially proud of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road because I was given the opportunity to pitch my own idea, then got to build the whole thing from the ground up in a matter of days when it got the green light.

I was contracted by It Factor Productions to create content for performances by Big Sean and Pitbull for the 2017 MTV Music Video Awards. Both performances were exciting to work on, especially Big Sean’s. He was going to be performing atop a 3 screen “building” and we needed to come up with some creative ways to break it apart in perspective as well as have it crumble in slow motion as the lift lowered Big Sean back down to the stage. I ended up creating a high quality model of the building as a flat face and then lighting it as though it were the corner of a building to bake the surface onto a very low poly model that matched the screens.

I was commissioned by Quinn Sikora to create a short animated video relaying an anecdote about Mozart’s sister, Maria Anna, tormenting young Mozart while he was in the bathtub by playing incomplete musical scales, forcing him to get out of the tub to resolve the final note. This project was a great opportunity for me to stretch my legs around 2D character design, animation, and blending 2D characters with 3D sets.

I was contracted by The Zinman Company to create content for a few performances on Showtime at the Apollo. The deadline on this one was super tight, so I had to come up with some creative ways to craft good looking content really fast. I ended up leaning pretty heavily on tools like Element 3D to make stylish graphics without breaking the bank in terms of time. It was quite the challenge!

I contracted with Midland Pictures to create an animated ident for LB Production Center, a theatrical lighting company based in Lodi, California. We initially talked in terms of magic and “forging” the logo out of the fiery depths of a trussed volcano, but ultimately decided to go for an epic machination out in space.

I was contracted by Digital Flodur to work on screen designs for the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Gala in the spring of 2016. The theme throughout was a blend between the architectural and the organic. It was a treat to work on because it allowed me the opportunity to push the envelope with photorealistic texturing and lighting in a way that I usually don't get to.

I was contacted by a local authoring team, Marcus Sikora and his mom, Mardra Sikora to illustrate and animate the story for a children's book Marcus had written called Black Day: The Monster Rock Band. Marcus is 25 years old and has Down syndrome, so Mardra had to help him with the finer points of story crafting by asking a lot of questions about the narrative and helping him arrange his ideas and dialogue into a cohesive story.  It took them about a year of weekly meetings before they had a draft of the story ready, at which point they got in touch with me about creating the visuals.  This is by far the most challenging project I've ever worked on and it took about 14 months to pull off.  I had fiddled around with character modeling and animation up to this point but never to the extent that was required to pull this project off.  I started with a sketch of what I thought the most expositional image for each page of the book would be, then spent four months building/sourcing all of the set pieces and characters as well as creating a rough layout of the animation to proof.  Once those were approved, I spent the next three months laying out, rendering, and compositing the final book images, then the next six months animating, rendering, compositing, and editing the final animation.

I was contracted by Digital Flodur to help them out with a couple of abstract loops to serve the ambience of this Comedy Central special. It was a fun job to work on because I had the opportunity to take relatively simple shapes and leverage textures and lighting to get a more sophisticated final look.

I was contracted by It Factor Productions to create content for J Lo’s 2016 Vegas residency, All I Have. This show was a blast to work on, but probably one of the most challenging things I had ever done at the time. I was primarily responsible for the show opening, which required figuring out a solution for getting believable cloth dynamics out of an Austrian curtain, creating a ton of particles effects timed and positioned to coordinate with choreography on stage, and building a dynamic simulation that filled the proscenium with 50,000+ diamonds.

I had the opportunity to work on Ariana Grande's 2015 Honeymoon Tour, covering a variety of cool concepts including a space mountain light show, a Harry Potter style castle, some Wizard of Oz styled buildings, and an Avatar-like forest (which ultimately got scrapped). It was a great challenge to try and create intricate details out of simple models and textures, and in the case of the forest scene it was a chance to try my hand at sculpting and custom painted textures.

