For this St. Patrick’s Day, JibJab unleashed a stop-motion eCard “Roll Out the Barrel.” Director Jeff Gill found the song in his record collection, and created an animatic to get the barrel rolling…

This was passed along to our resident stop motion animator Colin Lepper, who was kind enough to answer a few questions and share some photos of his creative process…

Of course! Being the half Irishman that I am, I always celebrate by drinking half of every beer I have. It’s important to have fun AND be responsible, so I make sure I only have half of each of my 24 or so beers.  I always feel like day to day people are way to comfortable with their hand eye co-ordination and center of gravity, so it’s nice to have one day where people stop acting like walking and talking is so easy.

It really depends, you’ve got so many types of green beer it’s hard to say. There’s just so many ingredients that could make it green you know? So I mean, if you throw some boring old food coloring into the beer then I guess it’d taste the same. But get some sour apple candy brewing in there? You got yourself a delicious dessert. Throw in some Kale and Cucumber? You’ve got a healthy snack. Throw in a Leprechaun? You’ve got a bloody mess. I don’t recommend that one.

3. Stop motion animation is notoriously slow. How do you stay sane doing it? Or, is it presumptuous to assume you DO stay sane…?

It’s definitely a slow process, but it’s pretty thrilling. each photo you take is so key to the scene as a whole, and it’s really like watching something play out in super slow motion. It’s awesome in sports, and just as awesome in the world of stop motion. I do have  a few tricks to keep me sane while I’m working though, My wonderful friend Sarah tells me it’s because of my patience and diligence, but I’m still convinced that it’s because she is an ever present Aardvark that hand feeds me energy drink soaked croutons throughout the day.

 Click on these words to plug you and some friends into this celebratory, green beer-filled eCard!