The JibJab Blog

Stick Your Face In It!

Month: October 2010

  • Happy Halloween from the JibJab Team

    Thanks to our fans, over 12 MILLION people saw the Monster Rap this month!  Wowee zowee! So from all of us, a big haunted thank you and a Happy Halloween!

  • Mashin and Rappin All Across the Nation

    We’ve been waiting all month to share our list news stations and morning shows that have featured Monster Raps, Mashes and videos from our Halloween collection.  We didn’t expect to get to this point and have almost too many to list.  Instead of doing a rundown station by station, location by location on the blog,…

  • Trick or Track

    For the Monster Rap, we were lucky enough to get  Keith Patterson, AKA Kap-er from P-Dash Media in NYC to produce killer track vocals for us.  Keith had previously collaborated with us in our Brooklyn days with voice over for our classic Geezer series.  We’ve dug up “Geezers the Musical” so you can hear some…

  • The Mouth on that Monster

    Frankenstein’s script called for the monster to convey some real emotion, which is a challenge when you don’t know what the expression of your characters (ie; your uploaded faces) will be. This lead us to our first experiments with animated Starring You mouths, allowing you to have a big toothy grin, show sadness, fear or…

  • Frankenstein B&W Backgrounds

    Our artists came up with sweeping landscapes, black and white rainbows, noirish corridors, evil labs and spooky nights to bring Frankenstein in a Minute to life. Have a better look at some of the scenery below and check out more in our Facebook album!

  • Terrorize Townsfolk Just to Keep’em in Check

    If you frequent our site, you may recognize some faces animated into Frankenstein! Several folks from the JibJab team got to have their heads featured as angry villagers, including most of our summer intern crew that worked on the short so diligently. Meanwhile, we had Jeff take some awesome photos with the beard he was…

  • That Poor Cat

    The cat in Frankenstein really grew on us, in fact we loved him so much we found ways to cram the kitty in all over the place. Here’s a better look at the little furball in action.

  • The Good, Evil Doctor

    For Frankenstein in a Minute, our designs were a bit stretchier and wackier than usual, as apparent in the evil Doctor’s long limbs, good for grabbing things off screen.

  • Frankenstein’s ReAnimatic

    Take a peek at our animatic for Frankenstein, sans the texture and colors to come.  It will give you a whole new appreciation for the piece when we publish the insanely background art next week!

  • The Imaginary Ones and the Twos

    DJ Adrienne mixes it up, blue screen style!  This video concludes our behind the scenes look at the making of our Monster Rap , now onto the making of Frankenstein!

  • Bob Your Head

    When you take creatures away from our Monster Rap and leave just the floating head,  you can really get a grasp of how much movement we have to match a face to in any given scene.  Also, it’s really spooky. The more faces that go into the scene, the harder it is for us to…

  • Incantation, Levitation

    It’s no secret how we got our witch to levitate in our Halloween Rap (black magic) but we thought it would be fun everyone to see our witch before and after our team worked their blue screen voodoo. Special shout out to Adrienne Spiridellis for her bewitching moves.

  • Fish Eyed Monsters

    The Monster Rap called for us to mimic both the angles and styles of your basic hip hop music video, so the first step in nailing the look was nabbing a wide angle lens for that fish-eye effect. Here’s he look in motion.  Of note, we are trying extremely hard to avoid that easy wrap/rap…

  • Jury Rigged Rig

    When you’re filming music videos like the Monster Rap, you’ve got to use what you’ve got to get the right angles and movement.  And sometimes all you’ve got is an office chair and an extra able body. Quit laughing, it works!

  • Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble

    Liquids are notoriously some of the hardest moving things to animate, so when it came to creating a bubbling witch’s cauldron for the Monster Rap, a real brew was the thing to do. Our solution? Ian took the project to the kitchen and brought some tomato soup to a boil. And here is the bubbly…