I was contracted by It Factor Productions to help create content for JLO's Bronx Concert in 2014.  It involved rigging a lot of elements for flexibility, such as a diamond studded low-rider bike and a Moroccan archway which could be customized to meet any stylistic requirements with the tweak of a few slider controls.  The work is generally pretty exciting because of the blend between solving artistic problems as well as engineering problems (insofar as you could call 3D work "engineering"), all on a relatively tight deadline (one month to build it all from the ground up.) 

I was contracted by Sunnyboy Entertainment to create visuals for Drive It Like You Stole It.  The concept was an alien looking car driving on a track in an abstract, low polygon landscape.  The emphasis was placed on close up shots and the distorted reflections off of the car's finish, so there were only a small handful of shots that showed the whole car at any given time.  The biggest challenge was simply managing the balance between fulfilling the concept and keeping the render times in check.  The deadline was pretty aggressive (about two weeks from the ground up) so there wasn't a lot of room for finesse, but even with such a tight deadline it was cool to be a part of it, and the guys at Sunnyboy couldn't have been better to work with.

I was contracted by Sunnyboy Entertainment to create the visuals for the song Strobe. The concept was a black seed in a desolate place that opens up into a weird, abstract sort of parade. The guys at Sunnyboy gave me a lot of room to come up with my own interpretation and create some interesting "creatures" as part of the process. The biggest challenge was simply the duration of the song, which clocks in at over 10 minutes long, in combination with the fact that the song changes drastically, evolving and escalating throughout the duration, so there weren't a lot of opportunities to create simple looping content that could be replayed at varying intervals.  All in all it was exciting to be a part of, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity.

I was contracted by It Factor Productions to help out with content creation for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Lost Christmas Eve Tour.  The centerpiece of the stage design was a giant projection screen in the shape of a building.  This presented a unique set of challenges as nearly all of the content we created had to fit within the confines of that screen shape, which required a lot of work adjusting the perspective of scene elements through a locked down camera.  It's greatest challenge was also its greatest strength, however.  Being a projection screen, the building was basically a blank canvas which meant that we could transform it into any setting required for the show, which included a night club, a hospital, a toy store, an old hotel, and many others. 

This is a video I produced for a social media management company here in Omaha. They put together a script then let me take the ball and run with it. I really wanted to get some elements of character animation in there and tell more of a "story" as opposed to just having a bunch of stylized bits of info floating around, but with the window of time to do it, there wasn't a lot of room to get insanely detailed with the process, so I went with a low poly look to keep things clean and simple. 

I made this to serve as an opening bumper for future videos for a local contractor.  They knew they wanted some cartoony guys to come together and build something, and let me take it from there.  It was one of my first forays into character design, rigging, and animation.

This is a personal project that I started a couple of years ago in order to push myself for development using a few tools, primarily After Effects and Cinema 4D. Here's a few of my favorites, but feel free to check them all out at noahwitchell.tumblr.com.

I made these graphics for part of a love story for some friends of mine who wanted an "8-bit" look. Lots of Mario sound effects and borrowed visuals from Mega-Man, Mario, and Donkey Kong. Everything was in reference to how they met and got engaged. They're both photographers, thus the segment of them shooting wedding guests and the Donkey Kong bride. They went to China on a mission trip together, thus the game opening. They met while both partaking in the photo program at a local community college, thus the darkroom/classroom settings.

This is a follow up video created for Alchemy to promote their latest Smartbinder feature, Teams, which allows teachers to share lessons and resources with each other.  I wanted to try and create a fun twist on digital identities in this environment, so I created little "badges" to represent individuals and groups and created a lot of animations to represent their interactions.

This is a short animated promo that I put together for a web-based lesson planning software called Alchemy SmartBinder.  The goal was simply to pique the interest of the viewer and encourage them to visit the website.  It was a fun project to work on because it was the first time that I tried to incorporate 3D into a flat, "2d" style, which was an interesting challenge.