Captain Johnson's Bearded Clam

       A couple months back I helped out on a music video for the incomparable and ferocious Nick Maksim.
It was released back in August but I had forgotten to post it, so I'm doing that now. Sorry Nick!

       He had approached me last winter about working on a few shots for his film, so I spent some time then and during the summer finishing a few seconds for him.
       Nick tackled this bad boy by himself over the course of three years; rigs, animation, lighting, and everything else you see. Pretty damn impressive.

Take a gander below....

It's already won an Award of Merit at the international film festival Indiefest, which is super cool. 

Here's one of the shots I worked on:

There's different colored objects that he's interacting with because I was having some technical issues with constraints so i was switching out objects as the shot was progressing. It was horrible. 

I don't want to talk about it. 

I also did the shot before this were he's clambering along the beach sand, and the nod after he sees the glimmer in the ocean. 

Head over to his blog to see the rest of the stuff he's done, including a little sketch he did of me. 

Congrats on the video's completion, Nick! This is just the beginning!

Jimmy Loves Juice (Trailer)

Here's a trailer I made for Jimmy Loves Juice, the newest short film to come out of SJSU's Animation/Illustration program, directed by the amazingly talented Dave Yee. 

Jimmy Loves Juice (Official Trailer)

 

from Youri Dekker on Vimeo.

Jimmy Loves Juice will premier at the End of the Semester Screening in San Jose State's University Theater on December 18th at 10 am.

October-faced

I did some sketches the other day, then experimented quickly with textures and paint in Photoshop. 

This is the result:

Joe Weatherly Workshop

       This past Friday I had the opportunity to attend a zoo workshop with the amazing Joe Weatherly.
The first animal we drew that day was the giraffe. I've only drawn a giraffe once or twice before and I didn't really know what I was doing. Joe was able to do some sketches for me real quick, pointing out their structure and proportions.

Joe's drawings:

And then my drawing afterwords:

Brandon's Goal

       During the month of August I worked on a advertisement for Brandon's Goal Foundation in Seattle. The story follows Brandon Brauns, a young boy who sadly passed away from cancer at age 11 back in 2010. This film was made to help spread the word about Brandon's story and about childhood cancer, especially since it doesn't get that much attention and research.

       More info can be found here: http://www.brandonsgoalfoundation.org/home.html

And here's the film:

Both myself and 4 other SJSU students animated this 30 second spot for their foundation. 

I animated the middle portion, everything from when Brandon jumps off the bed up until his mother looks over at the other kids. 

The Caveman's Capsule (24 Hour Animation - 2nd Place)

      About a week and a half ago I took part in the annual 24 Hour Animation Contest, wherein teams of 5 have 24 hours to create a 30 second short film. 

The prompt was: What would you do if you only had 24 hours left to live?

      After a ton of hard work we found out today that we got second place!

A total of 47 teams participated from all over the country, so I'm very proud of my team (The YERDL Turtles) for puling together and accomplishing this feat. 

I was responsible for the rough animation of the caveman (except the part where he's drawing, which was done by Nicki Yee) and then the composting/editing was done by me as well.  

Here's the final animation:

Created by the YERDL Turtles: 

Nicki Yee, Ryan Eways, Ryan Ramirez, Youri Dekker, & Grace Lacuesta

Directed by Nicki Yee

Coeur De Pirate

Last Friday I went and saw Coeur De Pirate perform in San Francisco.

She sings primarily in French, but combine that with her mad piano skills and some 

damn beautiful stuff gets made. She's got some cool tattoos too...

August Profiles

I've always been a fan of drawing faces in profile, not sure why. Here's a few I did recently:

One for a character design for a possible animation. 

One from a friend of a friend. 

And then one out of my head.