Jimmy Loves Juice (Work)

       Jimmy Loves Juice— the newest film to come out of the A/I program at SJSU— was completed back in December, and now it's gonna start heading into the festivals of the world. Our amazing director Dave Yee created an official blog for it as well, so check that out here.
The film is not released online yet, but since it's finished I thought it would be a good opportunity to show my contributions to the film.

       It's always crazy to see how far I get in one semester, and just how bad those beginning drawings of a character can be. I noticed that with Edith and the Bear too: it always takes some getting used to the world and characters you're dealing with.

Some of my very first drawings and iterations of Jimmy back in late August. 

Model Sheets

       I was asked to create the model sheets for Jimmy. I had never done this before, so it was definitely a tough task. I tend to draw characters more fleshy and detailed, and the notes I kept receiving from Dave were "more graphic" and "more simple." It's interesting to see the change in these drawings to the final product of what you see on the screen. I think once the character was taken into Flash it's given a new style that you don't get with pencil drawings.

The Film's Opening

About halfway through production it was suggested that the film should start with a book opening into the story. I asked to try out a few iterations of this idea. There was a lot of back and forth with ideas before getting it to the final look that you see in the film. 

Production still from the film's opening shot. 

What this shot consists of is just a 3D book I modeled with a background painting behind it. 

I populated it with makeshift juice boxes and crayons, knowing that eventually 

a 2D background would take their place. 

Final background painting by Gizelle Orbino.

The cover used for the UV Texture Map in Maya. 

I grabbed a background and frame of Jimmy from the film and 

adjusted them a little to achieve the best look. 

But this wasn't how it always looked... 

In the beginning I had attempted to see what it would look like if I traced the Maya elements in Flash. 

It was not a very appealing image. 

There were 3 objectives: reveal the book, reveal the title, and reveal the story or Jimmy's world. 

The question was how to actually do that. 

There were many failed attempts to get it to what looked best for the film.

You can see there were quite a few placeholders for the covers and opening shot.

Ultimately I put the title on the book and created a fade to white, which would then fade into the world. 

Here's an early approved iteration of it:

I also took Josh Zamora's score and worked it into the reveal of the credits and title little by little, which was a lot of fun. Originally I was compositing the opening shot with the butterfly and children, but that was taken over later by Dave Yee. 

So then you put all those elements together and you get the final product: 

Animations

Shot 1

       Lovely Dave was kind enough to give me the longest shot in the film. In the animatic it was an 18 second piece. When I finally finished with it it clocked in at about 23 seconds. But it was fun nonetheless.

The shot from the animatic done by Dave Yee. 

Here's my very first pass at it: 

Dated September 7th

Another pass with new drawings:

Dated September 29th

And then the final rough animation approved: 

Dated October 19th

The final animation, cleaned up my Samia Khalaf:

Dave also set up a GoPro filming me while I was shooting this hefty shot:

Jimmy Loves Juice Behind the Scenes

from yeebot studios on Vimeo.

Shot 2

A second shot I was given was this fun little thievery act by Jimmy. 

The shots go by fast so I duplicated them for the sake of the videos below.

The shot from the animatic by Dave Yee:

First pass blocking:

Dated October 5th

Second pass, pretty much approved for clean up:

Dated October 24th

The final animation, cleaned up by Samia Khalaf:

Shot 3

I also did the final shot of Jimmy and the aftermath of his little interaction with the tree, but I don't want to show that because it would spoil the film.

Trailer

       As told in one of my previous posts, I created the trailer for the film as well.
I think it's safe to say now that the film is done that I made this kind of as a joke, but it seemed to work out well enough as a devious teaser that Dave allowed it to be the official trailer for the film.

Jimmy Loves Juice (Official Trailer)

from Youri Dekker on Vimeo.

And that's that! 

Again check out the website, there's some neat stuff there as well. 

Another semester spent making a film, let's see what'll happen 4 months from now....