This week marked Romney’s first day as an official JibJab employee (he had interned with us over the summer) and the man stepped his game up a notch and came in to the office sporting a look that was much more business than casual. You successfully put our tattered jeans and graphic tees to shame for a day, Romney. Well done!
Dave from our design team whipped this up today in response to Sammie’s Escape video 
Sammie, the office pug, is known for many things around the office… there’s his friendly nature, his wheezing excited grunts and of course his fondness for knocking over trashcans to feast on whatever he finds. It’s the last one that usually means we have to keep him penned into a safe zone for some of the day, allowing us and our trashcans a little peace of mind. We just didn’t count on one thing. He’s learned to open doors. This is the second gate that we’ve bought to try and stop Sammie from escaping into downstairs JibJab, but to no avail. The first was a very simple gate like this one, which no amount of reinforcing could hold Sammie back. This time we thought we had him beat, with a futuristic plastic gate that featured buttons. BUTTONS. He wouldn’t be able to solve a button locked gate… right? Wrong. It only took him a few weeks, but he did it. Witness an old dog learning new tricks, caught on hidden camera.
With so much Soul Train action all over our site, it might be easy to miss all the intricate new birthday and baby cards we just launched! There are original songs, dances and lots of zingers up. One of our favorites is The King, a rocking and rolling 50’s style birthday bop that will have your toes tapping and knees buckled. We touted a teaser for the King’s Birthday song a few weeks ago to good buzz, hopefully he is popular, because we want to make more! Check out these up close photos of the puppets that Mike made, they’re really quite complicated and we’re stunned at their attention to detail!
We were lucky enough to be featured on the Today Show this morning, casting the hosts as grooving Soul Train dancers to hilarious results! The segment was definitely worth sharing, so click the image below to watch Roker and Co shake their groove thangs! Also, don’t forget to follow them on twitter @todayshow.
Along with the launch of our massive array of Soul Train videos, we’re proud to announce the addition of Face in Symbol Technology at JibJab! What does this mean for you? Right now it means afros! With each Soul Train video you have the ability to affix an afro to your head like Jamie, pictured below. He was just one of the many ingenious folks on our team who helped us pioneer the technological feat of fro that you see on the site today. We’re going to be using this ability in a LOT of new and interesting ways over the next year, just wait until you see what our artists have in store for Halloween!
In celebration of the release of Soul Train Starring You videos on JibJab, we’re hosting a Facebook “like-off”!
Official Rules: Post your Soul Train dance to your Facebook wall and rally your friends to press the “like” button underneath it. Post a screen shot of your video’s “likes” to the official JibJab Facebook wall (www.facebook.com/jibjab) by September 21st. The top ten videos with the most “likes” will win free year long JibJab memberships. One grand prize winner will receive loads of JibJab stuff, including our books, a JibJab DVD, two t-shirts, a signed “This Land” CD, “He’s Barack Obama” mug and a JibJab hat!
As the summer winds down, our amazing squad of summer interns are going their separate ways, back to schools that are located far too far away from JibJab for our tastes. While we get over our empty nest syndrome, we saw off our summer staffers with framed personalized certificates. Thanks for the incredible work guys! Our hope is that these hang high in your homes, reminding you to visit us often! We get lonely!
When you’re sharing working quarters with some of the most brilliant technical and artistic minds ever, everyone has a wish list for what they would like to see the site’s technology do. That’s where the fine folks of JibJab’s product department comes in. They collect and organize every request from employees and users into a massive bulletin board that takes a concept from idea stage, to upcoming on the roadmap, through the collection of specifications, past a ready for development phase, into development and finally declaring the update released onto the site! As you can see, there is something always in motion, making it’s way from the “idea” side of the board to the “released” side of the board. We can’t show you our list of ideas, but you can see our massive stock pile of completed release cards! It’s beautiful to look at isn’t it?
Between key light placement, aperture setting and shadow reduction, lighting a scene doesn’t come easy. That’s why we held a workshop last week on lighting objects, one of the trickiest daily tasks we have at JibJab. It was well attended, so we no longer have an excuse for anything poorly lit. Except for this picture, which could have used a bounce, a flood light, some white balance… you get the idea.
As raging wildfires burn 40 miles from us and Los Angeles sees triple digit temperatures, we’re thinking cool thoughts. Here’s some BG art we’ve been working on for the holiday season.
Something big is taking over our site next week. Big and fluffy. Stay tuned.
In keeping with our weekly goal to further ourselves by sharing tips, tricks and skills with each other, we recently had an in-studio workshop where our very own Maureen put her degree to use and taught us everything she knew about handmade film. After showing the class some examples of other artists at work in the medium, Maureen handed out clear and black film strips, which we all scribbled and scratched on for a short period of time. A few slices of tape later, may we present our experimental film…. Eggroll 118!
There’s nothing we value more at JibJab than outside-the-monitor thinking. That’s why Gregg, our co-founder, was so excited to see a collection of magazine subscription inserts spread out across our product manager’s desk this morning. Johan has been working on ways to better communicate the value of a JibJab Membership at checkout and rather than just look at online examples, he took a broader perspective to see what he could learn from other forms of media. Another reason why you’re the bomb, Johan!
The Wagon Wednesday tradition continues. While usually filled with candy, sometimes margaritas or ice cream sundaes take us by surprise. Today was another show stopper as Amia rolled in with fresh apples, homemade caramel dips and tons of toppings for caramel apples! Between the krispies, peanuts, marshmallows, chocolate candies and honey of today’s Wagon Wednesday we’re going to have to instill Diet Thursday pretty soon. Some dipped their apples classic style, others sliced and dolloped toppings, but both methods lead to sticky goodness!
