The Unsung Heroes of JibJab

At JibJab, the sexy work often gets the “oos and ahs” of the crowd. Animators animating… product and engineering building cool new features… but who are the guys who make sure you, the audience, can actually experience all that magic? It’s the JibJab network team. From servers to storage to databases, these guys are toiling away (often in a dark, windowless datacenter) making sure that when tens of millions of people slam our servers each week, we can still offer each and every one of them a super fast, snappy experience. And how are they doing? According to Alexa.com, even at our peak season (right now) our average load times are “very fast” and “82% of sites are slower” than us. Here’s to you, JibJab network team! You are so good you make us forget you are even there!

Here they are, joined by co-founders Evan and Gregg. (No, Gregg is not a part-time Nascar driver. The datacenter is freezing cold and he is wearing a jacket provided by Budweiser back in 2005 when the companies were working together.)

And here’s some JibJab trivia for you… the datacenter where these guys built out our massive network is just a block away from this cheap motel Evan and Gregg stayed at after they packed all their earthly belongings into a U-haul truck and moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 2002.

Our MJ Tribute? This is it!

Here’s another look at some of the puppetry going into our 2009 Year in Review (due in one week!). This time we’ve got a peek at our belated salute to the dearly departed King of Pop.

We’re (hoping to!) cap off production today and finish the audio mix this evening. Then a well deserved holiday break for the team before we launch it next Monday!

When Will We Get the 2009 Year in Review?

Fear not! JibJab’s 2009 year in review, entitled “Never a Year like 09′” is on it’s way, due Monday December 28th!

We are still cranking away at it, adding more detail, more gags and more animation!  As we’ve teased before, this year’s review is being done almost ENTIRELY with paper cut-outs and puppets, leaving our fancy animation programs to collect dust.  Here’s a peek at a few of the famous folks in our tribute to those who passed away this year. More will be featured in the review!

The Royal ElfYourself

According to The Daily Mail, Prince Harry created an ElfYourself and sent it as his Christmas greeting this year!  About time dancing elves made the trades, though the site missed the most important thing, a link!  So in tribute to the idea of a royal ElfYourself, we cooked up a royally awesome equivalent.  Enjoy!

Update: Not to start a tabloid war, but the Sun has the original video!

Chopped Tree Footage

Our first idea for our Tree Slaughter video was a bit more heavy on the “slaughter” than a season’s greeting needed to be. We toned it down, but the original will live forever in our minds (and on this blog!).  Warning, the following lumberjack attack is for mature audiences only.

Chat with JibJab Live on Justin.tv!

JibJab is going live!  Thanks to Justin.tv, we are getting the opportunity to live stream a video meet-and-greet-fun-time-chat this Thursday at 4pm Pacific Time (7pm Eastern).  Justin.tv is the biggest name in live streaming broadcasts and we’re excited to jump on board!  So this Thursday, take a little break and meet Gregg Spiridellis, half the brains behind JibJab’s founding. If all goes well, we may have some of our artists, programmers and writers meet and greet in the new year!  You can bookmark our page at this link.  See you Thursday!

New to Justin.tv? It’s pretty easy, you can sign in with your Facebook, Twitter or Myspace account to chat with us. Don’t have any of those? Sign up with Justin.tv and you’re in!

Elf Yourself Animatic!

And you thought your face on the elves was funny. This look behind the curtain at how we made ElfYourself’s singing medley was far too ridiculous not to share.  Special props to Devin and Ian for being hilarious at all times.

HONIKA ELECTRONICA

This weekend marks the start of Hanukkah! Huzzah!  And with the season, we get another amazing music video from for JibJab friend and collaborator Eric Schwartz aka Smooth-E! Check out his latest Jewish jam “Honkia Electronica” below!

Got a hankerin’ for more Hanukkah stuff? Check out our collection of Hanukkah eCards here. Want more Smooth-E? Click the image below for our collab with him from 2005, or check out his website!

Christmas Carol Concepts

We’ve posted another Facebook album full of art on our … Facebook.  This time we chronicled the dickens out of our Charles Dickens masterpiece, A Christmas Carol!  Click on to see a story of Christmas past!

Our RagTag Christmas Tree

We busted the old tree out of the box this week, adorning her with candy canes, ElfYourself ornaments and the occasional Nasty Santa doll left over from a few years back.  For a star, we made good use of a JibJab beanie cap with a dart stuck on it.  That’s just how we roll here.  Now add a few empty bottles of beer and we’ll really be showing our Christmas spirit!

You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out Wallpapers!

As we like to do after releasing new projects, we’re making a few of our backgrounds available for your desktop background!  Just click any of these backgrounds from You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out and you’ll get a massive, free image to right click and set as a festive holiday wallpaper!

The ElfYourself Album

For one final look behind the scenes at ElfYourself, we’ve posted a Facebook album with our 37 favorite photos.  Enjoy!

Meanwhile, has anyone seen this awesome video of the elves arriving in New York City? Epic!

Banned in Iran

A staffer at JibJab has family in Iran and they passed over this little nugget of information to the studio… JibJab.com has been banned for the entire country! This is part of a censorship that has been ongoing for the past few years which has included Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. We just can’t figure out what exactly we may have done to cause a rift with the country’s government…

Oh well, back to creating our 2009 year in review…

And now presenting…

The cutest iteration of the phrase “JibJab” to ever be uttered.

/Cutie courtesy of Anthony, JibJab flex developer and father!

The Faces Behind the ElfYourself’s Dances!

When it came to getting dancers for this year’s Hip Hop ElfYourself we knew exactly who to turn to… the incredible talents of the guys fromSickStep! You may recognize the moves of JibJab’s favorite dance crew from our last foray into break dancing, the aptly titled Breakin. Luckily they were cool with donning elf outfits and entertained us for hours on end with their sickest of steps.

Most of our dances are set against a blue or green screen so we can easily remove color in post production and place the elves in a vibrant environment. With ElfYourself HipHop we placed down white mats that we would end up keeping in the final video as a snowy dance floor, plus it gave the breakdancers a surface comfortable enough to do their most complicated tricks on, and slick enough not to destroy their costumes.