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When the clock hits noon and it’s time for his lunch break, Amir Lyles sets aside his mop, opens his laptop and resumes one of his many projects.

On a typical day as a Haven Hall janitor, the 25-year-old eats lunch while editing music videos on Adobe Premiere Pro — the same task he returns to at home, often for hours late into the night.

“I really just got the (custodial) job to fund what I like to do,” Amir said. “To be able to get it out to the people who actually would appreciate my work, more like a bigger industry, to actually get more eyes on me.”

Amir isn’t just a janitor with a few side hustles. He’s a self-taught graphic designer, music video director, fashion designer, music label co-owner and animator who’s built a creative operation in Syracuse — even as a full-time janitor. Amir promotes his music videos and animations primarily through his Instagram account @3dmflex and uses TikTok to reach younger audiences.

Though he’s only been working at Syracuse University for three weeks, he foresees this being his routine throughout his time here. His long-term goal is to expand his editing to a full-time gig.

Amir’s father has worked in SU’s custodial department since around 1995 and helped him land his current position about three weeks ago. The job comes with health, dental and vision benefits and employees can pursue a college education at SU after three years of service, Amir said — a benefit his father pointed to when encouraging him to apply.

Amir grew up creating art, he said. He began drawing as a child and taught himself video editing as a teenager after getting his first camera in high school. He then started his music-editing career with his brother, Zae Lyles, who began rapping around the same time.

“I just took off from there,” Amir said. “I just continued working with the music videos, figuring out new things, buying new cameras, trying to invest in myself.”

That self-investment has translated into a practiced system, Amir said. A music video typically takes him three to five days from start to finish. An album cover art commission takes a couple of hours. A full cartoon animation — his most technically demanding passion, requiring hand-drawn scenes, keyframing and custom sound effects — can take up to a month.

Amir’s most ambitious project to date is a 3-minute cartoon animation for an Atlanta-based artist that he’s been making for about a month, he said. The video has not yet been released, but Amir said he considers it one of his biggest accomplishments.

“You’ve got to do it scene by scene by scene,” Amir said. “Especially if you want smooth animations, you have to keyframe, add the sound effects, it’s a lot of specific details you have to actually be able to handle.”

His schedule isn’t for everyone, he said. But at 25, he’s already moved past the social distractions that might derail other people his age.

“People my age are worried about outside activities,” Amir said. “I’m in my old man state right now, just on my computer.”

In the early years, Amir said he shot and edited free videos for his brothers and friends as a low-stakes experience to sharpen his skills. For years, he assumed his talent alone would get him noticed — a mindset he now looks back on critically.

Once he began reaching out to artists on Instagram and offering first projects at no charge, things moved quickly, Amir said. It only took a couple of months to start building connections with artists outside of Syracuse.

He now takes on roughly four outside commissions per month, collaborating with artists from Atlanta and Texas, he said. Some of his more well-known clients have included Baby Otto, SSG Splurge, SlimeGoon9 and Trap Ebk. Within Syracuse, he said he picks up an additional six or seven smaller editing jobs per month, helping local artists clean up and finalize their videos.

Amir Lyles smiles near Haven Hall. Amir creates and edits music videos for artists based in Texas and Atlanta. Tara Deluca | Asst. Photo Editor

Beyond video editing, Amir also runs Weirdos, a streetwear clothing brand he started in 2019 after making a music video for a Trap Ebk song of the same name. What began as a few hand-pressed hoodies has now grown into a manufacturer-backed line, Amir said.

Amir focuses on streetwear, designing clothes that he would like to wear himself. People will gravitate more towards clothes that the designer actually likes, Amir said.

For his other jobs, artists who find him through TikTok often assume his editing rates will be low based on his roughly 300 follower count, and many go silent after he sends a quote. Pricing is a challenge, but he wants to be fair to his product, Amir said.

One recent TikTok, in which he spoke about being a school janitor, drew over 1,600 likes and caught the attention of at least one Haven Hall frequenter, Nina Gugino, a Syracuse University sophomore.

“I was like, holy sh-t, I recognize that face,” Gugino said.

After seeing Amir in person a few times when she visited friends in the residence hall, Gugino saw him come up on her For You Page.

The experience felt different from seeing a professor post on social media, Gugino said, where she said the power dynamic makes it feel uncomfortable. Seeing Amir, she said, was more personal.

Gugino said she commented on the video to show support, adding that janitors at SU deserve more recognition than they typically receive. She didn’t expect to see a school janitor on TikTok, she said, but wanted to show him a little love and appreciation.

“I see the custodial staff and I’m just like, that’s one of my homies,” Gugino said. “It feels more like your best friend pops up on your feed.”

Aside from TikTok, Amir’s creative work also extends to a music label. Amir, alongside his two brothers, runs 3DM, a label and production group. The three founded it in 2016 under the original name 3D Production, Zae said. The label partners with Syracuse artists and releases music across rap, R&B and other genres, with Amir handling visuals for its artists.

Zae said the label promotes its releases through YouTube, TikTok and Google Ads and has made an effort to build connections with artists in other cities and states. He said the group has grown musically since its early days, but he believes a bigger production team would take things to another level.

Zae said watching his brother develop from a kid sketching anime and cartoon characters into a professional video director has been a gradual but clear progression.

“As the years went by, he just started getting a lot better with his effects,” Zae said. “He started doing his own type of effects that nobody else was doing, no presets, no nothing. He had his own.”

Amir sees his custodial job as a means to an end, not a ceiling, he said. His long-term goals include opening a full production studio with multiple shooting rooms, growing the 3DM roster and eventually building a large-scale creative company capable of employing others, he said.

For now, the mop comes first — and the laptop comes right after.

“Most people wouldn’t be able to make this kind of system work,” Amir said. “But this is what I want to do, so I do it.”

Published on April 28, 2026 at 8:42 pm
Contact Caroline: cberskin@syr.edu