JibJab pal Alex Hirsh stopped by the studio while we were laying down CNR footage with Weird Al to film a very special first episode of his series Scribble Talk! Al was more than happy to oblige and today we finally got to see the result! Can you say way cool?
More fun Monster Mash trivia! We needed someone with extra lanky arms for our monstrous bride and our casting landed right on Jeff, who did a wonderful bride boogie for us. For covering up his manliness, long sleeves and gloves did a wonder! When we can, we like to use gloves and loosefitting clothes as much as possible so that everyone will feel comfortable putting their head on our characters, no matter what their color, shape or size may be, even if they’re a bearded 20-something!
When making characters for our Starring You dances, everything but the head is costume designed and made up. Sometimes in our little 425×319 pixel movies, you lose great details that take a lot of time to put together. That brings us to the werewolf from the Monster Mash, who we gave some really cool, but easily missed feet with some super long nails. Here Evan mixes the paint up, Alan paints the paint on and Devin wears the wolf toes.
It’s officially witching season and we’re pumped to finally release our frighteningly good Starring You Monster Mash! We’ve pushed our technology further than ever with this one, implementing aforementioned tinting technology and making hair pieces even more ridiculous than the huge Soul Train afros we introduced last month. Since our launch this morning Monster Mash been taking off on twitter and Facebook and is proving to be one of our biggest releases ever! If you post yours to either social media site, make sure to @reply us and share your mash! We want to see! Facebook / Twitter
Here’s our favorite so far, one from @ARRFdesigns that made great use of the family dog.
When we’re developing new technologies, schedules move fast and change often. That’s why our tech team rounds up once daily for a scrum meeting, a simple way of letting everyone know what has been accomplished, what is on the plate for the day and what hurdles may be in their way. Having a daily development meeting keeps everyone up to date on each other and ensures that when any changes occur, they are addressed immediately.
Anyone who has thoroughly perused JibJab has probably noticed our intricate stop-motion animations. There have been an array of amazing clay creatures seen on our site and this week we’ve been breathing life into this quirky little pine tree using the infamous frame by frame capture process. It’s mind meltingly tedious work, but the end result is always something to be marveled at. Here Devin, our master of claymation manipulates the tree’s trunk so that it can move and groove on our snowy set. You’ll see this one with the rest of our holiday stuff in just a few months!
Here is a sneak peek at two of the five characters for our big Halloween video debuting next week! We’re taking Starring You to new levels of diabolical personalization, allowing you to affix your head in our symbol technology. What does that mean? Facial hair, giant goggles and monstrous features are going to blend right into your head! We’re also releasing the brand new ability to tint your head’s hue and make it any color in the rainbow. Green, purple, orange, you name it! This is the closest you can get to turning into a monster without being cursed, bitten or raised from the dead!
What’s with this blog? It’s always us, us, us! Today we want to turn the focus to a few causes that we’ve supported in the past and want to share for people to support through the future! First up is Dallas Clayton’s children’s literacy project, the Awesome World Foundation. Dallas is a JibJab friend who is a killer writer/illustrator and he’s turned his skills into a mission to both donate books and promote reading all across the country. Check out his site, videos and books to learn more!
Operation Give’s “Operation Christmas Stocking” has also just gotten under way, an effort to fill the Christmas stockings of troops serving in Iraq. Stockings ship early in November to get over there, so making a merry one means doing something before the season has officially begun! Operation Give’s Director Paul Wilton and his group have been doing all sorts of amazing work over the years also getting toys, medical supplies and school materials to kids in Iraq. In fact, Paul and the soldiers he works with were the faces we used in “Second Term!” Click the image below to see what you can do this year.
Huge news! We’re excited to officially announce that JibJab videos and pictures will soon be available to everyone as a part of the Facebook gift store! This is the first time Facebook has offered anything in their gift store besides their stylishly designed icons and we’re ecstatic to be a part of it! Our material is still in testing, and JibJab gifts are slowly being released to select segments of Facebook users, alongside greetings from a few other well known companies. Our tech team has worked long and hard to make this a reality and today we salute them. Come to think of it, we should probably get them a thank you eCard or something…
We may have a huge wall in our studio dedicated to green screening items, but sometimes it’s best to have a mini studio right next to your desk, especially when you’re shooting miniature items. It may be shabby, but it gets the job done!
Our Soul Train contest was won by Kevin Lo, who made a funky Soul Train video starring his kids and amassed 100 people to press the “like” button on his Facebook wall. We think you’ll agree that it’s completely deserving of the win. Kevin will be receiving the package of prizes which we announced earlier this month, as well as a free year long subscription to JibJab!
Miss out on the contest? Well here’s your shot… we’re still accepting screen shots of your Soul Train dance on our Facebook wall for the next 24 hours. The top 9 with the most “likes” score year-long memberships along with Kevin! Unlimited JibJab access for a year!
Kevin’s adorable winning vid:
Official rules and posting procedure. Must be submitted by 11:59pm Pacific Time Friday September 25th.
With the fall season underway, we’re doing our part to get our Sports section filled up. Our disgustingly dope design team came up with three sports stills this week, with a few more on the way (racing anyone?). Check them out, especially the boxing one. It features our marvelous new black eye technology!
We’re launching a new series of index cards today featuring the venn diagrams and charts of Jessica Hagy, of This is Indexed. While you’ll find her index cards to be scattered all over our site, we made a category just for our blog/facebook/twitter readers so you can browse the majority of her stuff on our site. Click this link or the image below to check it out!
We had these made a while back ago, but had to reformat them to fit our latest site look. As evidence here are a few political ones from the 2008 election that we aren’t officially throwing up on the site. Funny, but just not as relevant anymore!
For those who missed it streamed live, our presentation from TechCrunch50 (the ultimate conference for web start-ups) is now up. The good folks over at Facebook Connect were incredibly awesome enough to let us talk as part of the Facebook Developer Garage presentation and Gregg wowed em with examples of how we integrated Facebook connect into our user experience. You can check out the entire video, where Facebook famously announced that they are cash-flow positive, or click to the 28 minute mark where Gregg takes the stage.
Here at JibJab, we have an affinity for pirates. We work in a pirate ship, after all. That’s why in honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day this Saturday the 19th, we’re posting up a secret category with our favorite pirate stuff from the website, plus a few fun things we threw together. Give the image below a click and spread the scurvy all over the world wide web’s waters!
Honorable mention goes to the pirate fight scene in “He’s Barack Obama”.
